Restless Legs Syndrome Relief And Hope for Sleepless Victims of a Hidden Epidemic

Chapter One: Yes, It Is a Real Disease The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure The word nightwalkers describes people (like me) who are forced to endure profoundly disagreeable creepy-crawly symptoms in their legs that can be relieved only by movement or medication. Walking is the method most commonly used, and since the restless limbs suffer more at night, the severely afflicted may have to walk all night long. Hence nightwalkers. The severity of symptoms ranges from mild (uncomfortable and intermittent), to moderate, to severe (distressing and daily). Those with the severe form -- who have the agony of serious sleep deprivation as well as the discomfort of RLS -- have in some cases been driven to suicide. My RLS eventually became severe: sleep was impossible until daybreak. I spent many dark hours walking. I can testify from experience that the name restless legs syndrome, though sounding trivial, does accurately describe the nature of the affliction. Legs, and sometimes arms, demand to be moved. People with RLS have employed many words in their attempts to relay their unusual discomfort: "prickly," "jittery," "pulling," "an electrical feeling," "pressure building up," "fidgety," "like thousands of ants crawling inside," "heebie-jeebies," "a deep ache in the bones," "as though a very large spring was coiled inside my legs," "like a cramp that does not fully develop." The character Kramer on the TV sitcom Seinfeld said his girlfriend had "jimmy legs," which is probably another way of describing RLS. A psychiatrist with RLS described the sensation as "ineffable," adding, "It's like an itch that you can't scratch," which gives added force to the aphorism that "the severity of an itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it." Since RLS is treatable, though not yet curable, the only way for Kramer's girlfriend to obtain relief is through medication or movement. If she is like most RLS sufferers, her symptoms fluctuate, and she seeks comfort by walking, stretching, rocking, or riding an exercise bicycle. Early Writing about RLS Restless legs syndrome has been around for a long time. An early account of RLS appears in the essay "Of Experience" by French author Michel de Montaigne (1533-92): That preacher is very much my friend who can oblige my attention a whole sermon through; in places of ceremony, where everyone's countenance is so starched, where I have seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never order it so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though I was seated, I was never settled. As the philosopher Chrysippus' maid said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs, for it was his custom to be always kicking them about in what place soever he sat; and she said it, when the wine having made all his companions drunk, he found no alteration in himself at all; it may have been said of me from my infancy that I had either folly or quicksilver in my feet, so much stirring and unsettledness there is in them, wherever they are placed. A British physician, Sir Thomas Willis, was the first medical observer to describe what appears to have been both RLS and PLM: Wherefore to some, when being a-Bed they betake themselves to sleep, presently in the Arms and Legs, Leapings and Contractions of the Tendons, and so great a Restlessness and Tossings of other Members ensue, that the diseased are no more able to sleep, than if they were in a Place of the greatest Torture. This account was published in The London Practice of Physick in 1683. Note that Willis includes arms in his description. For most people, it's legsYoakum, Robert H. is the author of 'Restless Legs Syndrome Relief And Hope for Sleepless Victims of a Hidden Epidemic', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743280686 and ISBN 0743280687.