Muscle twitching may not be a big deal to you, but for many men and women, twitching muscles cause tremendous anxiety and stress. Just one muscle twitch can set off a fear of dying, but only if the person knows that twitching muscles is a symptom of a fatal disease. With any muscle twitching incident, the person fears the worst.
Imagine living in this kind of fear. Muscle twitching brings you to tears. A twitching calf muscle, a twitching shoulder muscle, quadriceps muscle, foot muscle…the muscle twitching may be sporadic or nonstop. Muscle twitching may be all over the body, or just in one hot spot. Twitches may make clothes jump.
So what is it about muscle twitching? Don’t we all experience an occasional twitching muscle, especially after weight lifting workouts or intense aerobic exercise? Anxiety about anything can also make muscles twitch. We all experience this.
The problem begins when a man or woman starts getting annoyed at the twitching muscles, and invariably does an Internet search on “twitching muscles.” Googling these keywords takes the unsuspecting person to various links about an incurable disease that kills every one of its patients: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The person now thinks he or she has ALS, because muscle twitching is a symptom of ALS.
Fear, fear, fear plays tricks on the mind.
The fear is so overwhelming that these people become obsessed, relentlessly giving themselves muscle strength tests by doing oddball things like trying to get up out of a deep chair on one leg; hopping on one leg; repeatedly lifting something overhead; spending hours studying the suspected area of muscle atrophy in the mirror to see if it looks like the muscle is wasting away; becoming fixated on what appear to be “dents” in the muscle (a sign of atrophy?); studying the way other people walk to see if THEY, too, tend to drag a foot occasionally (sign of the classic ALS foot drop?), and…
Careful, don’t examine your tongue in the mirror.
…there is a form of ALS called bulbar ALS, which is extremely rare. ALS in general is extremely rare, with less than 6,000 new diagnoses in America yearly. Yet every member of the muscle twitching community of aboutbfs.com currently or at one point believes they have ALS. These men and women spend hours reading up on ALS and learn so much about it that they practically become experts. They learn about the bulbar form, which begins as wasting away of the muscles that control swallowing. Suddenly, they have difficulty swallowing and hear their speech as slurred. Their tongue starts twitching. They stumble over words. They spend inordinate amounts of time examining their tongues for signs of muscle wasting.
Everyone in this online community has peculiar symptoms, ranging from twitching tongues, noses and lips, to muscle twitching literally every second in a hot spot or buzzing all throughout the body. They visit doctors repeatedly. They insist upon EMG tests. Even when the EMG test comes back negative, they still think they have ALS.
The muscle twitching may begin in one concentrated area. The person Googles twitching muscles, learns it’s a symptom of ALS, and then suddenly, the twitching spreads throughout all their muscles, and within days, they feel weakness and muscle cramps. The mind is a very powerful force. One man even posted how he became shaken up after suddenly seeing on a recurring basis, a truck in his town for a company whose name was ALSCO. Was this a sign of imminent doom?
If this is you, visit aboutbfs.com and meet other people JUST LIKE YOU. Describe your symptoms and ask, “Does anyone ever have this?” on the forum. You will get lots of responses from people, many veteran muscle twitchers, assuring you that they, too, get the exact same thing. After reading that eight people have your exact symptoms, you will feel relieved, because after all, ALS is a very rare disease. Muscle twitching is normal unless accompanied by true clinical muscle weakness, rather than imagined muscle weakness.
