A study on the treatment of RL!

I hope someone may find this helpful.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[Hidden]

Looks good, thanks wanman4.

I see Dr B wrote it, (could he not change his name to Smith or Jones?), so it is bound to be of use - maybe we should be printing it out and taking it to our GP's/PCP's

[Eryl]

Published six years ago, and restricts itself to drugs that treat the symptom of rls. It mentions nothing of more recent work which point to bad diet being the cause of most rls. I suggest you check out the work of Terry Wahls who has cured herself of M.S. purely by changing her diet. She has also seen improvements in the condition of patients with Alzheimer's with the same diet. Her diet would probably help most people with neurological problems. I am following a similar diet and have not had any rls symptoms since I let the diet slip a couple of times last Christmas.

[Lapsedrunner in reply to Eryl]

A healthy diet is always important, but to be fair there is a very little evidence base for this diet regime .

[Eryl in reply to Lapsedrunner]

That's because it's relatively new. I'm not the only one to find that diet works. Check out the work of Terry Wahls and Georgia Ede. medium.com/@terrylwahls/i-d...

[Lapsedrunner in reply to Eryl]

I’m glad that this works for you Eryl, but there seems to be little evidence, other than anecdotal. I agree that diet is important but it’s not a cure-all, some people need medication and there is a wealth of peer-reviewed literature which evaluates it.

[Eryl in reply to Lapsedrunner]

Until you've tried it properly you have no evidence that it doesn't work.

[Graham3196 in reply to Lapsedrunner]

You are probably right that most of the evidence supporting diet is anecdotal. My experience has been that diet can relieve most of my symptoms for extended periods of time. Hence I am an advocate of everyone with RLS giving the diet a go. My reasoning is that there are quite a few people who have had relief by adopting a restrictive diet. A diet is cheap. A diet is something you can do all by yourself although I would strongly recommend that you get a bit of monitoring from your GP and help in application from a dietician.

If you diet for three or four months and gain nothing what have you lost?

Getting a real clinical trial going for a diet would be a nightmare, Can you imagine having 60 people with RLS under observation and feeding half of them a FODMAP diet and the others a "normal" diet. How would you be sure they kept to the diet? They would have to be in prison. We have our own prison called RLS and we know if we kept to the diet. It might just be a placebo effect. If I'm cured by a placebo then just don't tell me and I'll be happy!

As an aside I was appalled a while back when I saw the number of good medical ideas that fall over just because the researcher can't get sufficient people to become guinea pigs. They advertise in waiting rooms and on some web sites. For example the Michael J Fox foundation has a register of people willing to participate in trials of some sort. They don't make you sick and you might be lucky and get cured of whatever ails you.

[OFgc in reply to Eryl]

Also... Dr Mark Hyman and Dr. David Perlmuter have done alot of work on the connection between our brain, gut the food we eat (+ suppelments) and brain funcion. Both their work is worth diving into. Dr. Hyman is a family/functional D doctor and Dr. Perlmuter is a nourologist.

[Graham3196]

Thanks for this. This study has been almost a milestone but it is out of date. The author is now a strong proponent of iron infusion as the first line of treatment. In this paper the value of increasing iron is almost dismissed. It shows how far we have come. It also shows the really bad result of inadequate research. The original work on iron infusion was reported in 1953 and if that work had been (somehow) better then there would not have been "evidence" against iron infusions except for anemia that stopped us all getting iron infusions as the first stage of treatment. This might have saved some significant number of people a lifetime of RLS.

Of course I don't blame the original researchers but it is a shame and shows how much we rely on the reviewers of such results doing a good job and thinking of the limitations of the conclusions drawn. I haven't read the 1953 paper so I might be being very harsh on the authors and reviewers.

One other aspect is that Doctor Buchfuhrer supported and acted on these papers. Now his experience has changed his position so we can be very confident that his current views are strongly supported by practice.

Now our problem is getting the Governments and Health Insurance companies to agree to paying for this valuable treatment. Is this the role of RLS-ORG Does such advocacy cost a lot of money? There seem to be heart foundations and kidney clubs floating around on generous government support. I've never been involved in that sort of stuff.

[Hidden]

I agree that alternative treatments should be looked at seriously. If anyone is not familiar with the Facebook Magnesium Advocacy Group and Morley’s research on diet and proper supplementation with Whole Foods supplements/Nature Based, which he calls “The Root Cuase Protocol” I would urge you yo check it out. I have been on it for around six weeks and I am feeling much better energy wise. I believe my PLMD has stopped, but I am still struggling with my RLS symptoms!

[Goldy700]

Many thanks for that quite comprehensive study