I have to share this fix that is working for me
Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 6:18 am
I am a male in my late 40s. I have had RLS on since about my early twenties when I found myself commuting about 4 hours a day by train. It has usually come on with either inactivity or feeling really tired.
After some sleeping issues (serious insomnia, weeks with only 4 hours sleep, for example) I have been taking Seroquel to slow my brain enough to sleep. The trouble is that Seroquel gives me restless legs almost every night, often it becomes extremely irritating and the only thing keeping me from cutting my right leg off is the fear of phantom reastless legs. I tried Siffrol but that only seemed to work for a while. I've tried so many things to the pointthat my bathroom cabinet is a pretty good representation of the periodic table.
This is why I am so surprised that this way of minimising reastless legs is working (for now anyway - other things seemed to have worked for a while to then be ineffective [I tried this for a week before now writing this to be sure]) is working and that it has taken me this long to figure it out. I thought last week about how I describe the RLS to other people (it's like your arteries are being unbearably tickled) and then thought why don't I tickle my feet to get that same unbearable tickling feeling and maybe that could be a distraction from the RLS. So far it has worked and I am not up for hours after going to bed moving my legs around.
The method is this; first I loosen up my foot (the left leg is the biggest problem although since doing this the RLS has not occured in my other leg, arms or chest - yeah, I get it bad) by loosening the ankle by rotating the foot around the ankle a bit until nice and loose. I then tickle the bottom of my foot with the finger nails out and no socks on. It has to be ticklish to you, the idea is to get yourself to flinch from the tickling from time to time and to eventually get the foot insensitive to the tickling. The parts to tickle are the arch of the foot mostly but also up the inside to the ankle and at the back a bit above the ankle, pretty much the bits that are most ticklish. I find it helps to run the fingers from toes to heel a couple of times to finish off. You will need to do this a few times as one application is usually not enough.
This has already made me feel I've got some of my life back so I had to share it - I hope it works for others too and if so I'd love to hear from you. (If not here I have an email address with my name at gmail).
Thanks for reading this and good luck.
After some sleeping issues (serious insomnia, weeks with only 4 hours sleep, for example) I have been taking Seroquel to slow my brain enough to sleep. The trouble is that Seroquel gives me restless legs almost every night, often it becomes extremely irritating and the only thing keeping me from cutting my right leg off is the fear of phantom reastless legs. I tried Siffrol but that only seemed to work for a while. I've tried so many things to the pointthat my bathroom cabinet is a pretty good representation of the periodic table.
This is why I am so surprised that this way of minimising reastless legs is working (for now anyway - other things seemed to have worked for a while to then be ineffective [I tried this for a week before now writing this to be sure]) is working and that it has taken me this long to figure it out. I thought last week about how I describe the RLS to other people (it's like your arteries are being unbearably tickled) and then thought why don't I tickle my feet to get that same unbearable tickling feeling and maybe that could be a distraction from the RLS. So far it has worked and I am not up for hours after going to bed moving my legs around.
The method is this; first I loosen up my foot (the left leg is the biggest problem although since doing this the RLS has not occured in my other leg, arms or chest - yeah, I get it bad) by loosening the ankle by rotating the foot around the ankle a bit until nice and loose. I then tickle the bottom of my foot with the finger nails out and no socks on. It has to be ticklish to you, the idea is to get yourself to flinch from the tickling from time to time and to eventually get the foot insensitive to the tickling. The parts to tickle are the arch of the foot mostly but also up the inside to the ankle and at the back a bit above the ankle, pretty much the bits that are most ticklish. I find it helps to run the fingers from toes to heel a couple of times to finish off. You will need to do this a few times as one application is usually not enough.
This has already made me feel I've got some of my life back so I had to share it - I hope it works for others too and if so I'd love to hear from you. (If not here I have an email address with my name at gmail).
Thanks for reading this and good luck.