Restless Legs Syndrome: Causes, Factors and Treatments
For anyone who’s experienced it, the frustration can be miserable. The countless tossing and turning, the minutes that tick by (turning into hours), and you STILL haven’t gotten a modicum of decent sleep. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, that urge to constantly move or stretch your legs just won’t let up. Restless legs syndrome (RLS), aka Willis-Ekbom disease, affects a decent chunk of the population: thought estimates vary wildly, this 2017 representative survey places its prevalence between 5.7 and 12.3% of the population. That’s up to around 40 million people in the U.S. alone who go to bed every night knowing they’ll likely be kept awake for hours with that unrelenting, restless sensation. Conventional RLS Treatments For people suffering from moderate to severe RLS, pharmaceuticals like dopamine agonists, Alpha-2-delta ligands, opioids, anticonvulsants, and benzodiazepines are often prescribed. Dopamine agonists operate under the assumption that RLS is linked to imp