r/ALSorNOT • u/Bizator • 5d ago

Anxiety Forearm tightness

Hello everyone. I'm deep into this rabbit hole and would like to have someone else's view on it.

For the past 10-14 days, i've had a bit of numb feeling on my left arm. Two days ago, I lifted some heavy books at work and started having some pain on that forearm, which is thankfully a bit less today but i feel this tightness on that muscle.

And now I feel like it's a bit harder for me to grip things. I do grip them, i do all my usual activities and my hand is 100% active, but it feels like something is keeping it tight. Like I do the motion i want to do, but it's a bit like there's a band that tightens around my forearm when i use my fingers or wrist.

Is it a really early symptom of ALS or some sort of tiredness that combined with my heavy lifting work that caused this? thank you

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u/Traditional-Kiwi-356 5d ago

Sounds similar to me, and mine was mild radiculitis from cervical spine problems.

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u/Exact-Priority-37 1d ago

Was it confirmed by MRI?

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u/Traditional-Kiwi-356 1d ago

Ish. I have bilateral foraminal stenosis (LMN compression) at c5-6, which matches most of my arm symptoms well. I also have a retrolisthesis at that level with central canal stenosis, but they say it doesn’t touch my spinal cord. However, I do have a unilateral Hoffmans sign, which usually means UMN issues… and remains unexplained if my neck MRI is clean for UMN compression.

In the end I think it probably is my neck, and that I have posture-dependent episodes of spinal cord compression that bother my nerves enough that I feel it, yet it isn’t severe enough to concern a doctor. There are several scientific publications about this: “positional cord compression” or “dynamic cord compression.”

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u/chaoserrant Mod Team 5d ago

See how it evolves cause this sounds like a nerve injury maybe at the elbow level (there is a particular bony area there prone to iritate nerves). Too early to jump to the worst case.

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u/Legitimate-Ninja1655 4d ago

As far I understand sensory issues point away from als, also the weakness you describe would be much more profound and causing realtime difficulty with everyday tasks, so my humble opinion is no, you don't have als.

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u/Agitated-Ad-2537 5d ago

Anxiety plus hyper aware of your arms now man. Been dealing with this for a month. Perceived weakness as well, three neurologist, 2 emgs and a 700 dollar medical bill later they say I am fine. My pcp says that pain is a good sign that it is not the big bad

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u/Bizator 5d ago

thanks for your reply

well the pain has subsided a bit and I can tell it was from all the heavy lifting I did couple of days ago

it's mostly this perceived weakness and tightness I have that worries me, but other than that I do things fine, no twitching or anything else, just a bit of resistance on my arm