I worked at a tiny ad agency in NYC in the late 1980s. One of our products was one of the few over the counter RLS medications available. It was shocking how widespread the malady was, at least according to the research we did. Still, it flew very low under the radar screen of public awareness, and I always squirmed of embarassment when I told people the products I worked on. But believe me, talking about our RLS product became a pleasure after we took on the incontenence pads!
I have to agree with the the other posters, Fear Itself. Not a good idea to do this in General Questions.
Just advice.
samclem GQ moderator
So just because there are some ignorant souls who think you’re making RLS up, you won’t get treatment for something that causes you that much discomfort? Should medical communities or drug companies should keep all heretofore unfamiliar diseases and syndromes nice and secret, ensuring that sufferers won’t know that what they have isn’t in their minds – and that they might be diagnosed and treated?
That seems like a very ill-conceived idea to me.
I do not understand the logic that it’s better to be ignorant. In general, the less people know about an illness, the more likely they are to dismiss its symptoms. Sure, a few internet cynics love to claim conspiracy theories about drug companies. But I would be willing to guess that there are more people who’ve been helped by knowing about RLS than people who prefer the discomfort of RLS to the discomfort of possibly being disbelieved.
Yah, I’ve had RLS off and on for years. I never heard of a medication for it until recently. I manage mine with homeopathic magnesium, and heavy blankets to weigh my legs down. My father uses quinine for his (it doesn’t work for me). Orgasm also helps for long enough to let me get to sleep, and the RLS isn’t bad enough to wake me up.
It’s always been around. I imagine most people just thought it was something they had, and nobody else had, so they didn’t make a big deal about it. (or suffered in silence).
While I agree that things like that should be clearly labeled as satirical in GQ, I think a lot of you are overreacting a bit. It’s an absolutely obvious whoosh – the last major peanut allergy hysteria occurred around the same time the first RLS drug started getting marketed on TV. I’ve certainly met enough people in my life who think that peanut allergies do not actually exist and are all media hype to instantly associate any “Is <blank> an invented disease?” with peanut allergies. Now a typical answer to the argument “If severe peanut allergies are real where were they 50 years ago?” is that people just died of anaphylaxis upon exposure to peanuts and it was just another inexplicable sudden death (I’ve heard this explanation several times in the past couple of years alone).
P.S. I know peanut allergies are real and all that jazz.
For very small values of obvious. It left me wondering what the connection might be between the two problems.
Me too, as well as expecting a cite. As a hint, if you whoosh everybody, it may be less of a joke than you think.
Actually, at least one person with food allergies found your flip sarcasm offensive as well - I deal with enough crap from people who don’t take my health problem seriously, I just don’t need the kind of “help” an off-hand comment like yours generates.
I don’t know, nobody complained about somebody posting the “Butt Candling” link a few weeks ago.
You can buy bottled water more cheaply - same “active ingredient” as the homeopathic preparation.
I got Fear Itself’s joke, I just thought it was dumb. Not having peanut allergies or RLS myself, though, it didn’t really touch on a sore spot with me as it evidently did with many others.
Fear Itself was peanutically incorrect!
I have had RLS, or something like it all my life. I did not know anyone Suffered from it. Mine has never hurt, and takes no conscious effort- my legs just shake, wiggle and do their thing. It does cause people around me some irritation, as my legs are almost always moving when I am awake. When I stand still, it causes me to have “baby rock” and I can induce nausea vertigo sufferers. I can stifle it, but that can be uncomfortable, in a very vague way. I never knew it could be bad enough that treatment was required.
From a medical-historical perspective, perhaps this will shed some light … I had RLS since early childhood but never thought to mention it to a doctor, assuming any doctor would look at me like I was crazy.
Well, in … I’m not sure what year, probably about 1985 or thereabouts, I was visiting my old college roommate, who had recently completed medical school. One night while bored, I started leafing through her medical textbooks. Imagine my amazement when I came across RLS! I instantly recognized my problem from the name of the disorder, and realized that it had to be a real phenomenon, since here was this textbook describing exactly what I was experiencing.
Sadly, the textbook was quite withering in its view of RLS sufferers. It said that, although there were patients who complained of RLS, there was no objective way to measure the problem, so, “like migraines,” (I kid you not, it really said this) the disorder was probably just hysteria. It drew a link between people who complain of migraines and those who have RLS, saying the same patients often complain of both – meaning, “we in the medical establishment can be doubly sure the patients are crazy,” rather than “ah, here is an interesting link for further examination.”
Of course, medicine has come a long way since that textbook was written (presumably in the late 1970s or early 1980s). But, physicians who are now in their late 40s/early 50s would have been exposed to this literature that denigrated both migraines and RLS.
Oliver Sacks wrote something interesting about RLS, I think; he has a book on migraines, and I’m not sure that’s where he mentions RLS or if it was somewhere else.
I don’t have it, but I remember back in the mid/late 60s in junior school and into senior school in the 70s that there were several pupils who had it…
I don’t care who is right or wrong, but if you went and broke Qadgop the Mercotan I am going to be mighty pissed off.
I’m thinking that there’s a difference between “sewing machine leg” (as described in the other thread now being discussed in GQ), and RLS. I’ve known people who just restlessly jiggle their leg(s) up and down all day without being aware of it. RLS is a creepy-crawly, tickling, almost unbearable sensation deep in the calf muscle, and moving or stretching the muscle makes the sensation go away, at least for a minute or two. My mom had it bad all her life, and I have it only occasionally.
I don’t think I have RLS, but every so often, I get that feeling. Trying to keep your legs still is almost PAINFUL, I’ve found. Usually, I just find that a little Ben Gay on the back of my knees helps.
I had it really bad when I was in the hospital. During my EEG, every time I tried to stop fiddling, I couldn’t do. Just Could. Not. Do. It.
But like I said, it’s pretty rare for me. It’s usually when I can’t get comfortable for one reason or another. (Being in the hospital, trying to sleep when the AC is out because of a power outage, etc)
I don’t see why people would think it’s made up-it sounds like something that would just be a problem with nerves/circulation. It makes sense to me.
Oh, and CairoCarol, anyone who ever dismisses migraines like the author of that book should immediately be stricken with a severe one. “Just a headache” my ass.
I clip my toenails too far back sometimes, resulting in an ingrown toenail every now and then. It hurts like hell, but when it stops hurting, I get symptoms almost exactly like how people describe RLS. It’s really hard to point to a place that hurts, and it doesn’t really “hurt”. It’s just a strange sort of tingly (not electric at all) feeling that seems spread out over most of my lower leg. It’s always on the leg that recently had the ingrown nail, and it’s impossible to sleep with it. In fact, the worst part of the experience isn’t the feeling in the leg at all, it’s the lack of sleep.
Anyway, I haven’t bothered to tell a doctor about it, because it only ever lasts for a few days, and I’m not sure it’s even something they can help with. I’m not even sure it’s RLS, because it has a “trigger”, which is recovering from an ingrown toenail.