Pins & Needles Explained

By B. James McCallum

We've all had it happen to us. You're stuck in that long meeting or plane flight. You cross your legs to make yourself more comfortable. Finally, your lecture is over, or you arrive in Prague, and you stand to retrieve your belongings, but there's a problem – your legs are no longer under your control and millions of tiny unseen mosquitoes are biting you all at once.

Yes, we are talking about the pins and needles sensation and numbness one experiences when a limb "falls asleep".

The actual "doctor word" for the sensation of being stuck with many tiny shish kabobs at once is paresthesia. The word comes from a combination of the Greek prefix para for abnormal and esthesis meaning feeling. It can mean the pins and needles feeling, or it can be some sort of strange tickling sensation, or just simply numbness.

So what actually causes it? While paresthesias can be a sign of a serious medical problem of if frequent or persistent, more often than not they are transient phenomenon. Contrary to popular belief, they are not caused by poor circulation in a limb, but actually by compression (or perhaps trauma) of the nerves in that area.

Remove the compression (that is to say change your position) and the symptoms usually resolve quickly. For the record, when you "hit your funny bone" you are actually not dealing with a bone at all – it is actually a similar compression of the ulnar nerve of your arm. Technically the pain associated with this phenomenon is not a paresthesia anymore, but a dysesthesia ("bad feeling").

One of the more amusing stories incorporating paresthesia (or perhaps more appropriately the lack of sensation) involves a matronly old lady who was staying by herself in a hotel for the first time.

The unfortunate women woke in the middle of the night only to feel a strange hand around her neck about to choke her and let out a chorus of blood curdling screams, rousing the rest of the guests. Only then did she come to realize that the hand she felt was her own, and that it had simply gone numb.

Our quick thinking heroine immediately rushed out into the hallway with the rest of the guests, promptly disavowed any knowledge of the scream, and led the search for the unknown damsel in distress.

Some Pins and Needles Trivia

In 1937 a musical revue called Pins and Needles opened on Broadway. Produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, it enojoyed a four year run and remains the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway.

There are over forty different songs available on iTunes called Pins and Needles, marginally outweighing the the number called Needles and Pins.

Pins and Needles is also the blog of modern day seamstress and knitter, Summerset Banks. Ms Banks, 36, helpfully advises that it is much better to make a model aeroplane from a sock than a banana skin.