Headache and aching limbs are an almost inseparable duo during a cold, from which everyone suffers at times. But aching limbs can also have other causes. Find out here how you can play an active role in ensuring that you can soon move again without pain.
What are aching limbs?
Limb pain is pain in the arms or legs. Sometimes they are weak and hardly bother us, other times they are very strong and severe and massively affect our everyday life. Usually the pain is described as pulling, it develops insidiously. The discomfort can occur either only in the legs or the arms, or in both at the same time. Limb pain can occur temporarily, for example as an accompanying symptom of a cold, or have a chronic character – then it often affects only a single limb and indicates an underlying disease that requires treatment.
What are the causes of limb pain?
Limb pain occurs in a wide variety of conditions, ranging from a simple cold to poisoning to severe nervous system disorders. In this context, they arise via different mechanisms, sometimes affect all limbs, sometimes only one arm or leg, and last for different lengths of time.
Most common cause: infections
Most of us are probably familiar with limb pain in connection with a cold or flu-like infection. But limb pain also occurs with other infections, such as measles, mumps or TBE, a disease transmitted by tick bites. The pain is caused by the whole organism fighting against the infection and emitting certain pain-causing messenger substances, for example prostaglandins. In most cases, both arms and legs are affected; after the infection subsides, the pain disappears.
Pain in the limbs as an accompanying symptom
Osteoarthritis, gout, and rheumatism are diseases that are more commonly thought to affect older people, but they also affect young people. Limb pain is an accompanying symptom of these diseases:
- Osteoarthritis can occur in any joint of the body, it occurs preferentially in the spine, knees and hands.
- In gout, the legs and ankles are particularly often affected.
- Rheumatism is a generic term for many different diseases, depending on the type of rheumatism can hurt bones, cartilage or soft tissues such as muscles or tendons.
Pain in all extremities
Many women suffer from premenstrual syndrome (PMS) a few days before their period, which is believed to be caused by a hormonal imbalance. In addition to headaches or difficulty concentrating, aching limbs may also occur. Similarly, polyneuropathy can cause generalized limb pain. In this disease, all nerves belonging to the peripheral nervous system, i.e. all nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, may be diseased. Causes of polyneuropathy include advanced diabetes mellitus, severe alcohol abuse, severe damage to kidney function (uremia), or poisoning (for example, by mercury). Often there is a tingling or burning sensation at first, followed later by pain in the arms and legs. Less commonly, Raynaud’s syndrome, a circulatory disorder of the hands and feet, is the cause of limb pain.
Only the arms hurt
Prolonged pain in the arms indicates neuralgia (nerve pain, for example, due to entrapment) or neuritis (inflammation of the nerves) of the brachial plexus; this nerve plexus is responsible for supplying our shoulders and arms. Arm pain also occurs in carpal tunnel syndrome. In this case, a specific arm nerve (the median nerve) is damaged by pressure. Pain in the arm also occurs after X-ray radiation of the armpit and the lymph nodes it contains – a treatment used for breast cancer.
Pain in the legs only
If the pain occurs only in the legs, the trigger is usually the sciatic nerve, the anterior thigh nerve (the femoral nerve), or the lumbar plexus, a plexus of nerves in the lumbar region of the spine. Damage to these structures can be caused, for example, by infections, surgery or excessive compression by plaster casts or even tumors.
