One sided feelings

[buttonsblackie]

I posted a few weeks ago about having one sided funny feelings on the right hand side of my body - a bit like weak feelings but not really (if you know what I mean).

Since then I have had a neurological exam and thought I would pass on what I was told.

The consultant said that your nervous system can get switched on and become over sensitive and this can happen on one side of you body only. They think it is caused by an infection lowering your immunity and then opportunistic viruses moving in and then everything just going a bit hyper with the nervous system. This can cause odd sensations in one side of your body.

He basically said it is not life threatening, and the best thing to do is to ignore any of the sensations until your nervous system calms down and things get back to normal. This could take a while (I have felt like this for about 5 months now) - but it will get better through time.

He said that it is likely to be exacerbated by anxiety but said it would be a very odd person who had no anxious feelings when they felt weak in one side of their body - but as long as you show no other signs of any neurological disease try and keep the anxiety in check and do something to distract yourself if you start to get panicky.

While I would never advise anyone to ignore physical symptoms and not go to the doctor if necessary I thought that this post might put some peoples minds at rest.

R

BB

[Odyssey909]

Hi

Thanks for the post, really helpful. I've been having such feelings for a couple of months now and the doctor doesn't think there's anything serious wrong with me, however as you say it's impossible to ignore such feelings which are clearly nerve related. Where there's anxiety or stress present it's even more likely that there is nothing seriously wrong and these feelings are nothing to be concerned about

Best wishes
Tim

[jos]

hi all

i have had left sided sensations that progressed from my neck and back to my arm and hand and eventually down my leg - they were variable and not following any obvious neurological pattern - as a neurophysiotherapist i knew that these symptoms were not explained by a neurological pathology but developed a health anxiety about an unfound pathology that added to the depression/anxiety breakdown that i was suffering

my gp was fairly dissmissive saying it was anxiety and go away with some ssri's but i eventually got a CT and EEG which were all clear - one explanation was that one sided symptoms may occur from the non-dominant side of the brain due to psycological pressures - i have since tried to ignore the symptoms and feelings of hypersensitisation generally through the left - and tried to use both sides equally to normalise one to the other - swimming was good for this as it strenghens evenly

there certainly have been two sides of me during my breakdown - one was the old me trying to think logically and problem solve through at all - the other was the broken anxious depressed me that couldn't cope with the world or myself - the coping me was rarely there for the first few months but has returned now most of the time

from working with stroke patients i know how sided our brain functions are - it is not inconcievable that psycological symptoms could present with a sidedness representing a part of our needs eg creative/imaginative - (right side of brain affecting left side of body) that is not being adequately fulfilled

i have seen nothing in the literature or on the net about this sidedness and would be interested with anything anyone else has come up with

as a reassurance, as i get better my sided symptoms get less and also less important to me - the important thing is to have a good neuro exam from a gp or neurologist and if clear to work on normalising the sensations or strengthen if weak

An interesting area that hasn't been well looked at but is experienced by several people on this site

any feedback would be great - jos