Twitching and a couple other things.... I know, but please help me.

[Mamaisanxious3 17]

Hi all,

Ive been reading for a while but I feel I need to post. 
mom 31, female, mama of three sweet girls. A month ago A*S anxiety struck hard. I started getting what I thought was a quick “hitch” in my knee. It’s since subsided and not returned. ( I was a Catcher and played sports for years).

Well I googled and some how got to A*S. By this time I am In full panic mode. Constant googling stressed, lump in throat, not sleeping, not eating, just loosing my every loving Mind.

Then I start twitching. Eye, hand, quad, back, calf. Completely random. No weakness. I made the mistake of reading on article on a man who said he had symptoms for “years”. So of course now I think I’ll get it full on any day. 

Also muscles have felt like they’ve been burning more lately… Also read somewhere that a woman was diagnosed and said her first symptom was burning when she was doing her hair.

Twitching  is still coming and going and now I feel like my hands are aching / burning and my feet. ( somatic? Anxiety related)?

i daw my pcp who ran Every blood test and gave me a neuron exam. Checked reflexes ect... said he has no reason to suspect A*S. But he said that it’s hard to diagnose and that weakness isn’t the first symptom ( ugh).

 

Also my mom flew down to kind of help me out. I have felt the anxiety lessening some recently but that’s kind of when all the aches and pains started. Can you coming down from a month of chronic Anxiety  caused this type of pain?

can someone please encourage me. I am fighting this battle every day determined to win but it’s hard right now.

 

[sTeaLth 238]

Sadly, anxiety causes all sorts of symptoms. Twitching is almost ALWAYS benign. It comes on strong when we are afraid of its cause. I twitched bad for a year. Sometimes crying in bed from fear. Once I realized it was nothing but anxiety, it went away. It took time though. If you can walk up a set of stairs, hold a coffee mug, do a push-up, pick up a toddler, etc... then you DO NOT have what you fear. Twitching is 99.9% of the time absolutely nothing but stress.  Also, after bad anxiety I would always have a lot of pain. Your muscles tense up under severe stress. Fear not. You are fine. 

[Mamaisanxious3 17]

Thank you for replying. And thank you. I just needed some reassurance. I’ve been trying to starve my anxiety but holy crap. This sucks. I don’t want life to pass me by. 
 

[justov 0]

I think I can offer a little reassurance for you as your story is similar to mine (I also just posed my story in another topic on this forum where they has some A*S fears).

I have health anxiety and when I get fixated on something it can put me in a very depressive state and take me down a rabbit hole. A few years back, randomly I noticed it was a tad harder to swallow then normal sometimes. Like really dry food was getting caught and take extra swallows to go down. I thought it was odd and decided to do some of my own "research". Everything spiraled downhill from there. After reading up on a bunch of stuff, A*S came up and I read everything there was about it. Not long after I started getting other symptoms (perceived weakness of hands, felt like my speech was off or I was slurring, loss of appetite, tongue twitching and weakness, hard to sleep because I felt like I was suffocating because my muscles were not functioning properly), jaw and tongue getting tired quickly while eating.. I'm sure theirs more but its been a few years.

The doctors did lots of different blood work, had a brain MRI done and a swallow test to check the function of my throat, also seen an neurologist about it all. Everything came back normal and all of them said it didn't sound like A*S but rather Anxiety. This all lasted around 3 months before its just vanished. I noticed it started going away as I stopped worrying / paying attention to it all so much.

During that time I was in the worst mental health state I've ever been in to this date. I convinced myself that I had A*S and was dying. My wife (who understands I can obsess about health related issues didn't think to much of it at first but I basically convinced her something was wrong and this time was different). I would take daily pictures of my tongue to see if it was loosing muscle mass (hundreds of them over the course of the 3 months), same with my hands. I would record myself talking on a regular bases to see if my speech was degrading. I would test my strength, walk on my tippy toes and heels to make sure everything was still functioning properly along with testing my reflexes.

I've also always been a somewhat "twitchy" person but it does really ramp up when my anxiety goes sky high. I had a ton of twitching during this time which of course didn't help my mental state.

 

Anxiety CAN for sure cause every symptom your described and I most definitely have had every one of them. Most of the time they just come out of the blue but with time (sometimes longer then others), they go away. If i listed everything that has randomly popped up and disappeared, it would be pages long. My Nero said something similar but also said not to worry as there was nothing in my exam that pointed to A*S. Once I was able to put it out of my mind and stop obsessing over it, everything just disappeared.

[Mamaisanxious3 17]

Thank you so much. It’s really amazing what our minds can do. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your story with me. I hope you are doing well as of now. 

[MARC 431]

As I have said in previous posts, I have known 4 people who have had ALS and none of them had twitching as a symptom. Try to remember also that ALS is actually a very rare disease and the chances of you having it are extremely remote. 

[Mamaisanxious3 17]

Thank you Marc. I’m trying to tell myself this everyday. 

[Holls 1505]

I agree with everyone. I was an als worrier, you don't have any symptoms of als. Anxiety absolutely can cause everything you described. Please trust me, let this fear goooooooo... ! Don't waste another second on it. Go enjoy your sweet babies. You don't have als. Hugs. 

[Mamaisanxious3 17]

Thank you Holls. You are all so amazing. I’m slowing coming out of the pit- and doing it for my babies! Thank you for the encouragement.

❤️❤️❤️❤️