The weight of your head puts pressure on the blood vessels that thread through your arm, cutting off circulation. This prevents oxygen from going to the affected limb. This lack of blood sabotages the normal flow of sensory data to the brain as the parched nerves start firing off messages at random.
When these various nerve get scrambled, the brain misinterprets the signals and generates a range of sensations, including prickly pain, warmth and numbness. This neural static only gets worse after you’ve repositioned the arm and blood gushes back in.
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