What is meant by muscle twitching all over the body?
Muscle twitches are involuntary contractions of muscle fibers that can occur in principle in any muscle of the body. In principle, there are muscle twitches with and without movement effect. Further subdivided are: Myoclonies (twitches of whole muscles, mostly with movement effect) Fasciculations (twitches of muscle fiber bundles) There are many possible causes for muscle twitches, but they are often harmless. Nevertheless, they can be very annoying and many are disturbed by them, especially if they occur diffusely all over the body.
- Myoclonies (twitching of whole muscles, mostly with movement effect)
- Fasciculations (twitching of muscle fiber bundles)
- Fibrillations (twitches of the smallest muscle fibers)
Causes
It is advisable to subdivide them according to the type of muscle twitching:Myoclonies are involuntary contractions of one or more muscles and can be observed from the outside as short, twitching movements. Depending on the cause, patients have little or no control over myoclonies. Myoclonies can be harmless, especially if they occur shortly before falling asleep (sleep myoclonies) or as short “shivering attacks”.
Tic disorders are also a common cause of myoclonia, i.e. habitual patterns of movement that cannot be controlled by the person affected. Although tics are not dangerous in themselves, they can be very stressful and stigmatizing. A severe neurological-psychiatric disease with pronounced tics is Gille de la Tourette’s syndrome.
Another important cause of myoclonia is some epilepsy syndromes. However, epilepsy is not a uniform disease; many subforms are also associated with completely different symptoms such as tingling, smacking or apathy. In principle, all kinds of neurological symptoms are conceivable; myoclonies only occur in certain epilepsies.
When the whole body twitches, one speaks of a generalized tonic-clonic seizure or grand mal seizure. However, often only individual muscles or muscle groups twitch, this is called a focal seizure. In fasciculations, it is not the whole muscle that twitches but only bundles of muscle fibers, i.e. parts of a muscle.
As a rule, there is therefore no movement effect. Fasciculations can also occur all over the body, especially after physical exertion, they are more frequent and in most cases harmless, they are also called benign fasciculation syndrome. As a rule of thumb: if less than 3 fasciculations occur in 10 seconds they are harmless.
They often manifest themselves as twitching in the eyelid or in the extremities. Besides sports, the main causes are stress, mental imbalance or stimulants such as caffeine. One should be particularly attentive if fasciculations are accompanied by pronounced weakness and muscle loss.
This can be an indication of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and must be urgently clarified by a neurologist! Rare neuromuscular diseases such as poliomyelitis or spinal muscular atrophy must also be considered. Another cause is medication such as choline esterase inhibitors, lithium or methylphenidate (Ritalin) or electrolyte disorders such as a magnesium or calcium deficiency.
A herniated disc, especially in the cervical spine, can also lead to fasciculation of the entire body, but is then usually accompanied by pain, numbness or paralysis. Fibrillations are twitches of the smallest muscle units and are usually only visible on the tongue muscle. Their causes correspond to those of fasciculations.
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