Ever felt so tired at work that you needed to rest your head on your arm for a little while? We’ve all done it at some point, but doing it every day for long periods of time can apparently have negative consequences, as one woman in China recently learned.

Surnamed Zhang, 28-year-old  office worker from Harbin, China, used to nap at her desk during her hour-long lunch break, using her left arm as a pillow. Zhang’s fingers would often feel sore and numb when she woke up, but she didn’t pay much attention to that until three months ago, when, upon waking up from her daily nap, she couldn’t feel her left arm at all. She had experienced a similar sensation before, but it usually went away after a couple of minutes. This time the numbness wouldn’t go away, and she started having trouble with menial tasks like picking up objects, so she went to see a doctor about it.

While Zhang suspected that something was wrong, she never imagined her problem would required surgery, and she definitely didn’t for one second think it was related to her daily napping habit. As it turned out, resting her head on her arm on a daily basis had caused severe damaged to the radial nerves, which control wrist and finger movements.

Symptoms like those experienced by Zhang can usually be treated with special physical exercises, but because she ignored them for so long and continued to exercise pressure on her radial nerves, the damage had become so extensive that surgery remained the only option to give her back full control of her left arm.

Doctors warn that using your arm as a pillow when you nap or sleep, especially if done for long periods of time, can also stress the eyes, limit blood flow to the brain and even affect the digestive system.

Source: Eastern Net via Oriental Daily