Restless legs syndrome: Study raises hope for better drugs

[Daragh]

John Hopkins researchers may have discovered why insomnia persists in patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS), despite successful treatment of the condition....

medicalnewstoday.com/articl...

[Hidden]

Yes, good to see that some research is going on, i saw this a while ago, hope it will get us away from the dopamines at some time in the future

[Hidden]

I have also seen this article, i dont suffer with insomnia along side my RLS, but i do know many do. Its a good article and needs much more study on why it happens.

[newman1]

Insomnia is a completely different entity than RLS. Many RLSers suffer from a lack of sleep, for obvious reasons. When their RLS is relieved they are able to sleep, because the CAUSE of their sleeplessness was fixed.

Many others have RLS AND insomnia. The insomnia works with the RLS to create a compete nightmare, but they are completely different animals.

The insomnia could be caused by several different things. Stress, lifestyle, high cortisol levels, histamine intolerance (causes a racing mind) or high glutamate levels (also contributes to a racing mind).

First off, it's important to learn about sleep cycles when attempting to heal your insomnia.

After my RLS was gone, I still had big-time insomnia. It seemed hopeless. I did a lot of reading, listened to endless sleep inducing CDs including all sorts of white noise and other ambient sounds. Nothing worked.

I took tons of supplements, Enough to knock out an elephant and still couldn't get to sleep.

What finally saved me was two books that I purchased."No More Sleepless Nights" by Peter Hauri. I used this as my main book and followed his program, which includes journaling and self-talk.

As I went through the exercises in that book, I read another book "Say Good Night to Insomnia" but Gregg D. Jacobs.

The key for me was the idea of going to bed later than normal. Having a more compressed sleep time.

You need to train your brain that there is no longer going to be any tossing and turning time allowed. It won't be tolerated. If you want to sleep you have to sleep within the allowed time limit.

Eventually, if you want 7 hours sleep, you'll go to bed 7 1/2 hours before your wake-up time.

The most important part of the training is that you always have to get up at the predetermined wake up time. Even if you only have had 5 minutes of sleep. Drag your butt out of bed even if you feel like you don't have the strength to walk without falling over.

It took about 4 weeks of hell, but then the impossible happened and I broke through. I rarely go to sleep after midnight now, and get a decent long sleep 90% of the time. It's totally changed my life!

[Hidden in reply to newman1]

That is very interesting information, thank you Nightdancer! I will be looking at these books, as I suffer terrible insomnia and have for years. Unfortunately a lot of the problem I think is pain, but I do think I need to retrain myself in my sleep cycle.

Cazx

[thedragon]

Caz , I think you meant to thanko Newman!!!! Ha ha that method sounds interesting. I have rls and I'm sure rls induced insomnia ...I can go to bed without any symptoms but have got into the habit of not being able to do the switch over and go to sleep. I'm almost asleep but not. Which book would you say was the most helpful newman if I could only get 1 ? And caz ....Thankyou for your lovely words on the other posts x