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Desrtopa comments on Rationality Quotes September 2013 - Less Wrong
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Odd, this has never happened to me. Not the experience of waking up with a numb arm, but the experience of being at all worried about it.
I was quite worried the first time I experienced a numb arm which was both completely dead to sensation and totally immobile for multiple minutes, but after that had happened before, successive occurrences were no longer particularly worrying.
I've experienced 'pins and needles' many times, but a totally 'dead' arm only once. I didn't have any control over it, and when I tried to move it I hit myself in the nose. Quite hard, too!
When I experienced a "totally dead arm," I didn't just not have control over it, I couldn't even wiggle my fingers. It was pretty frightening, since as far as I knew the arm might have experienced extensive cell death from blood deprivation; after all, I had no sign of it being operational at all. My circulation was poor enough that I couldn't even tell if it was still warm, beyond residual heat from my lying on it.
It's happened twice again since then though, and the successive occasions were not particularly distressing.
IIRC the numbness is caused by nerve compression, not blood-flow cutoff.
edit: Apparently it can be either way: http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-most-common-causes-of-numbness-while-sleeping.htm
edit2: And another source claims it's due to nerves, so I dunno. I do find the nerve explanation more plausible than the blood-flow one.
I couldn't do anything with the arm either, it just felt as if it wasn't there. It was decades ago, but I think I used my shoulder muscles to try and move it. I was probably scared too, but that part of the memory is quite vague.