Spinal massage - does this work for other people too?

[Robin-Whittle]

Here is a simple massage technique which I have found really effective
at ending RLS symptoms for 5 or more hours, and for preventing it from
occurring for long enough to get a good night's sleep. I would really like
to hear from people who try this, or use similar techniques.

My wife has suffered from RLS since she was a child. Quite often now,
she gets the crawling feeling when in bed and the urge to shake her legs
and often her arms. Whilst asleep or trying to get to sleep, her legs and
arms will often have the classic RLS spasms. Some people on this
discussion board who have far worse problems, but these problems are
quite bad enough!

I can't say this will work for everyone - but I expect it will at least give
some relief for people with really severe symptoms.

The technique could be called "percussive spinal massage". For leg
problems, the place to do it is the mid-back - the lower thoracic region at
the lower extent of the back of the rib cage. I usually massage a region
area about 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) long. For the arms, the lower neck
and upper back, say around 6 inches top to bottom, between the shoulder
blades, is the place to massage.

While it is possible to percussively massage the spinal bones themselves,
this is probably not as effective as the technique I will describe. Also, it
feels really bad!

I describe this as if a partner were performing the massage. The RLS
sufferer lies face down on the bed and their partner uses the heel of their
clenched fists, or of their open hands (like a karate chop) to give dozens
and dozens of reasonably fast and firm hits to the muscles on either side
of the spine. I don't think it matters precisely how this is done. I can use
both hands alternating on both sides of the spine and work up and down
the area, or I can use just one hand going "bang-bang-bang", say 1 or 2
times a second moving down one side and then down the other. It is not
necessary to hit so hard as to be painful to an ordinary fit person, but it
will probably feel somewhat odd or uncomfortable.

This is not a "pleasant" or subtle massage - it has a purpose. It is not
useful, to any significant degree as far as I can tell, to do the normal
gentle or slow-and-firm muscular massage. I give gentle and enjoyable
massage together with this percussive massage - but it is the percussive
massage which really does the business.

I find that a minute of two or three strokes a second on the mid-back will
lead to a vast reduction in the feeling of stress and of other symptoms,
such as spasms and what I describe below as a hypersensitive reflex
reaction.

Each night, I give two minutes of this massage to my wife's mid back, a
minute or two to the neck and another minute or so for the lower back.
With one minor exception - a night in which my wife had many concerns
and stresses - she has experienced absolutely no RLS symptoms in the 7
nights I have been doing this. Normally, there would have been two or
three distressing episodes of RLS, with lost sleep etc.

I find that the foot and leg spasms are an extreme extension of a
hypersensitive reflex response. If my wife is suffering from the feelings
of tension and crawling sensation which accompany the spasms, then I
find that just lightly touching the middle of the sole of her foot will cause
an involuntary spasm, identical to an RLS spasm. This is a handy test to
see whether she is "on the edge" of having the spasms.

So far (with the one exception) these massage techniques have been
100% effective at halting and preventing RLS for long enough to get a
good night's sleep. Before this, when I was doing this massage to stop an
an RLS episode, it was dramatic to see that a minute of massage
transform her foot from being hypersensitive to touch to being in a state
where this touching is no problem at all, other than perhaps feeling
ticklish.

Simple exercise or ordinary pleasant massage (of the back, legs or
anywhere else) has effects which last only for minutes.

Another technique which seems to be effective, and which some friends
have discovered in their childhood (they also have early onset RLS) is to
invert the body with their back bent, their bottom raised and their legs
above their bottom. This can be done on the floor by lifting the hips onto
the hands, with elbows, shoulders and head on the floor. I have found
that doing this about 6 times, for just 10 or 20 seconds up and 10 or 20
seconds resting on the ground each time, is also really effective at getting
rid of my wife's symptoms for quite a few hours. Our friends did it by
resting their bottom and legs against a wall - I guess for quite a few
minutes.

I am not a doctor or an expert - but I am becoming an amateur
neurologist! I will write up my theories and experimental findings in the
next few months. I am really keen to find how effective these techniques
are for other people Please don't try these things if you are frail or
concerned about hurting yourself.

The mid-back massage can probably also be done by the sufferer
themselves, by standing or sitting upright and using the back of the hands
to insistently pound (not too hard) the muscles either side of the mid back.
A few minutes should do the trick - maybe a total of 100 or 200 so
moderately firm strokes.

- Robin rw@firstpr.com.au