- We're started?
Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous
Physical Therapists on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion of course, Bob.
- And we're being very rude.
We didn't introduce Napoleon.
- Ah, yes.
- Napoleon "Bone"apart.
- Right, "hi people".
- Today, we're gonna talk about why do your hands go numb
or arms go numb when you're sleeping sometimes at night
because we're gonna show you how, why it happens
and how to stop it.
- Right.
So the first thing is you have to understand is
generally it's pressure on a nerve.
- Sure.
- It's pressure on a nerve.
That's the simplified explanation.
There's actually issues about blood flow to the nerve
and stuff, but we won't get into that.
But you have nerves that come all the way from your neck.
And we use this red tubing here to kind of demonstrate just
one of the nerve, you know, strings that may be going down
But the nerves come from your neck, they go
under the collarbone and then they go into the arm and down
into the hand and they send signals up to your brain
and they give you a sensation of, you know, feeling
and all that.
- Make you move.
- So that's why you get numbness
and tingling when it, they're kind of cut off.
- Right. So in other words, if we pinch this nerve
for a while eventually everything below here
is gonna start to feel numb and tingling
and all those symptoms.
- So one of the areas that you can get a pinched
nerve is up in the neck itself, which,
this is a spine right here.
Lonnie, can you see that?
The, I dunno if you can see these
little yellow nerves coming out,
there's little holes there.
Lonnie's trying to focus.
It's gonna show me.
Yeah, right there.
You got a pen, Brad?
- Yep. So they're cut, they're cut off here.
In your body they extend and go down into your neck
and your arm. But that's what we're talking about.
The little holes are called framing.
- And they can get smaller sometimes with calcium build up
or, or a disc problem could cause that hole to be small.
- Sure.
- So let's get rid of this.
Alright.
So the other place that's really common is
under the collarbone and that's, especially
if you have your arms up like this, right?
That, that can compromise that area
and that can cause my, my hands go numb
when I go up this way, if I sleep this way.
- Right.
- One, and I, real quickly.
Once I, they both fell asleep and the alarm went off
and I'm going like this to try to get the alarm.
I have no movement.
- Yeah.
- All right, the other one, there's actually a case
where you call honeymoon palsy,
where you're laying down and you know
your spouse falls asleep on your arm and maybe
you guys have had some cocktails,
so you don't really wake up, cause, and anyway.
- He's talking from experience I think.
- The pressure on, on the arm actually causes
the rest of the arm to, to go numb.
- Right.
- And there's also the other one called,
what is it called? Saturday night palsy.
Saturday night palsy.
Brad's gonna demonstrate that one.
- This is not Saturday Night Fever,
but this is kind of related though.
- Yeah.
- So say for example, this happened to me once
when I was younger, I've had too much to drink and
and maybe I've decided to fall asleep
in your chair and your arm-
- There's an arm rest, yeah.
- And you're like that.
And you've been there for a while and then you wake
up and you realize you don't have an arm
and you don't feel your arm cause it's all numb.
- Yeah. You were getting pressure right here
on the outside of the, the
on a different muscle now.
Humerus. On the radial nerve.
- Yeah. But the pressure is causing problems cutting
off that nerve and pinging on it, so.
- So, alright. The other place where it's very common
to get impingement is a, which lot of people know
is the carpal tunnel, which is right down here by the wrist.
And there's a band that goes across, that goes
across the nerve and can give you pressure.
Especially if you, as we're gonna talk about,
if you sleep like this.
- Right.
- So let's go ahead and show the positions
that you want to kind of avoid.
So in either case you want avoid sleeping with your arms
above your head this way, or even you're on your stomach
you don't want to sleep with your arms like this.
- Yeah, I did, I've done this and waking up,
I didn't do the thing like you did,
but I've actually bit my arm cause I couldn't feel it.
I couldn't move it.
- Exactly.
- It's kind of fun, actually.
- If you sleep on your side and you even put your arm
up like this, it could give you trouble.
You want to keep it down here.
The other thing is you don't wanna sleep with your,
your wrist bent like this,
like some people like to do.
So what is the problem with this, Brad?
It really isn't unless you, like, if you do
the Saturday night palsy and if you were there
for a long time, you actually could damage the
covering of the nerve. And that tend- tends to recover.
It might take two to four weeks or something like that.
But if you actually get into damaging the nerve itself,
it could take months and even a year
and it may not ever recover.
So that's, that is a little more serious.
- Yeah. So yeah, don't, don't drink so much either.
That'll take care of that.
- That's right.
That's probably a good piece of advice to follow, so.
Alright, Brad, anything else?
- No, I think these are good.
You know, people are asking why do my arms fall asleep?
And it's very simple, you just have to understand it.
So we should thank Napoleon.
Can you zoom over there?
- Yeah, thank Napoleon.
- Yep, go on, get over, zoom right over.
- Remember, we're not just pretty, Brad.
- Yeah, we're pretty ugly.
- Yeah, I mean we're pretty handy sometimes. We're helpful.
- Okay. Goodbye.
- Alright, bye.