Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

My breakthroughs symptoms occur differently. I don’t get an urge to move, i just wake up. It’s very unusual and I was trying the determine if you also may have experienced this, but I think not. Did you escalate your dose of methadone prior to going on buprenorphine? Although both are opioids, bupre...

EEfall - When you wake up from “breakthrough” symptoms, what is it like? Do you get the urge to move or does it just suddenly wake you up from sleep?

This question goes out to my fellow RLS experts. What would be your best guess as to why most RLS patients do not incur tolerance to opioids? Based on my understanding, opioids act on the dopamine system via inhibition of gaba. This causes an in increase in dopamine production. There is also no rece...

I had the same issue with methadone (after about a decade of highly effective use of oxycodone, it's efficacy diminished quickly, and subsequently went to methadone.) Knocked out my severe RLS, but I felt absolutely awful...sluggish, nauseous, cranky and mildly depressed 24/7. Went to buprenorphine...

There is also one in Houston that is currently recruiting that will be looking at the new med that will hopefully treat augmentation. This will be the second trial for that med. The first, small trial looked promising enough to justify a larger test. Do you think it is money or interest that is the...

Seems like research has been at a standstill lately. I’m not seeing much published and there are hardly any new clinical trials going On (it was sparse to begin with). Has anyone else noticed this?

It happened to me too. It subsided after a few weeks. RLS flares after surgery seem to be common.

I’m wondering if the tolerance is at the opioid receptor or if it’s somewhere else in the RLS dysfunction.

This was actually the paper I was referring to, I must have misinterpreted where they put the electrodes. There are a few things I don't like about using magnetic or current stimulation for RLS. The first is that you don't get anything for nothing and if you change one part of the brain, another pa...

Another issue to contend with is that the portion of the brain where RLS originates is deep. So any external treatment has to either go through other areas with the potential side effects they might cause or else you will need to use many electrodes that focus on the right area and electrode placem...

This was actually the paper I was referring to, I must have misinterpreted where they put the electrodes.

Methadone is preferred by a lot of doctors due to the long half life, lower side GI side effects, and NMDA antagonism (slower tolerance build up). I also believe it reduces glumate. It is my preferred drug.

Oxy is very stimulating to me. I think many others experience that as well.

From what I can find, targeting the brain doesn't help RLS. However, I know an account of someone having magnetic treatment (PEMF) on their legs and it helped. There is a paper evidencing that repetitive transcranial direct stimulation of the motor cortex alleviated RLS symptoms. There are also stu...

Thanks. After looking at this myself, it seems that is a strong argument that RLS in PD is caused by the use of dopamine agonists. When looking at RLS rates in PD patients prior to DA treatment, there is not a higher prevalence. However the data is not 100% conclusive.

I am also very interested in this topic.