I am not looking for a diagnosis. I am asking if someone here has personal knowledge of what I am about to describe or can direct me to a webpage with more specific information.
A friend of mine, when he is home, sits in a recliner and reads or watches TV. He goes barefoot year round. He can seldom go for a minute without moving his feet and/or legs. If he does, I know he has dozed off. I suppose this is Restless Leg Syndrome, but my question is more specific.
About a year ago, he started flexing his left big toe - up and down, up and down, constantly. I doubt it stops moving for more than five seconds at a time the whole night. He flexes it 40 to 100 times a minute, easily. I probably would never pay that much attention to it, but it is distracting to watch TV with him when there is this constant movement out of the corner of my eye all night long, thousands and thousands of time each evening.
If you mention it, he will stop, but as soon as his attention is elsewhere, the toe starts up again. It only stops if he stands on it or falls asleep. Just the left big toe.
It is not like a muscle twitch - it is like when you deliberately flex your toe up and down. But he never stops. I don’t think he notices it, or doesn’t care, but it doesn’t seem like something he is intending to do since it is constant and repetitive.
When I Google this, I get a lot of similar things, but they are tics that come and go - not everyday, all the time things. It doesn’t seem like involuntary muscle contractions but a habit or repetitive movement that has a life of its own.
Anyone here have any personal insight on something like this or can provide a link to information on this kind of repetitive movement?
You know that foot jiggle thing when someone’s sitting down and they jiggle one knee continuously? That really bugs the fuck out of people who are not the foot jiggler?
Well, when someone’s whapped me upside the head for foot jiggling, and I’m doing my darndest for community harmony by forcing myself not to do it, toe-flicking’s what I do instead. It’s less intrusive, doesn’t make the furniture bounce up and down, and generally has much less likelihood of making people whinge at me.
Other things I do are the foot-flex (arched/flat/arched/flat) and the buttock-flex (left/right/left/right). Sitting completely still with no twitching of anything is simply unbearable to me, it makes me incredibly tense.
Interestingly enough, I’m not what you’d call a highly strung person - actually, I’m rather physically lazy and sit down a lot. I’m not what you’d traditionally call a “twitchy” kind of person. One of my pet theories about why I like to do this sort of twitching is that I have very low blood pressure, and I think I might be consciously or subconsciously helping the blood flow along by jiggling my body about. I also hate hate hate standing up (walking is fine, I can walk for hours) and my favourite relaxing position is lying on my back with my feet half way up the walls. And I don’t feel the need to twitch when I’m doing that.