When I walk I (male, 80 years old) have a numb feeling in my feet. My hands also feel strange. What could be the cause of this?
Joris Bartstra, journalist with a medical degree.
A strange/altered feeling in the limbs always means that something is wrong with the impulse transmission through the peripheral nerves. These are the nerve wires that run through the body like a kind of electricity network. We all know the feeling of a sleeping arm or foot when a nerve is trapped. But those nerves can also malfunction if the blood supply is insufficient: with a disturbed supply of nutrients (such as with diabetes), with vitamin deficiency (especially the B vitamins), due to poisoning with lead, for example, or by drugs against cancer. The transmission of an electrical stimulus through a nerve takes a lot of energy. If the nerve cell does not get enough oxygen or other nutrients, things go wrong. You notice this first on the feet. This is because the path that a stimulus has to travel to the brain is the longest from your feet. The numb feeling means that you have lost contact with the ground a bit. By far the most common cause is diabetes or a pre-stage thereof. I would go to the doctor to get this checked out first.
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