RLS news that concerns Veterans

[Rustsmith]

I just received this in a note from my Congressman's office. The message was written by his staffer who handles health issues and is the person that I met with as part of my RLS advocacy work.

I just came back from a trip to a VA hospital that is taking over some sleep research facilities from the USAF. It's a research project funded by the DoD and VA but concentrates on active duty along with veterans. The VA took over management so they can see veterans along with the active component. When the USAF ran the project they could only use active duty military. They will be concentrating on 2 things specifically. Sleep apnea and RLS. As it turns out both seem to be high diagnosed in veterans that deployed to certain areas. This is completely unrelated PTSD. They're trying to find out why and how to treat it. The Drs from both the VA and DoD agreed that low dose opioids are the best treatment. They are seeing RLS in upwards of 30-40% of returning veterans, again, not related to PTSD symptoms. They have no idea why.

Since caring for members of the military and veterans is usually something that gets bipartisan agreement, hopefully this is a good sign as far as the Congressional support for DoD health research funding. It will also be interesting to see why so many returning vets are experiencing RLS.

[Polar Bear]

Very interesting.

[ViewsAskew]

Wow.

[badnights]

I wonder if it's diet. When I return from field work, and toward the ends of longer jobs in the field, my symptoms are always worse. No fresh food. One year we ate freeze-dried food, and even though it was "gourmet" freeze-dried food, all handmade, the symptoms were really bad that year and the worsening happened within 3 weeks of eating like that. But even when we have frozen meat and canned stuff, I get bad symptoms.