Do you ever feel like your right side of body feels weird? Feeling weird is a common complaint people experience and visit their doctors. The symptom feeling weird is medically known as Paresthesia. If one side of your body, face, arm, or leg feels weird, or for instance right side of body feels weird, it is known as Hemiparesis.
Hemiparesis of right side of body or when you right side of body feels weird, it might make it difficult for you to carry on with your daily activities.
In this article, we will discuss about:
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Symptoms of Hemiparesis
The first and the foremost symptom of hemiparesis is paralysis of one side of the body. Symptoms are seen in accordance with what side of brain of your spine is damaged.
For brain, the symptoms are mirrored.
For example, if you have an injury on the left side of your brain, your right side of body feels weird. Likewise, if injury is on the right side of your brain, your left side of body feels weird.
For your spine, it depends on where the injury is so as to manifest itself as hemiparesis on the same side of body or on the opposite side.
Some of the symptoms of hemiparesis are:
- Difficulty in maintaining the balance.
- Inability to walk.
- Cannot hold objects by the affected side.
- Muscle weakness.
- Inability to control bowel or bladder.
- Bending towards one side when standing, sitting, or walking.
Causes
The most common cause when your right side of body feels weird, or hemiparesis of a side of body, is stroke. There are many other causes of experience such a thing.
- STROKE
It is condition that occurs when the blood supply to your brain is reduced when the blood vessel carrying the oxygen either bursts and bleeds, or when it is blocked by a clot. When blood doesn’t reach the brain well, due to less blood (and oxygen as well), cells of brain die.
When stroke happens because of the vessel blockage by a clot, it is called Ischemic stroke. And when a blood vessel ruptures, and bleeds, thereby reducing the blood flow to brain, it is called a Hemorrhagic Stroke. Sometimes, there is a clot that stays by temporarily and blocks the vessel, it results in a stroke-like condition called Transient Ischemic Stroke (TIA).
This results in your body to dysfunction, and your right side of body feels weird.
It is very important to know the symptoms and the time when the symptoms started, to have a successful treatment.
Some of the symptoms of stroke are:
- Difficulty in speaking: you may feel you are confused, words are slurred, and you might not even understand what the other person is saying.
- Hemiparesis or paralysis of one side of face, arm, leg, or whole body- you may experience weird feeling, numbness, pins-and-needles, weakness, or even paralysis. You arm may feel like it is fallen asleep, you face may droop to one side when your try to speak or smile.
- Vision problems: you may experience blurred vision, black sight, or you may see things double.
- Headache: severe headache, which may or may not be accompanied by vomiting, nausea, or dizziness.
- Difficulty in walking.
If you are someone who is accompanying the person who is having a stroke, always remember the rule of “FAST”:
- F stands for face: ask the person to talk or smile, notice if his facing droops down to one side.
- A stands for arms: ask the person to rise his arms, notice if he is unable to rise one of the arms.
- S stands for speech: notice if the person is able to repeat what you said properly. Notice every little change.
- T stands for time: if any of the above symptoms are noticed, seek immediate medical care.
- BRAIN or SPINAL TUMORS
Tumors are growth, that too abnormal growth, or mass like structure made up of cells of brain or spine. Tumors are classified as benign (that grow slowly, do not usually spread, and not fatal) and malignant (tumors that grow quickly, spreads to other parts of brain and spine, and are life-threatening).
Depending on which area of brain is involved you will experience different symptoms. For example, if you have a tumor in frontal area or brainstem area one side of your body feels weird and weak, for example right side of body feels weird.
Some of the symptoms of brain tumor are:
- Severe headache.
- Seizures.
- Changes in personality, or memory issues (depending on where the tumor is).
- Nausea with or without vomiting.
- Weakness.
- Hemiparesis- for example, right side of your body feels weird.
- Speech change.
- Balance dysfunction.
- Vision problems (based on where the tumor is located).
Likewise, spine tumors affect your body depending on where the tumor is located, and may result in a situation where your right side of body feels weird.
- INFECTIONS
Many infections, when they affect your brain or spine, can result in weird feelings in your body parts, for example your right side of body feels weird. There are many infections like shingles, postherpetic neuralgia, Rasmussen’s encephalitis (which is a rare, neurological disease that affects one side of your brain), and Lyme disease.
All these infections, and many more, result in weakness of one side of your body. They might have many other symptoms including:
- Seizures
- Weakness or paralysis of one side of body.
- Learning issues
- Inability to speak
- Fever
- Headache
- Vomiting
- Confusion
- Painful rashes
- Sensitivity to touch
- POSTICTAL PARALYSIS
It is also known as Todd’s paresis, or postictal paresis. It is a brief period of muscle weakness or numbness. It usually results in hemiparesis, where your left or right side of body feels weird. It occurs after a seizure, and may copy and mimic the symptoms of a stroke.
Symptoms include:
- Weakness of whole body (complete paresis), or one side (partial paresis).
- Difficulty in talking.
- Feeling body parts or whole body go numb.
- These symptoms always go away within two days or 48 hours.
- AUTOIMMUNE CONDITIONS
Autoimmune conditions are where your immune system makes your body attack healthy cells. This may result in a number of symptoms, including your left or right side of body feels weird (because of involvement of brain or your nerves).
Some of the autoimmune conditions that result in hemiparesis or weakness/numbness of one side of body are Guillain Barre syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, and Sjogren’s syndrome.
Symptoms of autoimmune conditions involve:
- Hemiparesis
- Vision problems
- Loss of balance
- Dryness of mouth, eyes, mouth, and skin
- Weakness of muscles
- Inability to walk
- PARKINSON’S DISEASE
It is a neurodegenerative condition where your nerves or nerve cells begin to degenerate, resulting in a number of symptoms, most of which are related to how your body feels or moves. You may experience your right side of body feels weird.
Symptoms include:
- Shaking limbs, or hands.
- Movements that are going to be slow, phenomenon which is known as bradykinesia.
- Your muscles may feel rigid.
- Balance issues.
- Trouble smiling, talking, blinking, or raising your arms while you walk.
- Changes in speech.
- Your writing will change, you will write words smaller than usual.
- PSYCHOLOGICAL
In case none of the above criteria fits your condition, this condition might be because of your mental condition. There are some psychomotor symptoms of mental illness that make you feel like you body is going numb, and this symptom of right side of body feels weird might be so.
Diagnosis
Your doctor will do a thorough check-up and a physical examination to diagnose what your condition is, and what actually is causing your right side of body to feel weird.
To examine the muscles, your doctor will test the strength of your muscles, where the muscle strength is rated as follows:
0/5: no movement at all.
1/5: little twitching movement.
2/5: you can move your limbs sidewards, but cannot raise them against the gravity.
3/5: you can raise your limbs against the gravity but not against the force of an examiner.
4/5: you can move and raise your limbs even against the force of your doctor but not as strongly as others.
5/5: normal movement.
Your doctor may also require you to undergo brain or spine CT or MRI for better understanding so that you can be diagnosed and treated at the right time.
Treatment
Treatment depends on what is the cause of your right side of body feels weird. Along with medical treatment, and surgery (in case it is needed), your doctor may recommend you to see a physiotherapist so that you regain your muscle strength and get back at your daily life.
Takeaway
Hemiparesis or numbness on one side of body occurs when your brain is involved with any problem, be it an infection, an autoimmune condition, or a neurogenerative disease. All these might result in a condition where your right side of body feels weird.
Among all the causes of hemiparesis, stroke is the most common. You can prevent a stroke by modifying your lifestyle. Know your symptoms, and act by the “FAST” rule to delay any serious complications.
Focus on yourself, and the condition you are going through. Seek medical care, and an early diagnosis and treatment.