Word of the week: Obdormition

We all know the feeling of sitting down for too long, getting up and your legs gone to sleep. The medical term to describe this sensation is called obdormition, which derives from the Latin ‘obdormire’ meaning ‘to fall asleep’. 

However, the numbness we all feel when our limbs go to sleep is actually  prolonged pressure on the body's nerve tracts for a period of time and during this time an impairment to our nervous system occurs, as information between the brain and limbs becomes obstructed. 

After the numbness goes away many of us feel ‘pins and needles’ or in scientific terms 'paresthesia’. While in most cases paresthesia is temporary and usually disappears after a few minutes, some people can experience it chronically, and over the years people have actually treated chronic ‘pins and needles’ by taking ketamine.