I’ve had them off and on for 25 years. Sometimes, it drives me nuts.
My twitches don’t hurt, but they’re random. They come and go. They hit different muscle groups.
I’m in my late 50’s now, and starting to wonder if I should get them checked out. It started when I was in my early 30’s, and my doctor at the time put me on Zoloft, which I took for a year then stopped. I usually ignore the twitching unless it kicks up…
Probably stress related.
I get them occasionally. They’re random - sometimes eye muscles, sometimes a deltoid muscle, sometimes a bicep.
What’s really weird is when it’s a tiny muscle somewhere next to your inner ear, and when it twitches, you hear a shuddering and fluttering sound. This is called Leudett’s tinnitus, and I have it. It crops up once every couple of years, hangs around for a couple of days, and then disappears.
@Bob_Blaylock has had some problems with that since a broken leg in 2019.
Loads of non-worrisome causes out there. Stress, fatigue, dehydration. A few scarier ones, but if it’s been happening for 25 years, I suspect it’s nothing too terrifying.
It’s certainly worth a) making notes of when it’s happening and any potential causes, and b) bringing the topic up with your doctor.
I certainly will. I get them in my hands/fingers, legs, shoulders, eyes, abdomen…it’s everywhere. Being 57 years old, I need to bring this up to my doctor and make sure nothing is being left to chance here.
Thanks for your input.
How many years have you had these twitches that randomly come upon you? Mine has been for 25 years, although never an ear twitch (that sounds spooky as Hell).
It first started a few months after I broke my leg. It was September 2019, when I broke my leg, and I want to think it was in November 2019 that I suddenly started having violent twitches in the other leg, the leg that wasn’t broken. Very painful and debilitating, and would have been debilitating even if I wasn’t already nursing a recently-broken leg. That went on for a few days before it let up.
Since then, I’ve been subject to random twitches that seem to appear almost anywhere in my body, but it seems my legs more often than anywhere else and my right leg (the one that wasn’t broken) more often than my left. Seldom serious or debilitating, but annoying and uncomfortable. Some times, bad enough that the affected muscles wind up being sore and overworked. That’s particularly annoying to me; I expect muscles to be sore and tired if I was using them to get productive work done, but it seems awfully wasteful for them to be in that condition because of this twitching, having not actually done any useful work.
Other than the time a few months after I broke my leg, there’s only been one other instance of it being very serious; that was some time, I think, in 2021, after I had returned to normal work. I started having very bad twitches in my right leg, bad enough to prevent me from being able to work, and it continued for about three days. I was sore for several days after that; some of the affected muscles having been badly overworked, possibly even mildly sprained.
Damn, this sounds problematic. What have your doctors said about the twitching?
I get restless legs and leg twitches. Magnesium supplements and a magnesium-containing rub usually provide sufficient mitigation to let me get to sleep.
If that does not work, I have a vibration plate that I can go and stand on for 20 minutes to provide sufficient relief to get to sleep.
I’m on a Facebook group with RLS sufferers, and nobody has mentioned this. I’ll have to mention it there. I googled the platforms, and they look interesting (though websites vary from “ZOMG THIS IS FANTASTIC” to “Couldn’t hurt, might help some conditions”). Magnesium is often suggested as a way of helping mild RLS. Another non-drug trick - similar in concept to the vibration plate - is a massager; I have a thumper-style massager that I used to use to pound my legs into submission. I use pharmaceuticals now.
Like this, but I did NOT spend that much on it - maybe 40 bucks at Bed Bath and Beyond 15+ years ago (after seeing one for over 100 bucks at Sharper Image).
Amazon.com: Thumper Sport Percussive Massager - Deep Tissue Home use Massager for Muscles, Back, Shoulders, Legs, arms. Portable percussive Therapy Action Electric Handheld Massager with Long Handle : Health & Household
@Bob_Blaylock , have they investigated whethere your problems might be related to a spinal injury? Anything that damaged your leg might have also done “minor” damage to the spinal area; that was one of the things suggested in a Medscape article.
Somewhere in all of the occupational therapy, the question came up. We were aware, of course, of the one leg, two bones that had been broken, and the surgeries and other treatments to deal with that. Somewhere, I started to question whether some other injury might have occurred, that went unnoticed, amid all the attention to the one very obvious injury. Some additional X-Rays and other examinations failed to find any evidence of any other injuries. No damage to my spine; no damage to my other leg; no signs of any damage anywhere else on my body.
Possibly unrelated, but I instinctively want to think it is, is occasional random twinges of pain, as if someone occasionally stabs me in some random place; most often my legs, and more in my right leg than my left.
With my background in electronics and computer science, I am aware of the need for conductors carrying high-speed signals to be shielded, lest interference from external sources induce false signals in those conductors. I find it easy to imagine my nervous system as being insufficiently shielded, with occasional random false signals being induced into my nerves. A false signal in a motor nerve, I can easily think, could cause a twitch in whatever muscle that nerve leads to. A false signal in a sensory nerve could be interpreted by my brain as a random twinge of pain. If I think of my body as a computerized machine, with lots of circuits that are not quite shielded well enough against some nearby source of interference, then the model fits the symptoms that I have been experiencing.
IANAD but my understanding is that the “shielding” of nerves is done by the myelin sheath. Any condition that damages the myelin sheath, of which there are many, is called a demyelinating disease.
I’d be skeptical as well. We didn’t even buy it - my MIL purchased it after her Parkinson’s diagnosis, but I don’t think she used it much. After she moved into a rest home we ended up with it at our place. I tried it a few times (from curiosity more than anything), before making the connection to my RLS. With the right Magnesium supplements, I only use it once every couple of weeks, but I used it almost every night for a couple of years. YMMV.
All my life, for the small random twitches. For the Leudett’s tinnitus, about thirty-five years.
I very occasionally have weird micro-twitches in an area of my right forearm. You know those stories about drug addicts or people with mental issues thinking that insects are crawling under their skin? That’s what it feels like, but isolated to a few square inches.
I’m his wife, so do have some info about the accident in question. He dropped several sheets of drywall on his left leg on a construction site. He would have been wearing a hard hat at the time, and was very promptly conveyed to medical attention, but I’ve always wondered about the possibility of head/neck/spine trauma during this event.
I get them a few times a year. They seem to happen when I am under a lot of stress. So I’ve always assumed they’re caused by stress.
How does RLS manifest itself with you? Do your legs hurt alot? What are you feeling when you get RLS symptoms?
I have them in my calfs (calves?) all the time. Well, not all the time. I don’t even feel them but if you look, it will appear that there is some living thing moving around under the skin. FWW, I’m also prone to nighttime leg cramps.
I’ve had muscle twitches my entire life (eye, bicep, shoulder, leg - all over and you can physically see the twitching). Also, thanks for letting me know there is a name for that fluttering noise which I get fairly often. It’s more enjoyable than the non-stop tinnitus I also have.
I’ve also had muscle cramps since I was young, typically calf cramps but I now also get them in my neck (that really sucks) and feet. When I was young and growing rapidly, the leg cramps were terrible and I did see a doctor. Prescription - Two bananas a day. I do think this helps and I still eat them daily and when I am not able to, I do seem to get more cramps and muscle twitches. The dual calf cramps that hit at the same time are the worst and can leave them sore for a couple days (like after hitting the weights a bit too hard after time off).