Category Archives: Restless Legs RLS

Restless Legs Syndrome / Exercise / Dealing With The Vibes

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Here are a couple of things that I have found very helpful in dealing with restless legs, the uncomfortable vibe that keeps millions of folks up at night and makes them crazy.  First of all, taking Veglife  Vegan Iron Chewables every day seems to help.  And here’s an exercise that is also beneficial:

Get in a comfortable position on your side in the bed.  You want to be able to have contact with the sheet on your lower leg below the knee.  Gently move your legs in an arc for about five seconds.  Now (and this is the important part) count to 10 or 15 and do it again.  The idea is to interrupt the RLS cycle.  The discomfort seems to come in waves of increasing intensity so we want to interrupt this.  If the vibes reoccur before you get to 10 or 15 then count to 5 or 6.

The good news is that by moving your legs prior to having these uncomfortable feelings we prevent them for awhile.  And by doing this exercise ten or fifteen times we take control of the situation in a relaxed position.  The vibes won’t intensify.  Will they go away for the rest of the night?

Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Medication may be needed.  Repeats may be required.  But I cannot tell you how important it is to take control of the situation.  Just laying there (or lying there, which is it?)  waiting for the the next round is not an option!  And too many people do this.  I used to do it.

 So let’s take control of this beast.  RLS “victims” are called night walkers.  My suggestion is that we learn to walk during the day and sleep at night.  Walk miles every day and lose weight.  You will feel better, sleep better at night and possibly even lessen the RLS situation.

And it will seem less of a drill to do this exercise.  Carry on!

Healing Restless Legs Syndrome/ Hope And RLS/ My Easter Adventure

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This post is dedicated to the millions of RLS sufferers out there. Restless Legs Syndrome can be a debilitating ailment in its more advanced forms and it strikes millions of people around the world. I never suffered from it until age 50 but children sometimes get it and have to deal with it all their lives. Typically it involves waves of very uncomfortable vibrations that attack the legs and arms. These waves increase in severity until the victim has to get up and walk to obtain temporary relief. The attacks are somehow tied to the circadian rhythm and evening or nighttime are the worst times. When you are dead tired and just want to rest this scourge is ready to make sure you do not have a moment’s peace.
I have lived with this problem for ten years and felt during this time that my body was out of control. There is medication that will beat it out of you for a short period of time so you can sleep. But Requip is almost as bad as the thing it treats. Loss of memory, balance, muscle ache and in general feeling like you are a ninety year old person in bad health would be my take on this stuff. I avoid it during the day and instead try to stay ahead of the circadian curve.

And walk, walk, walk. For awhile I was drinking on a daily basis just to feel a little better. It just didn’t seem to matter much what I did. But then I started gaining weight and looking pretty bad. I was hurting someone I love more than life and acting like an idiot in front of my children. So I stopped drinking and started losing weight.

After several months I was lighter by ten pounds but the RLS was worse! Every day was a test and after years of this action I was tired to death of it. So I prayed and asked God for help! I seldom ask Him or Her for personal assistance but when things get really bad I know how to do it.

This brings us to last weekend which was Easter. There was a really cool program on the History Channel about the Shroud of Turin and the latest computer techniques being used to try and discover the true likeness of Jesus Christ. In my mind there is no doubt that this piece of cloth was the one used to wrap him up after he died on the cross. When he re-entered his body on the third day a brilliant light suddenly emanated from him and it changed the fibers on the cloth to such a minute degree it takes the edge of a razor blade to approximate it. You cannot see the changes from any great distance.

So they went through all of this in a two hour program and I taped it. It was fascinating. Then I watched it again.

I also said grace at the beginning of our Easter dinner meal and thanked Jesus for all his blessings. I don’t think I have ever said grace but I was just so enthralled by this program and the image they produced of his face. It really didn’t look much like the shroud because they somehow managed to change something that was flat into a three dimensional object. And it was amazing.

They are very smart these scientists. After dinner I was sitting on the porch and the legs started up but then, just as quickly the jitters went away. “That’s unusual” I thought but didn’t give it much more thought. Later I took the meds and went to bed. But I had not experienced any problem all evening with the vibes. Usually there’s a couple of hours there where we make the transition and the chemical hammer does its work.

The next day I had no difficulty either. I went downtown and took some photos of Madonna and child from the various religious works at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for a slide show I intend to do. And I was smiling at people and having a wonderful time. It began to occur to me that maybe some sort of spiritual healing had taken place.
But such was not the case. I decided to forgo the medication later in the evening and ended up a writhing mass of unhappiness around 3 am. Apparently Jesus had not dropped a miracle on the aging blogger. Or had he? Was I listening? Or was I, in typical fashion, just going on down the road without reading the directions?

What had we eaten for Easter dinner? What did I put in my body? Ham, green beans and a few other things. Anything unusual? Well, yes, I did have some sort of Jello salad. I don’t really like Jello and it is made from such unusual stuff that I don’t really think I should try to like it. But what was in the Jello?

Mango oranges and crushed pineapple plus some shredded carrot. So we did a little experiment the next time the creepers showed up and it turns out that the crushed pineapple has a significant quantity of iron in it and it almost immediately relieves the legs. Also, the vitamin C in the oranges increases iron absorption up to seven times.

We have leafy vegetables in salad a lot but I guess the quantity wasn’t quite right. Vitamins of various sorts have never helped either. This, however, was something that really did help. So I did some more research and also found a granulated beet product that mixes with water and is equally as effective.

So, see? Jesus didn’t heal me at all although I loved the program about him and all of this happened on Easter.

Or did he? Perhaps he managed to get my attention long enough to guide my thoughts and actions in a positive direction. It’s possible that in a week or a month I will no longer need medication! It has already been reduced by 25 percent. And daylight hours are so much more pleasant and productive.

They are peaceful. They are productive. They are just heavenly.

Thank you Jesus.

And I hope and pray that someone will read this post and find it helps them with their RLS. Especially a child! This would drive my poor, medicated brain straight to heaven and back! This would be an example of taking joy to the next level. Which reminds me of something. . . Do you know the true definition of God?
He or She is ever increasing JOY. Ah, consider this for awhile icon smile Healing Restless Legs Syndrome/ Hope And RLS/ My Easter Adventure
Peace.
David.

Ruminating On Silver Linings The Sunday Before Christmas/ B12 Helps Restless Legs Syndrome

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It’s 34 F outside and raining.  So much for snowflakes and icy glitter as Christmas approaches.  Once again the skies are gray and full of nondescript clouds.  The trees have given up making wild gestures  of despair.

Now they are all drooping in sodden slumber.  Wake us up when the temperature goes below freezing.   Splash us with a dressing of ice as portrayed in the photo I put up a few days ago.   That was last year.  Nothing so interesting has happened this winter.  Noah is probably happy in his celestial yacht.  Somewhere.

My cough returned for a encore run and I have a headache this morning.  Will it never end?  I decided to go for the cure and went out for Hardee’s cinnamon  and raisin biscuits.   Four of these guys plus some Mountain Dew or (even better) Vault will solve just about any pounding pain in the CD ( chrome domium).    And in fact it’s working.

But the photo taking has been postponed (again!)  until the rain and the coughing stop.

Any day now.   On a more positive note I discovered that liquid Vitamin B12 and B6  are sometimes beneficial for RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome).   I was giving a can of Red Bull a chance to wake me up while having an attack of RLS a few weeks ago.  And the shaky legs went away!   No more bees doing laps from my knees to my ankles.

So I looked at the ingredients and discovered the Vitamin B content.  Now I take a teaspoon per day and it helps once in awhile.  Yesterday I even took a nap!   Oh what joy.   A nap during the day for someone with RLS is better than you know what!  Imagine never being able to rest unless you have taken some medication that is used mainly by Parkinson patients!  Believe me you do not want to take that stuff during the day unless you plan to live in bed.

So here is the good news for the five or ten percent of the population out there who deals with this scourge.  Try B12 and B6 in liquid form.

AND  look for silver linings  in the clouds.  I managed to find some yesterday as I grabbed a few moments of exquisite slumber during the day.   Then dreamed I was kissing a beautiful girl in a field of sparkling grass on a sunny afternoon.

Later, upon awakening, I told Beth about this dream.  And a  few hours later she told me that company would be here tomorrow (now today) and we would not be alone again until   the new year arrives.

We have been wrapping so many presents lately.  Perhaps we should take a moment and unwrap a couple.

Just for fun.

RLS Sleep Study/ Restless Legs Syndrome/ The Blogger Is Better

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I have noticed lately that when I write something I tend to repeat a word or phrase a second time in a way that is not attractive. And the reason I do it is because I have forgotten I used the word or phrase in the previous line or sentence.

It’s not quite as bad  if you used  the word or phrase in the previous paragraph. But it’s still good to mix up your words and hopefully add a bit of something to the idea you are trying to express.

It’s difficult to tell whether this memory issue is just part of the aging process or perhaps due to the medication I take for RLS. RLS is Restless Legs Syndrome for those who do not know and it’s controlled by a drug called Requip in most cases.

Dopamine is an issue and scientists are learning more about it and RLS all the time. Hopefully they will come up with better treatments soon.

I was emailed by a nice person from an RLS sleep study asking if I would share information about their study (see! There I go again ).

Here is the address:

http://www.rlssleepstudy.org/

And thank you to everyone who participates in this sleep study.  You are doing something good for about twenty million people who are having a difficult time coping with this scourge.

I’m feeling better tonight thank you.  I realize that I have a very strange sense of humor but it helps me when I’m feeling bad to talk about “the blogger is at the gateway to the next world” and so on.   I can hardly wait to find out what I’ll say when that time actually arrives.

Stay tuned.  But the bug is in abeyance and I also isolated the computer germ ( better! Didn’t use bug again) that was causing posts to disappear.  Unfortunately it was my nice shadow image plugin so now all the photos are flat on the page.

Oh well.

And I found a  video about Willard the Fighting Kangaroo that was very amusing.  Just Google it if you would have a look.

Thanks Willard for making me laugh.  And some of the rest of you too.  Beth made me my favorite dinner tonight and after a few days of not eating it tasted so good.  The bed is comfortable and the Requip is doing its part.

So I can’t complain.  Life is not meant to be comfortable all the time.  We would not appreciate these moments of rest if it did not challenge us in various ways.

And now to sleep.

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