I'm only guessing in general terms from the very narrow experience I've seen and others may have had different experiences, so they can offer good advice.
Keep in mind that I'm not a doctor and cannot be diagnosing your disease as a matter as a professional, so my opinion is just that a layman's opinion.
Doctors will say at least when they study the basics of the EM disease, that a characteristic of the disease is it worsens when heat is applied to the area and is reduced with cold. Since you're symptoms aren't worsening with heat, chances are you don't have EM. There are of course many things that can cause hand and foot problems. If one has some other problem and it's causing a problem with the hands and feet then that primary cause can often be found. Stress can affect us negatively. So that of course could be a trigger for something and of course can make many diseases worse. If I was to search out and list all those diseases, it could just cause you more worry when a health care professional can narrow things down much better for you.
The tests for many of these "primary" causes for a syndrome can be figured out. Some apparently can develop EM quickly. I'm going to mention a different disease, but I don't think you have that either from your description, but this is just my layman's guess. Neuropathy can also affect the hands and feet negatively. I know of a guy who I used to work with occasionally and ironically he developed Neuropathy as some senior citizens get it, or some people with health problems, but this guy was only in his early 50's. And he all of a sudden couldn't use his hands and feet because of the fast onset of the disease. They didn't really offer any hope for him, but this is a relatively rare condition to many people who have no other cause. I don't even know if he got it due to a diabetic condition. Diabetics can get neuropathy. In the case of this guy, he couldn't use his hands or feet and he developed muscle atrophy, from what I've heard and was very weak and crippled from it. He ended up in a nursing home near his sister's house so someone could visit him and takes more pain medications than anyone else in the hospital. So he got a severe form of the disease,
I saw a lady who had this disease at a local nursing home and she was an old lady who couldn't bend over and pick up her remote control for her TV set which was on the floor, because her hands would not function well enough to pick up a remote control. She asked me to pick it up for her, which I did. She said, she was hoping for a "grabber" device to be able to pick up the remote. Her hope was in getting a simple grabber device. When I looked at the shape her hands were in I wondered if she'd have the strength to use a grabber, maybe she would and had other issues, but her hands looked terrible and very weak and I thought she couldn't even use a grabber, but that was just a quick impression, not a diagnosis for sure. So many elderly and sometimes younger people end up with these conditions.
I'm pretty much at a loss for words, not because I know a lot about medical conditions, but because I'm less learned than many others and it's easy for others to throw out symptoms and share where they are, but you could have something really different or perhaps minor that will resolve itself. Sometimes people develop symptoms that get worse over time because of an underlying condition and sometimes our minds are just overactive from our own imaginations and the problems go away.
I'm happy to hear that it seems to be minor compared to some major problems. I can say that with allergies from stuff we've seen on the news sometimes people get a reaction to something they encountered and it could be sudden and new to them. For example the famous creator of the Muppets died from an allergy to a chemical pest control. It's important to find out from a medical person what is happening if something is happening and doesn't resolve itself. Sometimes our mind may make a bigger thing out of something. I had a case one day as an example where I felt like I was dizzy about to pass out and sick to my stomach. I felt very weak and fatigued and this was during a hot spell. I felt so bad, I had a friend and work drive me to a nearby ER, because I thought I was going to pass out on the way possibly if I drove myself. We hear about people in their middle ages dying suddenly of a heart attack and not being serious about the symptoms. I was fatigued from a burning the candle at both ends and missing sleep however. I turned out that the doctors checked me out and gave me a stress test. I didn't have any heart issues, but was dehydrated and fatigued. It was better for me to get checked out than to drive away and ignore a symptom. Now in hindsight some rest and proper hydration would have helped me greatly and I could feel foolish about seeing a doctor, but it was good that I checked it out anyway. (And my insurance covered the ER visit.
I hope that this helps a little and hope that you don't have EM or other nerve related issues or other serious problems. it's a good thing to check these things out.
As a side note I went down to Florida to visit a relative that was sick. They had bug spraying done to their house to keep the bugs at bay. My sister and I stayed down there for an extended stay and either the bug spray or other odors from the house were making us feel physically sick while we were there. We were getting sick possibly from the extermination service. Our relative had health issues that were not related to the spraying but that seemed to possibly bother us, just that change. So there are many things out there that can hurt or harm us and the body normally has a pretty tremendous ability to heal and recover from many of these things.
I don't know if really comprehensive and long health surveys of EM sufferers have been made that can provide any more clues to primary EM for those who have that. It would be interesting to see if there is someone who collected that data and was able to find anything else that was a possible cause of the EM cases we hear about over the net. I think TEA.ORG had a survey, but I don't know if it was detailed enough or read enough and analyzed by doctors studying this rare disease to be of any help.
Sorry to be changing the subject a bit I just wonder about some of these things for the ones who seem to have EM without any known cause. There is a lot of almost "urban legend or old wives tales" kind of theories that we can hear or speculate about with different diseases. Probably a subject for a different thread and maybe a different forum altogether. I've heard some interesting ones. Here's some of the stranger speculations I've heard from some people. An old guy told me he had a theory that "black ants" caused cancer. He pointed out many people he knew that had and died of it, had black ants living around their house. That's an interesting theory, isn't it? Some guys who smoked and died of cancer may have had black ants by their house, but that doesn't really mean that they caused it. Ants in particular eat and digest biomass including dead things, as much as 40 to 60 percent of the biomass of the earth is digested by ants, so they are around dead stuff. But does that mean, they can be a cause of cancer? Along that line of strange and out there thinking, I read somewhere that people who live in cold climates, in the north statistically develop a greater chance of getting MS. If you are in a cold climate you chances at getting MS are double that of a person living in a warm climate. Why would that be the case? And it's for those who were born and raised in the cold climate, growing up in that climate, not living there for their entire life? Why is that? People can or could speculate. What would an old wives tale speculation be for that as a cause? My mother has EM, the girl across the street developed Fibermyalgia. A few people nearby other neighbors developed MS. Two got a rare case of MS of the brain, which is usually hereditary. Why the MS, Fibermealgia (spelling) and EM nerve cases in such a close location? Could it be environmentally based? Who knows. It's probably very difficult to track and find out. And it's probably more difficult to find that out now that privacy laws keep people's health records more secure. It's difficult to say what causes some of these illnesses. Some strange diseases like MS are labeled as being the cause of some rare virus sometimes, as has been the case in the past, then later the story or article is never proven and it becomes just another theory. It's really difficult to say what is the cause of some of these more esoteric and crippling illnesses. There may not be a common cause.
With EM, primary EM without a known cause, the set of symptoms and how the body reacts to heat and cold often become the diagnosis of a syndrome, or a "set of symptoms" it's a common set of symptoms, but we may not know what the true cause for all these cases are and may never know. It may be that they are all unrelated.
In my mom's case for example, sometimes she claims that a heavy dose of antibiotics will help her symptoms a bit. Some ER doctors claimed (knowing nothing about EM) looking at her feet/skin condition that her pain was an infection and made silly claims that two weeks of antibiotics would cure her feet. . . of course these were just educated guesses by someone unfamiliar with the disease or syndrome and the antibiotics didn't work.
Neurological disorders are really tough to figure out. They are often guesses being made even by the best educated doctors who really don't know for sure what the cause was for the problem. They may offer different therapy options willing to practice and test a particular drug. Drugs that may help one burning foot sufferer may not help another one. The EM cycle of pain is something that is very difficult to figure. In the case of my mom, she probably has permanent nerve damage or perhaps brain damage or some kind of auto-immune response disorder. It's very difficult to tell. About the only thing educated doctors can agree on is, it's nerve related and it's permanent. Of course we as a family often want to have hope and faith that something positive may happen in the future or some miracle can occur. (I've seen miracles by the way as well and seen people recover as a result of prayer and healing that isn't necessarily from a doctor on this earth, so anything is possible). It's tough however to have much hope when one is dealing with chronic long term health conditions that never seem to go away and never seem to show any hope toward recovery. Such is the case for some, like our family.
Sorry I've kind of gone off topic and started to speculate and chat a bit off topic. In any case I'd say the news of you're responses to heat and cold look a bit promising toward a negative EM diagnosis and that's one good bit of news, at least in my layman's humble opinion.
Joey said:
Hello, watchman! Thank you for giving me this advice! Gives me hope that it may be something else! I really appreciate the feedback from you, Lets answer your questions.
The symptoms I had were like burning hand syndrome, but they cleared up in a day or so, and were just from over work or the cold. i may have over worked my hands lifting weights maybe but.. i do that all the time.... I'm in Florida, tis very hot now a days :) I didn't touch anything really hot or cold that day.... well actually the pizza box i was holding that day was very hot.... hmmm.... but still the feet started just before i got the pizza.
I'm wondering if something in the carpet install, like fibers could have caused a kind of contact allergy for example being allergic to some kind of chemicals in the carpet This started the day BEFORE i worked with him, i haven't worked with him a few weeks before this.. and everything was fine.
Stress and sadness is another thing, but perhaps it's just a side effect of the health problem. Did you feel stressed before you had the symptoms? I was only stressed out because i received some bad news from someone... I'm still stressed about it, but... later that day is when i got these symtoms, wasn't really depressed before this day.
Does cooling help relieve the pain. Putting your hands it cold water reduce the pain and flaring?
Well.. my hands don't really have a hurting burning sensation.. i can take the pain.... doesn't hurt that bad. but i put my hands in cold water for you and it barely took any redness away
But it felt good :)
Does elevation of the hands and feet reduce the pain?
Really no constant pain to be reduced right now..and my feet aren't really that bad. But I think it might... when I'm not standing on my feet they're okay.
But those with EM will say heating up of their feet or hands in warm water will cause the symptoms to get much worse and cooling will cause the symptoms to be reduced, so that is one test you can do to see what happens. I applied very cold water for a few minutes or so.. it felt good on the hands, but.. they are still red. I applied very hot water on the hands and it burned (maybe cause the water was hot lol) but that didn't really make my hands any worse :/ maybe that's good news?
