Why are my hands asleep?

Every morning when I wake up, both my hands are asleep. Well, maybe not every, but the vast majority.

Anyways, why could this be? And is it doing any long-term damage?

do you tend to sleep with your hands under (or near) your head? (i.e. with your elbow joints tightly closed up; this can compress the blood vessels and nerves).

I don’t think it will cause any permanent damage, but IANADoctor.

Next time this happens, pay attention to exactly which fingers of your hand(s) get numb. Median nerve compression (usually the result of flexing the wrist) causes numbness of the thumb and the second and thrird fingers.

Compression of the ulnar enrve, usually at the elbow, usually results in numbnessof the fourth and fifth digits.

You might try buying and wearing a wrist splint at night. If the symptoms resolve, you probably have some form of carpal tunnel syndrome.

I’ve had this too, I’ve never met anyone else who has though. It’s like when I wake up my hands are too “weak” to do anything. It’s not tingly or numb like pins and needles.

It’s just they can’t seem to do anything that requires strength. I have to wait a while for them to wake up.

Is this the same thing you get Ace? Do others get it and should it be a cause for concern?

Back in high school I used to work in a steakhouse bakery, and one of my jobs was putting cookie dough on a large cookie sheet. I did this by using a scoop to scoop out the dough, etc. It involved a lot of wrist movement. This repetative motion day after day led to my hands (no matter what position I kept them in) feeling numb and looking swollen when I woke up in the morning. A few weeks after I left my job, my hands went back to normal.

So are you performing a task often that requires repetative hand/wrist motion (chuckle chuckle wink)?

Generally when I sleep my body has a special intelligence that informs it to change positions every now & then so that the pins & needles thing doesn’t happen. Same thing happens when I model for art classes, thats why i have to change poses every 20 minutes sometimes.

There was a similar thread here that may help. I too had this problem and it was a matter of me getting into a habit of positioning my hands to cause them to fall alseep without me knowing I was doing it.

I just put a string so my arms couldn’t be above my head till I broke the habit.

When your limbs fall asleep what is happening is that you are pressing on your nerve. This causes the tingly “pins and needles” sensation.

You ARE NOT cutting off blood flow, it continues as normal.

Istara - that doesn’t sound like your hands are asleep since you don’t get the “pins & needles” sensation.