RLS and Iron supplements

[cliaz]

Funny thing happen to me yesterday. My wife and I went to interview a pediatrics Dr. we are thinking about for the twins.

He started talking to us about what medical conditions do we have and our parents have so he can write it down in the family medical history.

So at the end of the list I brought up RLS and his ears perked up. He said that his new medical journal came out and they were talking about this poor 2 year old child who has it so bad that he can't sleep at all at night.

They did a bunch of test on him and found out he had low iron in his blood. So his Dr. prescribe iron supplement to the child and guess what???????.......his RLS had stopped bothering him.

So then they prescribe it to other children with the same results.

So the Dr. we were talking too told me I should tell my personal Dr. about this when I go to see him.


Just thought I would pass that along. Never hurts to check it out, ya know.

alrighty,
bYe

[Heronak]

Having ferritin (iron) levels checked is useful, but unfortunately taking supplements doesn't necessarily decrease or stop RLS. My ferritin levels are on the low end of the "normal" scale so I tried 3 months of high dose supplements per my doctor. Not only did it not affect my RLS, it did not increase my ferritin levels.

There's excellent info on this site - take a look at the 2004 Medical Bulletin:

http://www.rls.org/pdf/2004_medical_bulletin.pdf

Best,

Heron

[ViewsAskew]

I'm in month 6 of taking iron supplements and so far I've only gone from a ferritin level of 8 to 30. Since they recommend people with RLS have a level of 50, I'll be doing this for another 5 months! And, at this point, it has not affected the RLS in any way.

However, some people do find it helps. One study I read said that up to 20% of people with low ferritin had the RLS stop completely when levels where raised above 50. What it didn't say was whether these were primary or secondary cases of RLS or if they were mild, moderate, severe, etc.

Ann