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Transcript of a youtube video:
You know the sensation: maybe you fell asleep on your arm or you crossed your legs for too long, maybe you smacked your elbow in the funny bone: when you free your arm or uncross your legs and an uncomfortable feeling creeps upon you: a strange tingling sensation that is often described as pins and needles.
Now, it's real scientific name is paresthesia, but why does it happen?
Since some of the things that cause pins and needles, like crossing your legs, can also restrict blood flow; it's easy to assume that that's what's causing the feeling and it is sort of but not directly.
Instead of paresthesia happens when you interfere with sensory nerves, which send information to the brain and spinal cord about things like how fluffy your dog is, or how much pressure you're putting on something, or whether your drink is still cold.
When your limbs find themselves in awkward positions, you are restricting those nerves' blood supply.
At first, you'll feel numbness as your nerves stop getting the oxygen and energy they need to send the right messages to your brain.
Once that pressure goes away, you uncross your legs or shift your arm, the nerves can start working properly again. But they're still misfiring as they reboot, which the brain interprets as tingling.
You can also get paresthesia from putting pressure on a nerve, because its surrounding tissues aren't getting enough blood.
One of the quickest ways to do it is by hitting your funny bone, because you just smacked your owner nerve. That nerve runs from your neck to your hands and is particularly exposed and vulnerable in the elbow region, since it's only hidden under a few layers of fat and skin.
For most of us, paresthesia only lasts a minute or two, but others aren't so lucky.
Compressing her for long enough, which can happen from leaning your elbow on a table for a while, and the tingling sensation can stick around for days.
If the pressure on the nerve doesn't go away, some people might need splinter surgery to give their nerves enough room to breathe, and those with major nerve damage: tumors pressing against nerves or certain nervous system disorders like multiple sclerosis, often suffer from chronic paresthesia which last much longer and there isn't usually a simple fix.
Some of you've been sitting in a weird position while watching this video, and your legs are starting to go numb, your best bet for getting rid of that tingling feeling is to just get up and prepare yourself for a couple of minutes, a hopping around while your nerves get back to normal.
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