I thought I would throw in some of what I have learned in the years that I have endured this life altering situation. Thank God there is more information available now than 40 years ago.
Anyways, both my mom and daughter have RLS but never needed to go beyond increasing their ferritin levels. I see a doctor whose specialty is RLS...of course that only occurred about 25 years ago after my PCP (primary care provider) finally had no more tricks to pull out from her sleeves. If the PCP is not educated on (RLS), find a specialist. My trialed me on so many controlled meds that if I wasn’t a nurse and new the potential of addiction, I would probably be living on a street corner looking for a fix. As it turned out, the majority of the pain meds, oxycodones, vicodins , and controlled sleep meds, along with many of the anti anxiety meds actually can make RLS worse. Not sure if you all have a horrible time after drinking any alcohol😩? Same sort of issue often occurs with the meds mentioned above. I was then put on simemet, short acting type and long acting type. It was a miracle for about 5 years, until I started with rebound effects and was experiencing RLS 24/7 when I only had it eve-night. Thankfully I didn’t sit much at my job! That is when I went to specialist. 1st thing he checked was my ferritin level. I stress ferritin cuz my pcp told me I didn’t need it done cuz I wasn’t anemic. However, my ferritin level was 1/3 of level it needed to be. Began the iron with the vitamin c in it, 2 tabs/day. Also transitioned to requip. O.25 mg tabs, 5 /day. Spread out starting at 2 pm. Once ferritin level was up and requip kicked in, I was back to living my life again! Last year, 10 years after the above, I started having issues with RLS again. Had taken management role and was sitting more. My ferritin level was low again, too. MD increased my requip. Max is 0.25 mg tabs-8/day or 4 mg/ day. He timed these pills based on when symptoms start and were worse, etc. Once again, I knew when my ferritin level was back up and the new schedule of meds kicked in! I’m currently going on 1 year of new schedule. In addition, he did give me clonazepam 0.5 mg tab if I have a few days when the meds don’t seem to work. The reason for this drug is that RLS can increase with anxiety, I start to get very anxious when I have a few nights in a row with RLS. It breaks the cycle.
It's Almost Graduation Day...saying goodbye to RLS
2 year old Toddler with RLS
Still having success (no RLS for almost a month now) with B1 supplement and celery juicing.
RLS for 13 years
