View Full Version : Restless Leg Syndrome
coldspring
07-19-2007, 12:16
It seems like I've noticed a lot of mention of this Restless Leg Syndrome lately.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77252.php
There is a real prescription for it, and I think most of the people here know what it is.
Footslogger
07-19-2007, 12:18
I think it's the whole "restless leg syndrome that's behind most of us wanting to hike ...
'Slogger
Johnny Thunder
07-19-2007, 12:56
Restless Leg Syndrome is a fake disorder created by a big 'ol Pharma company to keep a lucrative patent up to date. See, it was about to open up to market generic drugs for the original purpose, but, whoooaaa no, people can't get their drugs cheap. So, they created a fake disease.
I have this info from the highest order. One of my clients is this company and one of their Pharmacy Docs told me point-blank that she was in meetings where they were scouting alternative uses for the drug so they could keep the patent. One of her coworkers invented the term.
I won't say who it is but if you do some research as to what drug hit the RLS market first, you'll know.
Pharma industry is whack. Don't even get me started on off-label prescriptions.
Johnny
Old Grouse
07-19-2007, 14:11
It may be fake, but I and many others have been troubled with it for years - long before they started advertising a pill for it.
Old Grouse
07-19-2007, 14:12
By the way, they used to pooh-pooh the symptoms of Lyme Disease.
Johnny Thunder
07-19-2007, 14:34
Old Grouse - Out of respect for your condition I'll refine my point. The doc's coworker took a list of seemingly related symptoms and created a new term (without any research to link them) a prescribable disorder.
Like a lot of things that afflict us...a small minority have it while a whole host of others think they have it.
See: ADHD overprescription. etc.
My all-time favorite is my friend who has IBS. She says, "I have IBS which means when have have to poo I have to go quick or else it starts getting uncomfortable." No cr*p. Me too.
Sorry, that was bad.
Johnny
Nothing fake about restless legs syndrome. It's a EVIL illness to deal with.
Mother's Finest
07-19-2007, 15:01
anyone out there afflicted with RLS, try ghostriding your whip.....You will work out all the restlessness.
peace
mf
I had RLS before it had a name. I also had a great doc who prescribed Valium for relief!
Old Grouse
07-19-2007, 15:02
I also suffer from noassatall. Can make sitting on logs & boulders very painful.
I wonder if CRS is related to RLS?
The Scribe
07-19-2007, 15:05
Both me and my wife have it. Can't be sure but she might be the first person that understood what I was talking about in describing it.
She has it much worse than me. She got a quinine script for it and it works.
I don't get it as often. For me it seems the worst if I drink alcohol, then just sit around and veg. I often just call it a night when that happens. Tam on the other hand takes it to bed with her if she doesn't take something.
Old Grouse - Out of respect for your condition I'll refine my point. The doc's coworker took a list of seemingly related symptoms and created a new term (without any research to link them) a prescribable disorder.
Like a lot of things that afflict us...a small minority have it while a whole host of others think they have it.
Johnny
It is not a made up illness and it is not a small minority. I have had RLS for 17 years, and when I am walking the floor at 4am, crying and tired and trying to sleep while leaning up against a wall, believe me, it is real. My mother has it as does my sister and I've talked to several others that have it. We were all relieved when it was finally given a name. The medication I take works, and I'm glad for it. There is no way someone can 'think' they have it. Either you do or you don't. There is no way one can fake legs that won't stop twitching or moving. Maybe there are different degrees of RLS, but anyone who insinuates it doesn't exist, doesn't know the first thing about it, like that doctor's coworker. It is mostly a female problem, and like many other female problems, we are told it's all in our head. PMS was one of those problems when it was first given a name too. Before then, most women were told by their doctors, it was all in their head.
Interestingly, I've had very few episodes of RLS while I'm in my tent after hiking all day. Some, but not nearly as bad as at home.
Johnny Thunder
07-19-2007, 16:12
It is not a made up illness and it is not a small minority. I have had RLS for 17 years, and when I am walking the floor at 4am, crying and tired and trying to sleep while leaning up against a wall, believe me, it is real. My mother has it as does my sister and I've talked to several others that have it. We were all relieved when it was finally given a name. The medication I take works, and I'm glad for it. There is no way someone can 'think' they have it. Either you do or you don't. There is no way one can fake legs that won't stop twitching or moving. Maybe there are different degrees of RLS, but anyone who insinuates it doesn't exist, doesn't know the first thing about it, like that doctor's coworker. It is mostly a female problem, and like many other female problems, we are told it's all in our head. PMS was one of those problems when it was first given a name too. Before then, most women were told by their doctors, it was all in their head.
Interestingly, I've had very few episodes of RLS while I'm in my tent after hiking all day. Some, but not nearly as bad as at home.
I think that you've missed my point by claiming that the Doctor's Coworker didn't know the first thing about RLS...she invented it. Yes, I'll admit that there are a set of symptoms which we've grouped together under the umbrella of "Restless Leg Syndrome" (mostly because of the obvious fact that these symptoms involve the inability for legs to remain re****l); however, the disorder of RLS and all drug prescriptions done under it's guise are primarily flawed because it (RLS) was coined to keep a drug patent from expiring. No clinical research and then discovery of disorder...it was: make up the name of the disorder and then conduct research to link the specific drug's use to curing the symptoms.
I'll restate where the doctor and her coworker came in. Large Pharma companies have teams of Pharmaceutical Doctors (a few steps above those that dole out pills at Rite Aid) whose only job is to consult with the marketing teams regarding clinical and chemical matters. The person who "Made Up" RLS was a Pharma Doc who didn't a. research the drug. b. research the symptoms or c. make the drug. Their labeling a group of symptoms to be "RLS" was not clinicaly based. That is my assertion that it was "made up."
You have a set of symptoms and at least one chemical resource to fix those symptoms. That is perfect. Totally the way that the prescription drug industry should work.
But, from it's dubious inception, the terming of "RLS" was not to help you but to make the Pharma company more money by keeping generic drugs from competing in the drug's original prescribable purpose.
Another large pharma firm recently did this by pushing for the governing board of American Psychiatrists to create a new off-shoot of ADHD: Adult-onset ADD. It's the same symptoms and the same drugs...but here's the brilliance...since it's a "new" disorder the patent is good for another 7 years (read: 7 years of no generics)
Yes, before Adult ADD was "made up" there were adults using existing ADD medication. Just as you had symptoms (and hopefuly prescriptions) before RLS was "made up".
I feel that we've wandered off topic and agree with Mother's Finest. Ghost Riding is the answer. If you're not convinced Google: Ghost Riding Ms Daisey.
Johnny
Johnny Thunder
07-19-2007, 16:15
re****l);
Johnny
Could have sworn I typed: re****l
Johnny
Johnny Thunder
07-19-2007, 16:15
Guess I did
trlhiker
07-19-2007, 17:29
I have had episodes in the past especially if I was real tired but I have found that if I drink fluids, crystal light ice tea in my case, thru-out the evening and up to 30 minutes before I go to bed, it does not bother me. I have also read in Dr Gotts newspaper column that it helps if you put a bar of a ivory soap under your legs.
mweinstone
07-19-2007, 17:43
i have death. caught it at birth. damm death. doctors are allways renameing it but its death all right. call it what you will. symptoms include but are not limmeted to: death.
i have death. caught it at birth. damm death. doctors are allways renameing it but its death all right. call it what you will. symptoms include but are not limmeted to: death.
Boooooring.
History of RLS
The term Restless Leg Syndrome was coined by Professor Karl-Axel Ekbom in 1944 and is therefore also known as 'Ekbom's disease'. He was born in 1907 in Gothernburg. He studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute and later became the first Professor and head of the department of neurology at Uppsala university hospital. In his 1945 publication entitled 'Restless Legs', Ekbom described the disease and presented eight cases. The addition of the word 'syndrome' to the title of the disorder highlights how the disorder is defined by clinical symptoms rather than by a specific pathological process.
Ekbom was not the first to describe the disease, the earliest documentation was 300 years prior to this and appears to lie with Thomas Willis, a 17th century English physician who served King Charles II. Born in 1621, the son of 'small farmer', Willis studied at the private school of Edward Sylvester in Oxford and worked in the disciplines of anatomy, physiology, medicine, iatrochemistry and pharmacology.
As a Sedelian Professor, Willis lectured on physiology, he also identified diabetes mellitus, as well as being the first to describe typhoid fever in 1659. This greatly accomplished man, amongst numerous other things, also described a case in 1672 in Latin, of what may have been RLS using the current diagnostic criteria. Willis thought that the cure for RLS was blood letting, indeed modern understanding can account for this as anaemia, iron deficiency and/or low ferritin levels can contribute to RLS. Willis wrote in a chapter entitled ‘Instructions for curing the Watching evil’ in ‘London practice of Physick published in 1685:
‘…..Wherefore to some, when being in bed they betake themselves to sleep, presently in the arms and legs. Leaping and contractions of the tendons
and so great a restlessness and tossing of the members ensure, that the diseased are no more able to sleep, than if they were in the place of the greatest torture!…..’
Willis went on to think that the diseases originated in the spinal cord and was a product of spinal irritation and used opiates as his therapy of choice. Sir Willis wrote:
‘Sometimes since I was advised with for a lady of quality, who in the night was hindered from sleep by reason of these spasmodic effects which came upon her only twice a week; she took afterward daily for almost three months, receiving no injury thereby, either on the brain or about any other function, and when while by the use of other remedies; the dyscrasia of the blood and nervous juice being corrected, the animal spirits became more benign and mild. She afterward leaving wholly the opium was able to sleep indifferently well!!’
Current thinking is that the spinal cord may indeed be affected in RLS although the complement of treatment has changed somewhat!
In the 19th century the term ‘Anxietas Tiabarum’ was the name given to the condition in Germany and was believed to be a form of hysteria, whilst in France the name ‘Impatience musculaire’ was adopted.
Descriptions of the disease were also documented by Wittmaak in Germany in 1861 described as as:
‘A characteristic feeling is that from older anxietan tibiarum: a strange but descriptive compulsion to move has invaded the legs of the inflicted person. Every moment see the legs brought into a different position; drawn up, stretched out, abducted, spread apart and crossed over one another. However, these movements are not sudden or violent, rather they are slow, mindful as if it were of eventually finding the one position that will give the most relief. In every strange description of the nervous teasin of hysteria one often also finds this train of involuntary agitation displayed in the legs and feet. The same thing also occurs however else where without one being able to find a definite cause…the condition lasts approximately a quarter of an hour.’
Bread published an article entitled ‘neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion’ in the Boston Medical Journal in 1869. Bread described the disease as ‘one of the myriad results of spinal irritation’, again highlighting how the spinal cord was though to be involved from an early stage. In 1923, Openheim was the first to describe RLS as a neurologic disorder in his ‘Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten’. His description was also important as the familial component of the disease was also recognised. His account included:
‘Restlessness in the legs is a special kind of subjective paralgesia. It can become an agonizing torture, lasting for years or decades and can be passed on and occur in other members of the family.’
In 1940, Mussio-Fournier and Rawak described a ‘curious case’ of RLS, entitling the disorder a ‘familial occurance of pruritus, urticaria and parasthetic hyperkinese syndrome of the lower limbs’. However this particular analysis failed to identify the difference between RLS symptoms and an additional allergic disorder which existed concomitantly in this particular family.
Ekbom himself first described the disease in 1944 as:
‘Asthenia crurum paraesthetica (“irritable legs”). A new syndrome consisting of weakness, sensation of cold and nocturnal paraesthesia in legs, responding to certain extent to treatment with priscol and doryl.’
In his paper published in 1945 he wrote:
‘A clinical study of a hitherto overlooked disease in the legs characterized by peculiar paraesthesia, pain and weakness and occurring in two main forms, aestheia crurum paraesthetica and asthenia dolorosa’.
It is interesting that Ekbom described this disease as ‘overlooked’ as still today there is a lack of awareness of this condition. The emphasis of description Ekbom gave of this disorder shifted from the previous preoccupation on the movement abnormality alone to the sensory aspect of the disease. Ekbom had made the distinction that the presentation of the disease could vary although we know that patients will describe a wide variety of sensations other than the clear-cut ‘two forms’ Ekbom described.
Here's the link to the article. It's on the RLS website. It was not made up symptons nor was it a recent naming of the symptoms.
Here's the link to the article. It's on the RLS website. It was not made up symptons nor was it a recent naming of the symptoms.
http://www.restlesslegs.org.uk/history_rls.html
dangit here's the link
TinAbbey
07-19-2007, 19:33
the percentage of people that have this and posted on this thread is off the charts
the percentage of people that have this and posted on this thread is off the charts
According to the article in the first post, there are 10 million people worldwide that have it and 10% of Americans. That's no small potatoes.