Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

Thanks for your concern, but this is NOT shock therapy, in any way, shape, or form. It is FDA approved and is the most studied medical device there is. That said, I'm taking it slowly and with a bit of skepticism. I'm very quick at discontinuing treatments, whether drug or other, at the first sign of a problem.

(So far the one thing that has caused me the most harm is Requip.)

However, my last treatment was on Friday, and I've had much, much less pain since. And more, more PLMs. I have an appointment with my pain doc tomorrow, and I'll talk to him about that.

Susan

Hi Susan It was great chatting with you tonight on the chat line tonight.

I am glad that you are having less pain, but sorry that you are getting more PLMs.

Let us know what your pain dr says.

Take care and have a nice evening.

I guess I've been doing the Alpha Stim for about 6 weeks, off and on. And I realized that at the pain doc yesterday, I could only report pain at about 3-4 on the pain scale. And the pain has been consistently getting less and less during the day. It's almost back to where it was pre-Requip, where the pain comes and goes with the weather changes. The only problem I've really had with it is that I seem to get a rebound in the pain the day after the treatment. But after that it really subsides.

The other thing that I'm sure the Alpha Stim has helped with is in getting to sleep. It's done wonders for that.

Now I just have to get one to use at home. Then I'll be able to hook it up at night at bedtime and zap myself into the alpha state. It puts me into a relaxed state, kind of like taking benzos, but without taking the benzos. A natural high.

I'm glad I gave it a good try. I think the experiment has been a success!

Susan

I wanted to bump this up since I've had a home Alpha Stim unit for a couple years now. I use it off and on, and up until recently mostly "off." I haven't found that it helps with RLS, unless the RLS is painful. Then it knocks the pain down so that it's just regular RLS. I did have some let pain the other day, and I took out the probes and did my legs, and the pain went away within a day or two.

Mostly I use it for help with sleep and depression. I skip using the probes on the legs and just hook it up to my head. From reading about it on various websites, I now understand that it can take 1-2 hours of use a day to lift depression. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go off antidepressants entirely, though, because I've had a pretty severe case for a long time. I had 2 concussions when I was young and concussions have been linked to depression later in life, so I figure I'm stuck with that.

What I've noticed, and I haven't been using it that many days for an hour a day, and I keep falling asleep and forgetting to use it
- After several days of using it in a row, I had a couple very happy days where I actually felt like my old happy self.
- It seems to affect my sleep cycles. After several days, I noticed that one night I actually had something like 4 sleep cycles. My deep sleep was still fragmented all over the place, and I still didn't feel rested. (I have a Zeo and can track my sleep stages) But for someone who doesn't have narcolepsy, it seems like this could be quite helpful.

I've already linked to some pages of research on this device, if you're interested in reading more about it. It's expensive, but may be covered under insurance or at least under a cafeteria plan.

This sounds worth checking into. Thanks for bumping it back up.