It is more generally known as the feeling of " pins and needles " or of a limb being "asleep" (although this is not directly related to the phenomenon of sleep). The manifestation of paresthesia may be transient or chronic.
Without a proper supply of blood and nutrients, nerve cells can no longer adequately send signals to the brain. Because of this, paresthesia can also be a symptom of vitamin deficiency and malnutrition, as well as metabolic disorders like diabetes, hypothyroidism, and hypoparathyroidism.
Nerves below the head may be compressed where chronic neck and spine problems exist and can be caused by, amongst other things, muscle cramps which may be a result of clinical anxiety or excessive mental stress, bone disease, bad posture, unsafe heavy lifting practices or physical trauma such as whiplash.Paresthesia can also be caused simply by blocking of the blood stream to a limb by applying weight pressure on to the limb for extended periods of time.Another cause of paresthesia, however, may be direct damage to the nerves themselves, i.e. neuropathy, which itself can stem from injury or infection such as Lyme disease, or which may be indicative of a current neurological disorder. Chronic paresthesia can sometimes be symptomatic of serious conditions, such as a transient ischemic attack, motor neurone disease, or autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis or lupus erythematosus. The herpes zoster virus can attack nerves causing numbness instead of pain commonly associated with shingles. A diagnostic evaluation by a doctor is necessary to rule these out. Demyelination diseases may also cause cross-talk between adjacent axons and lead to parasthesia. During impulse conduction some aberrant current that escaped a demyelinated axon can circulate in the exterior and depolarize an adjacent demyelinated, hyperexcitable axon. This can generate impulses conducted in both directions along this axon since no part of the axon is in a refractory state. This becomes very serious in conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
Source: Wikipedia > Paresthesia
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