Home Remedies and Non-pharmaceutical Approaches to Dealing with Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)

Restless Leg Syndrome is a little understood disorder. Millions of people lie in bed nightly with a relentless desire to simply fall asleep. Instead they find themselves struck with feelings in their legs ranging from the annoying to the painful. The only solution seems to be to get up and move around. A scientific understanding of RLS is not necessarily required for you to develop a method of reducing the frequency of your own symptoms. Borrowing from the scientific method, however, can allow you to analyze your daily life and how it affects your RLS.

My particular symptoms only occur when trying to sleep. Many experience them any time they are at rest. It wasn't until I had a very severe onset of symptoms that I began seeking information and a possible solution to my RLS. The nature of my job does not allow me any of the medical options currently available. Those of you with periodic or typically mild symptoms may not desire to resort to pharmaceutical treatment. There are a host of medical options, none of which are ideal. There are no drugs designed specifically for the treatment of RLS. Those that are sometimes prescribed, such as pramiprexole, ropinirole, levodopa, and opioids, among others, have many frightening side effects including heart complications, compulsive behavior, falling asleep without warning, and with the opiates, chemical dependence. For many, this is just not acceptable.

The lack of true understanding of the mechanism behind RLS has created a large number of theories and suggestions for self treatment of the disorder. Contributors to RLS have been suggested to be anything from iron or vitamin deficiencies to lack of exercise or poor leg circulation. Dealing with your RLS should be a discussion topic with your doctor, even when medical treatment is not an option for you. A physical analysis can give you a baseline used to analyze changes you make to your lifestyle in an effort to reduce RLS occurrences, and your physician may have suggestions that can help you.

A diary or journal is an extremely useful aid in determining which daily routines exacerbate or reduce your symptoms. Cutting back or eliminating stimulants like caffeine and nicotine from your day may be a good place to start. With a journal, you can monitor your intake of stimulants and determine, over time, how changes in their consumption affect your RLS. Many of you may have jobs that do not contribute to your physical activity throughout the day. My own activity varies from day to day, and using the journal, I have noticed that symptoms occur more regularly on days that I am more sedentary. The sometimes unpredictable periodicity of RLS symptoms makes the journal invaluable, as it may take several days or weeks to determine trends associated with your daily routine.

A balanced diet and general maintenance of your body through exercise, hydration and a vitamin regimen is key to analyzing contributors to your symptoms. This will reduce the number of variables you will need to observe in your effort to find relief. Daily habits of activity and diet vary widely from person to person. This makes it difficult to use the advice of others in your search for non-medical treatments for RLS. Your journal will allow you to see just how changes in your routines affect your symptoms and their frequency. Without it your task can be much more difficult. Patience is required, as no changes to your habits will provide you with immediately observable results. Over the course of a few weeks you will be able to determine what modifications are helping, allowing you to continue experimenting with your daily routines.

Modifications I have made to my own habits have been successful in greatly reducing the occurrence of symptoms. First and foremost, I gave up smoking, which is a good thing independent of RLS. Caffeine is difficult for many of us to give up. I have succeeded in cutting back my intake, and there was a definite reduction in the frequency of my symptoms. An increase in physical activity also correlated to less frequent symptoms. A mystifying remedy, involving placing a bar of soap under the sheets on the bed has also seems to have provided significant relief. This particular home remedy has never been scientifically tested, and my own observations are only a couple of weeks old and thus not conclusive. Many people offer up testimonials as to the veracity of this particular method, and you may want to give it a try.

Until more research reveals a solution to RLS, those of us looking for non-pharmaceutical treatment are left to our own devices, and the advice of our doctors. There are many resources on the internet to help us work together. The RLS Foundation (www.rls.org) is an excellent source of up to date information. Message boards and forums are a great place to discuss methods of treatment, and get support from others with this disorder. If we share information and results, perhaps we can all finally get a good night's sleep.