anybody have chronic lyme disease? correlations with rls?

[chopoffmyfeet]

when i was young, i was bitten by a deer tick that gave me lyme disease. this was before the big lyme disease scare so no one knew what it was. i wasn't diagnosed until i spent a week in the hospital, but that was more than a month after contracting it. because i had it for so long with no treatment, i feel the effects of chronic lyme disease very strongly.

i don't see any obvious correlation between the two, but i am wondering because the time frames in my memory that i can recall seems like the rls stuff started happening around the same time as the lyme disease.

if anyone has any info about people with lyme disease (chronic or not) who also suffer from rls, please post it here.

sidenote- chronic lyme disease sucks, and it definitely makes dealing with my rls more difficult... some of the long-term effects of chronic lyme disease are chemical inbalances in the brain, chronic fatigue, as well as joint destruction (my knees are on the path to being replaced).

[Penguinrocks]

Hey Chop and welcome
Wish I could help some on this, but I just wanted to let you know that apparently someone trying to sell "crap" is lurking and posting these links on the forum.
I've noticed it in other forums.

I wish I could offer you some advice on this, but the most I can offer you is someone who will listen and not think you're losing your mind.

Penguin

[Alison]

I am 20, and was just diagnosed with RLS. I had Lyme when I was 11, caught it very early and was treated for it. My parents are convinced that I may have Lyme disease and not RLS. I picked a tick off of me months ago. However my doctors maintain I do not have Lyme(not that I really trust them) Anyway I don't know if this really pertains to your thought, but I am curious also if rls symptons can be brought on my Lyme.

[ViewsAskew]

Anything is possible! RLS is secondary to many other diseases, so maybe something in Lyme is causing a trigger for RLS. Could be a neurological thing or an iron thing or who knows what!

After hearing this from a couple of people, I thought I'd check to see if I could find anyone else saying the same. I found this one first:

http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/neurow ... reRLS.html

Then I hit paydirt here:
http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic509.htm

I've never seen this extensive of a list of secondary causes! I don't know any of the doctors/researchers/authors, nor did I read it in detail. It does have a short list of references at the end, which is a good sign. But I don't know how much of it comes from the references or where they got some of the info.

This link may contain exactly the same information. It looked quite similar but I didn't read it in detail, just noticed it also discusses lyme:
http://www.ccspublishing.com/journals2a ... ndrome.htm

And, yet again. This is also in emedicine, as is the first link, and has the same primary author/doctor:

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/articles/44514-2.asp

I haven't seen this same info in other online articles. It may mean that this is newer information, or it may mean that this is the author's opinion or hypothesis that is not yet backed by scientific information.

If all of this is true, then there may be many more secondary causes than known before and may be why some people cannot get their RLS under control. If it is being treated as primary, but there really is something else at work causing it, it might not respond the same way. My cousin had Lyme and she really had to change her diet. This could be of the reasons, for example that some people find a specifc diet is so helpful - because it works on the primary cause.

Well, just mad rambling. . .scientist I am not. But interesting fuel for thought. These all are worth reading for anyone without a clear cause of their RLS.

Ann