Why Are My Hands and/or Feet Numb and Tingling, and How Can I Make It Stop?

Your foot falls asleep as you watch a movie and when you go to move it again, you experience pins and needles. This cycle of numbness and tingling is perfectly normal and due to temporarily cutting off the nerves from your brain. If you experience numbness and tingling in your hands and/or feet on a regular basis, however, this could signal a more serious problem.

To help you figure out what’s behind nagging numbness and tingling in your hands and/or feet, the team here at Valiant Life Medical wants to focus on the topic in this month’s blog post.

Common causes of numbness and tingling

In some cases, numbness and tingling in your hands or feet are due to temporary, perfectly harmless situations, such as the scenario we describe above when your foot “falls asleep.” This can happen in your arms or legs and usually occurs when you’re crooked at an odd angle that cuts off your peripheral nerves.

If you experience these symptoms regularly, however, and it’s not due to an awkward position, it might stem from a more serious problem. 

There are many conditions that can cause numbness and tingling in your hands and/or feet, including:

• Injury
• Bacterial or viral infections
• Vitamin deficiencies (namely B12)
• Toxins (think heavy metal poisoning)
• Liver or kidney failure
• Lumbar or cervical disc issues
• Nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy)
• Diabetes (diabetic neuropathy)
• Hereditary or genetic conditions, such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease

Two of the more common problems we see here at our practice are related to your spine or peripheral neuropathy, which we explore in the next two sections.

Nerve compression in your spine

If you have degenerative changes in your low back or neck, such as degenerative disc disease, it can compress the sensitive nerve roots in the area and lead to symptoms that radiate into your arms, hands, legs, and feet, depending upon the location of the compression.

For example, if a nerve group is irritated in your cervical spine, radiculopathy can develop, which describes symptoms that travel down the length of the nerve into your arms and hands. These symptoms include numbness and tingling, which is often accompanied by pain.

Peripheral neuropathy

Nerve damage is another common culprit behind numbness and tingling in your hands and/or feet. 

There are any number of ways in which your peripheral nerves can become damaged, such as:

• Diabetes
• Metabolic syndrome
• Alcohol use disorder
• Infections, such as HIV and Lyme disease
• Cancer treatments, including chemotherapy
• Exposure to mercury or lead
• Autoimmune or inflammatory diseases, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis

Of this list, diabetes is the most common cause of peripheral neuropathy, and about half of people with diabetes develop nerve damage due to uncontrolled levels of glucose in their bloodstreams. 

Diagnosing and treating your numbness and tingling

Since there are so many potential causes of numbness and tingling in your extremities, we first need to identify the root cause so we can determine the best treatment approach.

For example, if we find that nerve compression in your spine is responsible for your symptoms, regenerative medicine in combination with advanced physical medicine can go a long way toward relieving the nerve pressure stemming from your spine.

If your symptoms are caused by peripheral neuropathy, we first figure out what’s causing the nerve damage, which dictates our treatment to a large degree. As an example, if you have diabetic neuropathy, the most important step to relieving the numbness and tingling is to better control your blood sugar levels.

Whatever the underlying cause of your nerve damage, our goal is to first address this problem, and then we can tackle the nerve damage through cutting edge technology, regenerative medicine, and advanced physical medicine which helps heal, repair, and encourage new nerve growth.

For expert diagnosis and treatment of tingling and numbness in your hands and/or feet, contact our office Fort Worth, Texas, to set up an appointment.