Weird Medicine: Leg Dents
It's important to be actively involved in your own health. There are many things your doctor can do and will know that you can't and won't, but doctor's are not omniscient, so it's good to arm yourself with information and get to know your own body.
I love WebMD for helping me figure out if I need to see a doctor, but I managed to stump that particular website this time.
My left leg has recently developed a dent and started tingling (no other symptoms). It tingled like this once a few years ago (without the dent), and I realized my cell phone was culprit. I've been careful not to carry my phone directly on my body since then, so that didn't explain things this time.
My first attempt at online research pulled up nothing, probably because I was using the word "recess" instead of "dent" or "indent". After a week or so I decided to make an appointment with my doctor "just in case". The woman scheduling the appointment asked if it was like an "indent", which gave me the word I needed for my google search.
Apparently this is a "new" but not unheard of condition. It seems some leg "dent"s are cause by repeatedly leaning against a certain counter. However that didn't fit my case. There is a newly discovered/studied condition called Lipoatrophia Semicirularis which appears most often in office workers (one site said also in a disproportionate number of young women). I thought my lack of exercise recently might be the culprit (still possible), but many people who had regular exercise routines and of various weight sizes were experiencing the same strange symptom.
The current theory is that Lipoatrophia Semicirularis (fancy way of saying the fat deflated strangely in your leg) is caused by low level electromagnetic and electrostatics fields, like from a computer. The dents in many of these people's legs seemed to match the line of shielding their desk would give them from such fields. The good news is that changes to the environment or leaving the environment, cleared up most of the cases. So it may be as simple as not sitting my laptop on my lap so often. (I'd been doing this a lot recently for writing.)
I wanted to share the story, because it seems to be uncommon but not rare and many people on the message boards said it was new to their doctors.
There are other and more serious conditions that can effect your fat layer, but this is one of those things that you could experiment with on your own to see if electronic equipment may be the culprit. I'll still be keeping my appointment with my doctor to be on the safe side, but at least now I feel like I can talk to them more intelligently about what might be going on.
P.S. Just to be clear I advocate educating yourself, not jumping to conclusions. Some home remedies are very safe to try to see if they solve the problem, others should be approached more cautiously.
Update: My doctor agreed we should keep an eye on it but did not seem overly concerned, since I wasn't showing the symptoms that would indicate a serious condition. She suggested stretching.
It's hard to say exactly what the cause is... I later noticed my leg does hit my chair arm when I sit a certain way, so repeated pressure may be a factor after all. Regardless, I've spent less time at the computer and more exercising...still probably not as much exercise as I should get, but the leg does seem to be improving.
I love WebMD for helping me figure out if I need to see a doctor, but I managed to stump that particular website this time.
My left leg has recently developed a dent and started tingling (no other symptoms). It tingled like this once a few years ago (without the dent), and I realized my cell phone was culprit. I've been careful not to carry my phone directly on my body since then, so that didn't explain things this time.
My first attempt at online research pulled up nothing, probably because I was using the word "recess" instead of "dent" or "indent". After a week or so I decided to make an appointment with my doctor "just in case". The woman scheduling the appointment asked if it was like an "indent", which gave me the word I needed for my google search.
Apparently this is a "new" but not unheard of condition. It seems some leg "dent"s are cause by repeatedly leaning against a certain counter. However that didn't fit my case. There is a newly discovered/studied condition called Lipoatrophia Semicirularis which appears most often in office workers (one site said also in a disproportionate number of young women). I thought my lack of exercise recently might be the culprit (still possible), but many people who had regular exercise routines and of various weight sizes were experiencing the same strange symptom.
The current theory is that Lipoatrophia Semicirularis (fancy way of saying the fat deflated strangely in your leg) is caused by low level electromagnetic and electrostatics fields, like from a computer. The dents in many of these people's legs seemed to match the line of shielding their desk would give them from such fields. The good news is that changes to the environment or leaving the environment, cleared up most of the cases. So it may be as simple as not sitting my laptop on my lap so often. (I'd been doing this a lot recently for writing.)
I wanted to share the story, because it seems to be uncommon but not rare and many people on the message boards said it was new to their doctors.
There are other and more serious conditions that can effect your fat layer, but this is one of those things that you could experiment with on your own to see if electronic equipment may be the culprit. I'll still be keeping my appointment with my doctor to be on the safe side, but at least now I feel like I can talk to them more intelligently about what might be going on.
P.S. Just to be clear I advocate educating yourself, not jumping to conclusions. Some home remedies are very safe to try to see if they solve the problem, others should be approached more cautiously.
Update: My doctor agreed we should keep an eye on it but did not seem overly concerned, since I wasn't showing the symptoms that would indicate a serious condition. She suggested stretching.
It's hard to say exactly what the cause is... I later noticed my leg does hit my chair arm when I sit a certain way, so repeated pressure may be a factor after all. Regardless, I've spent less time at the computer and more exercising...still probably not as much exercise as I should get, but the leg does seem to be improving.