Does your workout leave you on pins and needles? That prickly feeling in your forearm during your push-up routine, known as paresthesia, is something almost everyone experiences from time to time.
Paresthesia is usually harmless. However, if it happens often, the tingling can indicate a neurological issue. Look for other symptoms of more serious conditions, including signs of poor circulation, carpal tunnel, thoracic outlet syndrome, heart attack, or stroke.
Pins and Needles
Paresthesia is an uncomfortable sensation on or just underneath your skin that feels like tingling, burning, or prickling. It commonly affects a limb, though it can affect other places on your body as well. If you’ve ever fallen asleep on your arm, you’ve felt the burning, “pins and needles” sensation attributed to paresthesia.
Paresthesia can occur when there’s sustained pressure on a nerve or limited blood flow. While push-ups shouldn’t normally cause the symptoms of paresthesia, an overuse injury that causes swelling or inflammation in your forearms could press abnormally on the nerves in your forearm, causing that tingling feeling you get when you’re doing push-ups. Mayo Clinic attributes this type of tingling sensation to a pinched nerve, which can be caused by repetitive movements, such as push-ups.
Avoiding the Tingle
If your paresthesia occurs only when you’re doing push-ups, your exercise routine is likely overworking your forearms. A small amount of muscle tearing during exercise is normal, but chronic overuse of a muscle during exercise can cause inflammation and swelling, which will only get worse with continued use.
Treat an overused muscle in your forearm with rest days, ice, compression sleeves, elevation, and painkillers. Try limiting the number of forearm push-ups you’re performing until you can gauge how the frequency and difficulty of your push-up routine affects the muscles in your forearms. In time, you can also try push-up variations for your forearms like the close-grip, incline push-ups, or decline and finger push-ups.
Tingling All the Time
If the tingle in your forearm doesn’t go away after your push-up routine, it could be a red flag for something more serious. Causes of persistent paresthesia include serious conditions such as stroke and transient ischemic attacks (ministrokes), multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, and encephalitis, among many others, according to Cleveland Clinic.
These health issues can cause misfires in your nerves that manifest as pins and needles.
Diagnosing the Tingle
It’s important to diagnose whether the tingling feeling in your forearms comes from worn muscles from push-ups or from a more serious neurological, circulatory, metabolic, or autoimmune condition. Consult your doctor about prolonged or returning paresthesia, and be sure to disclose your exercise routine to help rule out push-ups as the cause if there is an underlying condition.
If you feel any other sensations like numbness, severe headache, chest pain, slurred speech, loss of vision, or loss of hearing, consult your doctor immediately.
