Here you can share your experiences with substances that are ingested, inhaled, or otherwise consumed for the purpose of relieving RLS, other than prescription medications. For example, herbal remedies, nutritional supplements, diet, kratom, and marijuana (for now) should be discussed here. Tell others of successes, failures, side effects, and any known research on these substances. [Posts on these subjects created prior to 2009 are in the Physical Treatments forum.]
Important: Posts and information in this section are based on personal experiences and recommendations; they should not be considered a substitute for the advice of a healthcare provider.
stjohnh wrote:I like fried chicken livers, but have bad memories of beef liver. My Mom (who had RLS) went through a phase when she made me and my brothers and sisters eat small amounts of raw beef liver daily when we were children. Might actually have been a good idea, but we didn't think so. My grandmother bought spleen from the butcher when I was a kid. She fed it to her Siamese cats. I bet they didn't have RLS. https://youtu.be/JN0OQVs0vR0
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.
About every two years my mother would cook (overcook) beef liver for our dinner and proclaim that from then on we would have it once a week or month. Everyone hated it so it would be a long time before she tried it again. But raw beef liver, yuck! Now the only two foods "off my list" are offal and eggplant.
I had never taken iron before, and I took 2 Proferrin for about 3 months, and it raised my ferritin from 39 to 50. The increase actually occurred over the first two months. I'm now trying ferrous sulfate to see if it does any better.
stjohnh wrote:In my quest to keep my iron levels as high as possible and hopefully decreasing the frequency that I will need repeat IV Iron (Injectafer) infusions, I have ordered dessicated spleen tablets (lots of heme iron, 2mg/500mg capsule) from amazon and transdermal iron patches. Even better might be eat spleen or liver from the butcher shop, but both are gross as food, LOL. Good evidence they will help is NOT available, but there IS good evidence that ferrous sulfate orally is very unlikely to help keep my ferritin high enough to keep my RLS symptoms at bay, both in the literature and by my personal attempts at increasing ferritin with ferrous sulfate.
In one of the reviews on Amazon, the person taking desiccated spleen said that it can mess with your immune system, and their doctor took them off after 90 days. Doing more looking it appears that this is probably not an issue, but it might be worth checking.
