Eli5: What is really happening when body parts “fall asleep” & why does the sensation feel that way?

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I undeestand it has to do with blood flow and such… but I’m curious why it feels tingly or even painful sometimes?

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of larger blood vessels travel in a similar pathway as nerves. When the blood vessels get constricted, there’s a fairly good chance that the nerves are too.

You get tingly and painful sensations because those same nerves are sensing irritation/damage from compression. When you compress blood vessels/nerves long enough, signals between the brain and various body parts don’t get sent causing your body parts to “fall asleep”. Kind of like getting a kink in a garden hose, depending on how bad it is, you could be slowing down or fully stopping the flow.

Keep in mind that if you compress or traction nerves for too long or aggressively, you will eventually get significant to even permanent damage to the nerves.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Blood supply to a nerve is insufficient to keep nerve functional is “falling asleep”. When thisnhappens there is no sensation. You just lose function of that part of the body. The pins and needles sensation is what nerves do when they begin to wake up after blood flow is restored. Essentially the nerve is in a temporary state of chaos and is firing off erratic impulses and the brain interprets it as that pins and needles sensation.

btw, the same thing happens when damages nerves heal and restore the connection. You will get something similar to that sam pins and needles sensation when the damaged nerve regains function.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Pins and needles is like an old-fashioned analog TV or radio with bad reception, or tuned slightly off station. There’s a signal coming through, sort of, but it’s noisy and hard to interpret. The noise feels like pins and needles, and the actual sensation of touching something is muted and fuzzy.

Anonymous 0 Comments

man its like ur nerves are throwing a mini party when blood flow gets cut off. the tingling is just them waking up. sometimes they get cranky so it hurts for a sec. body’s wild like that.