I’ve been struggling with it a lot lately. Magnesium and calcium seem to add some relief. I also have been soaking in Magnesium salts in a hot bathtub and that seemed to help as well. (At least I slept until 4:30 this morning.)
After the holiday I am going to try a “new age” solution and give up as many foods with refined sugar and artificial sweeteners as I practically can. (I won’t, for instance, worry about sugar in the foods I eat at a restaurant.)
Even if this doesn’t work for me, less sugar in my diet won’t be a bad thing.
I’m assuming you’re working with a knowledgeable medical professional, not one who prescribes quinine or says it’s all in your head, right? and they’ve checked various nutritional measurements (serum ferritin, B12 levels etc.), and made sure you don’t have anything else going on that could be giving you the symptoms, that needs to be addressed. Like sleep apnea (well, that doesn’t make you twitch but can contribute to the fatigue).
I’ve visited some of the top people in the country for this thing - the folks at Johns Hopkins, and am currently “managed” using one of the dopamine agonists and while it usually makes it easier to fall asleep at night, it never did much for the fatigue. And the dose that made it really easy to snooze off made me nauseous.
Also check out the book “RLS Rebel”; the author (Jill Gunzel) has a lot of non-drug ways of dealing with the condition.
Whoops - this is a Pit thread, not IMHO/MPSIMS, so
FUCKIN’ RLS!!!
Ugh. Fucking RLS. I had it BAD while pregnant - I lost sleep because of it, and I wasn’t sleeping that much near the end anyway.
You may have already had this as a suggestion, but get a bar of soap (I used Irish Spring), and put it under the covers by your legs. I know it sounds totally fucked up, but I swear to God, it was the only thing that helped me get some sleep. I have no idea why it works, but it was a suggestion on my baby board, and one of the best ones I ever got.
I tend to have a very mild case of RLS when I’m not pregnant, so getting pregnant just made it about 100 times worse. If I ever feel it acting up now, I stick Irish Spring under my covers and it helps.
I have RLS pretty bad, and have had it most of my life. When I was a child I was told it was “growing pains”. Growing hurts? Various doctors told me there was nothing wrong with me.
Last year I was accepted into to a drug study for a RLS drug. I knew the first night I hadn’t received the placebo! I now take Mirapex two hours before bedtime. It’s a Parkinson’s drug now being given in much smaller doses for RLS. It has worked wonders for me. While it hasn’t completely cured my insomnia, at least I can lie in bed without twitching!
I was never diagnosed with RLS, but I had some of the same symptoms. I just never went to a doctor for them.
Minor injuries seemed to trigger it for me. A healing ingrown toenail gave me the worst symptoms. I felt creepy-crawly up and down my whole leg whenever I tried to rest, even for awhile after it seemed to be completely healed.
I used to have it regularly – although these days am on a medicine regimen for totally unrelated issues that seems to totally knock it out – but I read a suggestion to take vitamin E, an ordinary dose, twice a day. I tried it and it really worked well for me; after a few months, I cut back to once a day, at bedtime, and it helped a lot. These days I don’t need the vitamin E (although I take a vitamin regimen dictated by my doctor, who thought the vitamin E was a good idea since it was effectively harmless if it didn’t work for the RLS), and I never did have a severe case. There’s not much that’s more frustrating than that compulsion to move, though, is there?
After suffering since high school, I finally discovered some triggers: smoking; anything with suphedrine, such as Nyquil; and stress. I thought I was crazy when I was trying to explain the bizarre feeling after taking cold medicine. I learned nearly 15 years later that it’s not just me, and I just avoid suphedrine completely now. Gave up the smoking too, and it’s been better than ever. If I could get rid of the fucking stress, it’d probably be gone.
The commercials gave me a name for what I had always had. My aunt has it, too, and I take after her in a lot of other ways - I wonder if it runs in families.
tdn, it really seems like being tired in the first place lets it happen next. I wonder if it’s a case of your body then overpowering whatever neurons are misfiring?
