Everyone always says that. 
I don’t have RLS, but my malady always gets blamed on stress, too. I dunno about RLS, but I could get a migraine attack reclining in a Roman bath, lightly scented with rose petals, a dozen candles bobbing on the water and a lute strumming way off in the distance (having just returned from a languid week under a beach umbrella).
Bracing myself against the usual half-dozen suspects who will descend to torture me, I’d like to point out the irony from my perspective of banning a person who makes light of restless leg syndrom while tolerating people who make light of progressive emphysema (which I have). Like here, for example. Not only am I not dying fast enough to suit some people, but I was suspended a couple of years ago for the mere mention of it in passing simply because in the minds of various idiots I couldn’t possibly have been doing anything other than fishing for sympathy. I mean Jesus.
I missed that. Can you link to one of those old threads? If you don’t want to bring it out into the open, you can PM me with it.
Thanks, tdn. You’ve always been very kind. I don’t enable my PM for personal reasons, but I do give out my e-mail address to certain people who request it through the admins. I would give it out to you.
Got it. Hate it.
I don’t know when they started using the dopamine agonists but I know it was more than 5 or 6 years ago. They were also using Sinemet (L-dopa? which isn’t an agonist per se but more like the actual dopamine - maybe a medical person will pop in and clarify what I’m trying to say). I consulted with the guys at Johns Hopkins back in 2001 and they were very familiar with that; in fact Sinemet was already known to be less-than-optimal at that point (in many/most cases, it leads to rebound and augmentation and sometimes those don’t resolve when you quit the stuff).
A local neurologist at about that time tried convincing me to go on Klonopin (clonazepam). Which was a recognized treatment, yeah, but had so many negatives to me that I was not going to go there. Same neurologist insisted that Sinemet did NOT have any history of rebound/augmentation. Uh, thanks, I’ll listen to the dozens of sufferers who have testified to me that they’ve had that, plus the RLS specialists, on that one, vs. one neuro with outdated info, thankyouverymuch.
My brother, and then roommate, had it bad. It kept me awake in a different bed.
My neuro told me that’s BS-- stress itself does not cause migraines. However, when under stress we’re prone to behaviors than can be triggers-- disrupted sleep schedules, drinking too much caffeine, etc. I wonder if RLS is the same? (I wouldn’t know, as I don’t have it-- though I have gotten it as a drug reaction, oddly enough, to certain flavors of triptans. Y’all have my sympathy.)
I always seem to get migraines during fun things. Never when there’s a meeting at work I’d love to call out of, or a dentist appointment I don’t want to go to. But if my boyfriend’s cooking me dinner or my friends are going to the movies, then I’ll get one.
I wonder if “stress makes it worse” is tacked on to a lot of conditions because it leaves a little bit of the “it’s emotional/psychological and/or you could make it stop if you really wanted to,” that some people seem to really want to cling to.
Clonazepam is one of my anxiety medications. I agree that there are a lot of negatives associated with it, not the least of which are its history of high addiction rates and the body’s tendency to build a tolerance to it. But as a part of an overall treatment, it can be a great help. As a sedative, it works fast, and I take it only when I encounter one of my anxiety triggers. I mention my experience with it because it might be intended to be used the same way with RLS; that is, only with flare-ups. If it isn’t abused, maybe it can be effective.
And look where it got Senator Larry Craig!
Amen to that. My migraines are weather related. Getting stress out of my life isn’t going to help that.
I don’t have RLS but some medications give me RLS-like side effects (especially Tylenol). I don’t know how you people stand that night after night - I think they would have to lock me up in a rubber room.
My Mother does have RLS in both her legs and arms (my Mom is quite ill with an autoimmune disease and B Cell Lymphoma - the RLS is just the cherry on top). She has really crappy circulation. I have no proof, but I believe that the two are related. She was never one for exercise. I am hoping that the running and other exercise I do will keep my circulation good enough that I never have to go through what I see her going through.
Yeah, doesn’t it suck when you give a flameout and nobody comes? Keep at it, you might one day get it.
As for the OP. This is one of those tricky things. The TV ads probably did a lot to stigmatize this as a fake disease. I won’t even care to guess the ratio of real sufferers versus the bandwagon jumpers, but even if it is just one real sufferer, it must be terrible to have your disease labeled as bogus because a poorly thought out ad of a company who meant to make money of it and probably managed the exact opposite (or maybe it worked, what do I know?).
I have a mild version of RLS which flares up occasionally - I consider myself lucky that mine is mild enough to be stopped with bananas, Vitamin C, milk (which I eat regularly every day) and a small glass of tonic water (which I take as needed). My mom has it too, so I’ve know to call it restless legs for all my life. I also have poor circulation - if I go to bed with cold feet, they don’t warm up in the night. I also have very shaky hands (on no caffeine at all), as does my mom - I suspect there is a link that just hasn’t been found yet.
Edit:
Not worth my time.
Yeah, every once in a blue moon, not from any medication, I sometimes get those effects. Like when I was in the hospital, and they were doing an MRI and an EEG, my legs could NOT stop kicking. Or this summer, when we had a power outage, during a heat wave, with no AC, I could NOT sleep, and my legs were twitching again.
And for those who say it’s phony-why is it so hard to believe? It’s a CIRCULATORY problem, and neurological as well. I was at my neurologist’s just last week, and saw a pamphlet on it.
That would definitely suck to have to deal with that all the time. (when my knees bother me, I’ve found that rubbing Ben Gay on the backs helps and stops it)
(Lib, I think that was because you dropped that, “I’m dying”, without explantion, when you were losing an argument, or being called out for other behavior.)
(The name, however, is really stupid sounding. So maybe that’s it)
The only thing I care to say about that is that I’ve never lost an argument. When someone makes a compelling case that changes my mind about an issue, I consider it a victory for both of us, as I did here. There’s nothing lost when knowledge and understanding are gained. As to when circumstances mitigate the taunting of people for their misfortunes and diseases, I have no useful comment.
Before I knew what it was, I had it rather bad during That Time of The Month. I have since learned to take more calcium/magnesium and also to drink tonic water in the evening.
Lib, please, just for once, take your hijack to a new thread. Please.
I hate to agree with Liberal but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I can’t joke around about hilarious made up or pointlessly defined illnesses.
So perhaps my Pitting of you was justified after all.