Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

All opioids are Central Nervous System depressants that can cause mild sleep apnea to become a problem. Gabapentin and Lyrica are also CNS depressants, so they can cause issues too. Every time that I have an appointment with my neurologist, she asks "Are you still using your CPAP machine?". I tell h...

Wednesday, February 28 Welcome to Robin66, who is newly diagnosed, is having difficulty sleeping and staying active. She is worried about the progression of the disease. Generally, the severity of RLS will get worse with age. How fast it progresses varies. However, treatment can be 95+% effective ev...

I have not been able to convince my neurologist to let me try buprenorphine. I was interested because it is also been shown to be effective in treating Treatment Resistant Depression, which I have. However, read what you can about the dental problems that some burprenorphine users are having. It isn...

Vitamin D deficiency can cause a wide range of neurological problems. My neurologist regularly checks my Vitamin D and B12 levels even though she knows that I take them daily.

Well I just made an extremely long post and for some reason it did not show up. The system has a time limit for creating posts. I am not sure, but I think that it is around 10 minutes. Therefore, when you write an extremely long post, you can sometimes exceed the time limit. The work around is to e...

I have never had pain with my RLS, but I did have issues with methadone when I first started taking it. It would keep me awake for 6 to 8 hrs. Some of us refer to that side effect as "Alerting" because you feel dead tired by are wide awake. I resolved that problem by shifting the time that I would t...

Monday, February 26 Welcome to CalmLegsJL, who is looking to learn more about RLS and is interested in natural remedies. You can find quite a bit about non-prescription treatments for RLS in our forum on Non-Prescription Meds, Supplements, etc. Unfortunately, most natural treatments are not very eff...

When you ask your doctor to check your iron levels, be sure to ask to have your ferritin checked too. Ferritin is not part of the normal blood iron test and is the most important iron criteria for RLS. Further, when you get the results, don't accept a report of "Normal", be sure to the the number. T...

One of the requirements to become and RLS QCC is that they must be prepared to prescribe opioids for refractory RLS. The medications that they listed are consistent with the current recommendations, namely iron first followed by gabapentin/Horizant/Lyrica with dopamanergics after that. They probably...

In addition to the RLS management document that the link in my signature points to, you might also share this document with your doctor. It explains why opioids are required to treat "refractory" RLS, which is what we have after augmentation. https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(...

You can also try soaking your legs in very hot water when this happens. For most of us, it immediately calms your legs and the RLS doesn't return for about 20 minutes, which is usually enough to allow you to fall asleep if you go to bed immediately after drying your legs.

Saturday, February 24 Welcome to dodieoncrystal, whose son has had RLS since he was in his 30's and is now 59. He's been subscribed all effective medicines - They work for a few years then no more. ..even prescribed opoids - They work but cannot be forever. He has very severe pain, loses many nights...

Sorry, but I don't remember the key words to use to find the publications. There were only one or two, but that may be buried in our Research papers folder. It was several years back. As I remember, the publication spoke about how change occurred to the brain's structure due to dopamanergic augmenta...

Nan, every neurologist that I have seen, including the one who was clueless about everything, has relied upon discussion during appointments. When I first saw my current neuro, we talked about various treatment option for about an hour because I was highly augmented at the time. I proposed methadone...

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