Hello to all on this forum ...
My father suffered from RLS for decades; he had no choice but to suffer great discomfort in those days of working down a mine. I inherited the disease from him and suffered myself for decades before discovering what has turned out to be a most effective, non-medicinal approach to gain relief, sometimes for weeks on end. I want to share this discovery with the RLS community. I stress, however, that this is what has worked for me, and so I cannot say anything about the potential effectiveness for anyone else in their own situations.
In short, I have been able to achieve a superb non-medicinal level of relief through the use of "Compression Stockings" ... the kind of very tight stockings one gets supplied with when facing the prospect of lying for long periods in a hospital bed. It was this very scenario where by accident I found, during a long stay I had in hospital for an unrelated reason, that the fact I was wearing Compression Stockings, very swiftly brought about a wonderful level of RLS relief. This experience was a couple of years ago, and ever since then I have been using compression stockings to gain predictable levels of relief, often as I say, lasting for many weeks between feeling once more the "tickle" that heralds the onset of another RLS episode.
In general, I have found that the tighter the stockings the better the overall experience afterwards. Personally, I keep those stockings on constantly for at least a couple of days, and sometimes for three or four days. After whatever length of period I choose, I invariably experience great relief for what now has become predictably long periods. It is sometimes rather hard to put these stockings on by one's self, due to the strength of the elastic material of which they are made but, a pair of helping hands from a trusted friend can get around that issue; in my case, my dear wife!
So, bottom line if you want to try this approach ... get your GP to prescribe for you a few pairs of Compression Stockings of the type one gets supplied with in hospital after surgery in order to mitigate the possibility of DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis - blood clots in the legs). As I say, the tighter the better and, keep them on for a few days.
Only for reference, I have attached herewith a photo of a "Compression Stocking Package", the type of which I use. This may be useful to GPs where, in my own experience, when I originally talked about these with the GP I had at the time, he had no precise idea of what I was talking about!
I wish you all many good nights ahead of better sleep and super relief during daytimes.
TomF.