Occasional involuntary muscle spasms - something to worry about?

For a long time I’ve experienced this, and it’s always when I’m tired (usually it occurs when lying in bed about to go to sleep). I’ll feel somewhere in my body a muscle twitch involuntarily. It’s usually in the lower body (ankle, leg, thigh) but once in a while I’ve felt it in the upper body.

This used to happen pretty rarely (like maybe once a week if that), but lately I’ve noticed it happening more often (pretty much every day). I have a doctor’s appointment in about a month during which I definitely plan to ask about it, but I’m just curious whether this could be a sign of something troublesome that I might need to deal with sooner, or if it’s normal. For the record, I have no other symptoms that I can tell and feel otherwise healthy.

Never a bad idea to go to the doctor, unless of course you are me. Muscle spasms can have causes that are impossible to diagnose. It could be a mineral deficiency or an absorption difficulty. You may require something more than the norm so a standard diagnosis can miss something. The doctor will run appropriate tests and you will feel better that the sky is not falling.

A pretty common symptom, and generally benign. Ask your doc, but I would not worry over it in the meantime.

And yes, IAAMD

It never hurts to hydrate!

This is called Hypnic Jerk and is very very common. Absent any other symptoms you have nothing to worry about.

If it’s while falling asleep, it’s a myoclonic jerk. The twitching of a muscle that occurs intermiitently throughout the day is called a benign fasciculation.

If I use the term “hypnic jerk”, I’m not calling you names ;).

Causes include fatigue and stress, among others.

Yeah, it happens sometimes. It hasn’t happened to me in a while, thankfully. It can be really unnerving because it jerks you out of a nice sleepy drift, but not uncommon or dangerous.

I started a thread about this a couple of years ago. For me, this started soon after i started exercising regularly again after a considerable hiatus. It still happens to me occasionally, but not as much as it did for the first year after i started exercising.

As i noted in that thread, the main dangers that we found resulting from this phenomenon were:

  1. me clocking my wife in the head with a twitching arm while we were in bed, and

  2. me striking my arm on the edge of our coffee table when i twitched during an afternoon nap on the couch.