Sensations of fizzing or buzzing, or paraesthesia in limbs

Forbin

Forbin

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Possibility of ME or PVFS after COVID-19
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In the FT article, one of the post-Covid symptoms that infectious disease professor Paul Garner mentions that he is afflicted by is...

...my arms and legs are permanently fizzing as if injected with Szechuan peppercorns.
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This odd symptom of "fizzing" in the extremities is something I specifically associate with my own case of ME. I don't know if it shows up in other illnesses, but if the cause were known, it might tell us something about ME. My guess is that it might be cytokine related, just because I think I had experienced a similar sensations during the heights of pre-ME bouts of the flu.

Meanwhile...

Robert 1973 said:
I wonder if Dr Nicholson is aware that his KCL colleague and “expert in the field” once claimed: “we believe that understanding of the postviral fatigue syndrome has been hindered by doctors who suffer from the condition also researching it. Though medical training affords insight into the subjective effects of illness, it is axiomatic that objectivity is not similarly enhanced” (https://www.bmj.com/content/296/6623/696)
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I wonder if that "KCL colleague and 'expert in the field'” is aware of the story of Dr. David Fajgenbaum, who saved his own life by searching for drugs that could be repurposed to treat Castleman's disease. He's now looking for drugs that can be repurposed to fight Covid-19. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/27/heal...ajgenbaum-drug-review-scn-wellness/index.html
 
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I have always assumed that these are the parasthaesia described from the early papers. I too eventually settled on "buzzing" to describe it. Before that when asked if it was "tingling" I said it was similar but at a lower frequency.
 
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chrisb said:
I have always assumed that these are the parasthaesia described from the early papers. I too eventually settled on "buzzing" to describe it. Beforen that when asked i it was "tingling" I said it was similar but at a lower frequency.
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I have a Garmin Vivosmart and I sometimes miss alerts because the buzz/vibration feels very similar to this symptom.
 
My daughter is a nurse and I told her the only way to describe the pain in my legs was burning fizzy coke and she had heard pain described that way. So it maybe happens in other diseases.

I also get a bubbling feeling through my body. On another forum someone, who's name I have unfortunately forgotten, said that her specialist had told her it was caused by spasms in the arteries.
 
Forbin said:
This odd symptom of "fizzing" in the extremities is something I specifically associate with my own case of ME. I don't know if it shows up in other illnesses, but if the cause were known, it might tell us something about ME. My guess is that it might be cytokine related, just because I think I had experienced a similar sensations during the heights of pre-ME bouts of the flu.
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That's a regular symptom I've had for years and somehow never associated with ME until recently. I never bothered listing it as my symptoms or mentioning it to a GP, way too random and low on priority.

So many weird symptoms I experienced over the years that I never really included in the picture, seeing them mentioned with COVID-19 makes sense of so many things. And of course all things that would never be part of research or clinical picture because they would simply never be recorded unless a research team dared actually give full freedom to list any and all symptoms. Maybe some of those symptoms point to an identifiable cause but can't happen because the questions aren't ever asked. So many missed opportunities.
 
chrisb said:
I have always assumed that these are the parasthaesia described from the early papers. I too eventually settled on "buzzing" to describe it. Before that when asked if it was "tingling" I said it was similar but at a lower frequency.
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Buzzing is different from fizzing. Hey about that weird vocabulary thing, haha. It's really hard to progress without a common vocabulary.

Fizzing feels like having soda/pop/coke/whatever you call soft drinks, bubbles that pop up at random, mostly in the lower legs. It's also visible at times. Buzzing feels like having a low-vibrating device inside the body, feels more concentrated around the spine, neck and/or chest. Both pretty common in COVID-19.
 
Late to the party on the subject but my experience is like @rvallee's in that I have been able to distinguish between what I would call buzzing which feels like a mild vibrational humming much like you might imagine the feeling if you considered the humming of a power wire, how that might feel.

The other fizzy drink feeling is more like a wave and particle feeling. The fizzing happens in a sequence of fizzy drink pops that sort of rolls along most often this is experienced in the head for me.

Anyway, interesting side-bar of a symptom not really talked about much. Glad Garner brought it up. I'm done with being the crazy person who brings up some bizzare symptom medics think is a sign of the need for a padded room environment.
 
NelliePledge said:
I think this is neuropathic pain?
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Difficult to say, pain can be part of it, but it's not 'pain' as I understand it - it's just unpleasant noise that can't be ignored for long, is 'unpleasant', and quite distracting.

Even very high levels of it aren't painful per say, but they can prevent any other activity, especially cognitive as they are so distracting a chain of thought cannot be formed and held.

Neuropathic pain on the other hand, can be really quite painful, as it's not always subject to the normal built in maximum limit of pain that a nerve can carry.
 
Forbin said:
This odd symptom of "fizzing" in the extremities is something I specifically associate with my own case of ME.
Click to expand...

I had a lot of tingling sensations in the extremities the first 5-6 (?) years. I remember sometimes it felt like pins & needles, sometimes felt kind of like hot/cold at the same time, like Ben-Gay or Icy Hot had been rubbed on my hands and feet (and up a bit, like long gloves and socks). It's mostly gone now.

I was told it was a type of parasthesia - is that term still used?

I don't know how common it is in ME patients but I have read about it on various forums.
 
Looking only at a secondary source (Jenkins 1990) it would seem that Gilliam reported "sensory symptoms including skin hyperaesthesia, paraesthesia, and anaesthesia, and varied from day to day".

I am amazed that in almost 80 years this seems not to have been thought worth pursuing. Has there ever been an assessment of the other conditions in which such symptoms are reported, their similarities and differences and possible causative factors. Silly me. Of course we know that it's just dysfunctional cognitions. And the only causes of dysfunctional cognitions are psychiatric - that great unmoved mover.

EDIT one might also ask whether such symptoms are experienced by people suffering from depression and/or anxiety, and whether there are people diagnosed with ME who do not experience these sensations.
 
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Encephalomyelitis of Unknown Origin 1955: Cumberland:
Dr Wallis did autopsies in the 1955 Cumberland epidemic. This was an epidemic that
once again started with children in a boarding school in the early fall and spread to
the near-by residents. This publication of one of the most extensive early
investigations will appear on our Nightingale website later this year. It might be of
interest in repeating the onset symptoms of children and adults who fell ill in 1955:

Wallis' Onset Symptoms

1. The patients usually stated they thought they had caught a chill or a touch of the
"flu", the illness starting immediately or on some occasions, a few days after this
infectious illness,
2. Excessive tiredness, finding normal work a burden to them,
3. Difficulty in walking due to legs feeling a loss of power,
4. Sweating, unrelated to work done or the ambient temperature,
5. Difficulty in keeping warm,
6. Bouts of dizziness and unsteadiness,
7. Intermittent headaches and neuralgic pains, often around the eye or down the
neck,
8. Insomnia,
9. Loss of clarity of thought and concentration,
10. Aching in the legs and back of an intermittent nature,
11.Pins and needles in hands and feet,
12.Blurred Vision.

Wallis' Frequent, Later Neurological Signs and Symptoms

1. Paraesthesiae (burning, prickling or formication often in the absence of an
external stimulus),
2. Hyperaesthesia (increased pain to touch) and hyperthesiae (increased pain),
3. Impairment of taste or smell,
4. Vertigo,
5. Blurred vision,
6. Loss of concentration or depression,
7. Poor recent memory, diminished powers of abstract thought,
8. Impairment of co-ordination and unsteadiness,
9. General weakness,
10. Inversion of sleep rhythm,
11. Abnormal perception of taste and smell,
12. Visual acuity considered impaired but no objective evidence,
13. Diplopia (double vision) in upward and lateral gaze,
14. Sluggish pupil reactions to light and accommodation,
15. Motor dysfunctions, generally muscular weakness,
16. Ataxia with positive Romberg,
17. Syncope without any epileptic evidence,
18. Tremor in half the cases that usually disappeared after several months,
19. Co-ordination impaired with breaking of crockery, difficulty walking through a
doorway, pouring a cup of tea,
20. Reflexes: normal or decreased initially, normal or increased or brisk later.
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from Byron Hydes Little red book.
 
This is what Wallis said

Hyperaesthiae of the skin overlying the affected muscles
was present from the onset of the myalgic pains, while
parasthaesiae made their appearance any time from the onset.
These consisted of feelings of numbness of variable distribution
and "pins and needles" which commonly affected the extremities;
sometimes the little finger and ulnar border of the hand would
alone be affected, and in this case pain was usually felt in
the interosseal muscles of the hand, particularly the fourth
interosseus muscle.

other abnormal cutaneous sensations experienced included a
feeling as of trickles of cold water running over various parts
of the skin, and a feeling of insects crawling under the skin~
the latter type of sensation being experienced in a few cases only
and was to the arms and legs.

Four cases complained of feeling as if' a worm was
crawling in their legs, under the skin. In one case where I was
present at the time of the complaint, a slow wave of contraction
was seen to travel along a bunch of muscle fibres in the
gastrocnemius muscle at the site of the complaint
 
Wonko said:
Difficult to say, pain can be part of it, but it's not 'pain' as I understand it - it's just unpleasant noise that can't be ignored for long, is 'unpleasant', and quite distracting.
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yes, intensely uncomfortable not painful.
Its one of those symptoms i dont mention because the others are worse and it also tends to invoke the disguised (or indeed overt) eye roll from the doc.
 
I don't have that in my limbs but sometimes in the middle (Solar Plexus?) - it feels like as if I was held to a giant tuning fork. So more like a humming vibration.

Have never mentined it to any doc either, it's a "crazyness" symptom.
 
Leila said:
I don't have that in my limbs but sometimes in the middle (Solar Plexus?) - it feels like as if I was held to a giant tuning fork. So more like a humming vibration.

Have never mentined it to any doc either, it's a "crazyness" symptom.
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Yep. I get it too. It's difficult to describe without someone leaping to out words in your mouth.

It is definitely not palpitations - I know what they feel like thanks to anaemia & the occasional need to adjust T4 levels.

Tuning fork describes it well.
 
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