Why Do My Muscles Twitch?

Hi MandaPanda10! I am sorry you are dealing with constant muscle twitches. I know that must be frustrating, to say the least. While I do not want to contradict a physician, I will say that some of our members to complain of muscle cramping and twitching, which they relate to their RA. If your medical team has ruled out other possible conditions, you may ask your rheumatologist what can be done to help the twitching and why he/she feels it is not related to your RA. The human body is a vast and complicated universe in and of itself and we are always adjusting our understanding of it and how chronic conditions like RA affect it. Here is a piece by one of our contributors in which he discusses the changes to his body since his RA diagnosis, including muscle twitching and cramping -- https://rheumatoidarthritis.net/living/athletics/. I hope this information helps you know you are not alone in this! Thank you for reaching out and please don't hesitate to reach out again if you have any other questions. Best, Erin, RheumatoidArthritis.net Team Member.

RA is an autoimmune disease (AID), which you know, of course, but AI diseases are not like others. If you come down with strep throat, pneumonia or any infectious disease the symptoms and effects will be well known and reasonably predictable. But it seems to me that any AID really means your immune system has gone awry and is not acting as it should. But it's a bit or a lot different for everyone: different symptoms, different reactions to meds, different everything. A rheumatologist who believes there are hard and fast rules for RA to follow is not one I'd want to deal with. It's also likely that anyone with RA has something else going on with their immune system so the RA label is just a general description of what we experience but once the immune system starts acting up it does so in a variety of ways. But it seems to me the bottom line is that once you have any AID you will experience a variety of symptoms because what has happened is your system is broken to some degree but not as your body "breaks" from a clearly defined disease but in a variety of mystifying and mostly painful ways.

Personally I started with Polymyalgia Rheumatica, moved into Palindromic Rheumatism and then into RA. To me I have just had AID and the names mean little. None of them behave exactly as they're supposed to and all together just add up to AID.

Best of luck.

I get muscle jumps when I am resting

Hi there. I have both RA and fibromyalgia, and I always have muscle twitching. I take Lyrica for my all over nerve pain caused by my fibromyalgia. I definitely see a huge difference in my twitching when I have run out of Lyrica, like in between a refill. I can't say that the twitching is caused by RA or FM, but, the Lyrica helps tremendously.