Pins and needles usually mean you’ve sat on a nerve. When the feeling keeps coming back, it can point to diabetes, circulation, the spine or a missing vitamin, and that’s worth a GP visit.
Everyone knows the feeling. You stand up after a long stretch on the couch or a cramped car trip, and one leg fizzes. Doctors call it paraesthesia, and most of the time it means nothing.
The NHS says pins and needles from sitting or sleeping on part of your body “only lasts a few minutes”. Pressure squeezes a nerve, the signal scrambles, and it settles once you move.
The same NHS guidance adds a line worth remembering. “Everyone can get pins and needles but see a GP if you keep getting it or it lasts a long time.”
Tingling that keeps coming back, wakes you at night or creeps up from the toes is different. Several common causes become more likely from midlife onward.
The usual suspects
Diabetes is the big one. Health New Zealand’s Virtual Diabetes Register estimated that 365,867 people in New Zealand had diabetes in 2025.
High blood glucose damages nerves over time, and the feet usually go first. Healthify, the New Zealand health information site, describes the feeling as “prickling, tingling, burning, aching or sharp jabs of needle-like pain”.
Mayo Clinic says more than half of people with diabetes develop some type of neuropathy. Tingling feet are sometimes how undiagnosed diabetes first shows up.
Circulation is another cause. Peripheral arterial disease narrows the arteries to the legs, and its classic sign is pain, aching or tiredness in the legs when you walk, which eases when you rest.
Healthify lists other signs, including one leg feeling colder than the other, skin turning pale or blue, and ulcers that won’t heal. The NHS adds numbness or weakness in the legs. Smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and age all raise the risk.
The spine can be the source too. Sciatica happens when a nerve root in the lower back is irritated, and Healthify says it can bring “numbness, weakness or pins and needles in a part of your buttock, leg and foot”.
Healthify also names spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal linked to ageing, as another common cause of sciatica.
Low vitamin B12 is easy to miss. Nerves need B12, and Healthify says older people are at risk “because your gut is less able to absorb B12 as you get older”.
Long-term use of two very common types of medicine can also lower it. One is metformin, the first-line diabetes drug. The other is the proton pump inhibitors used for reflux, such as omeprazole and pantoprazole. If you’ve taken either for years, ask your GP whether your B12 has been checked.
Other causes include heavy drinking over a long period, some chemotherapy drugs, kidney or liver disease and an underactive thyroid. Less often, tingling is an early sign of multiple sclerosis.
Restless legs feel different
Restless legs syndrome is an unpleasant crawling or pulling feeling, usually in the calves, with a strong urge to move. It comes on at rest, is worse in the evening and eases briefly when you walk.
Healthify says it affects about 7% of adults, is twice as common in women and gets worse with age. Low iron is a known cause, so a blood test is worthwhile.
What your GP will look for
Expect questions about when the tingling started, where it is and what makes it better or worse. Your GP will also go over your medicines and how much you drink.
A neurological examination checks reflexes, strength, sensation and balance. Blood tests can pick up diabetes and low vitamin levels. If circulation is the concern, a simple test compares the blood pressure in your arms and ankles.
Nerve conduction studies or scans may follow if the cause isn’t clear.
What helps depends on the cause, and some of it is in your hands. Healthify’s advice for diabetic nerve damage is to keep blood glucose and blood pressure at target, not smoke, and not drink too much.
For artery disease, the NHS says stopping smoking reduces the risk of it getting worse, and regular walking helps. People with diabetes should check their feet every day, including between the toes, and have a foot check with a health professional once a year.
When it’s an emergency
Call 111 immediately if you notice numbness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body. Stroke Aotearoa NZ lists it as a stroke sign, alongside a drooping face, arm weakness and slurred speech.
Call 111 too if you have tingling or numbness in both legs and around your buttocks or genitals, weakness in both legs, or you lose bladder or bowel control. Healthify says these can mean pressure on the nerves at the base of the spine, which may need emergency surgery.
A leg that suddenly turns cold, pale and painful, with pins and needles or weakness, can mean a blocked artery. Cleveland Clinic warns that permanent damage can happen within four to six hours.
If you’re not sure what to do, call Healthline free on 0800 611 116, any time.
