I have been suffering from RLS for more than 10 years. Every day I needed high doses of medication which eventually no longer worked and had to be replaced. Completely desperate I tried to get rid of the disease by a special RLS diet, avoided caffeine, sweeteners, sugar, gluten, milk in any form, etc. took high doses of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, etc. detoxified my body and liver, deacidified me, eliminated a Candida fungus from the intestine, etc. etc. etc. NOTHING REALLY NOTHING AT ALL HELPED! Now I have listened to the advice of a friend and tried intermittent fasting. Since I always have to eat to numb the RLS pain it is very difficult for me. Not to eat for 24 h is impossible, 16 h hardly feasible. But as someone once said: "If the best possibility is not feasible, take the second best you can implement". So now I've set myself the feasible time frame of 12 hours in which I eat nothing. I quit early in the evening and skip breakfast in the morning. For about 3 weeks now I've been doing it more or less consequent and experienced a sudden improvement. If the strength of my complaints was before a 10 on a 1-10 scale, they have now weakened on a 6. I mostly get along without pills now, only some days I still need one. So far the RLS have not disappeared but the intermittent fasting has made them bearable.
Intermittent Fasting as cure? - Restless Legs Syn...
Intermittent Fasting as cure?
What about mixing the fasting with cutting out the dairy, gluten and sugar?
Glad you've gotten some relief. I take it you've taken into account other medications that may be exacerbating things and Iron? You seem to have tried everything else!
I am off of all medications now except l-thyrox, no difference. i had severe lack of iron a few times, no difference. i had too much iron in the blood several times, no difference.
Hi @silkyreg congratulations for getting out of medication.I am having wors rls and it deives me crazy at night time , cant sleep. Can you explain more on how did you cured rls
Thanks
I didn't cure it but it is bearable without medication. I have to stick to the 3 parameters that I found out:1. don't walk too much. Walk around in my condo is ok. do a little garden work is ok. buy groceries at the supermarket is ok. but visiting a second store after shopping in the supermarket is already too much and my legs freak out.
2. NO, absolutely NO Coke. I don't know why but Coke makes my RLS a living hell.
3. STICK TO THE INTERMITTEND FASTING SCHEDULE OR HELL BREAKES LOOSE!!! This is the hard one cause it means not to eat from 8pm till noon next day EVERY FUCKING DAY OF MY LIFE.
Love it! Don’t stop, keep going. It’s what the Dalai Lama does. You are a shining example oh wise one.
Glad it's working for you, at least partly. I 'm not aware of any logical connection between fasting and idiopathic RLS.
It may be therefore that your RLS is, at least partly, secondary. So it's not the amount you're eating but WHAT you're eating.
Perhaps you need to keep a diary of what you eat.
Exactly.😉
intermittent fasting is proven to activate the self healing abilities of the body. i guess this is what's going on at the moment.
Overeating has always been a trigger to my RLS. Hearing that intermittent fasting has reduced your symptoms doesn’t surprise me. Maybe eventually try the 16 hour fast and see if you get even greater relief.
I too have been fasting to try and alleviate my RLS symptoms. I'm happy to hear that you are getting a lot of relief!
I've been doing a 20-24hr water only fast once a week. And I feel ya! at the begining it was very hard to follow through. my RLS would go nuts all day long while I was fasting. but I kept at it, and by the end of 2 mo. I was not experienceing any daytime symptoms.
I've been doing it for a year now. and my RLS has also gone from a 10 to about a 4 on a 10 point scale! it is so much more livable! There is so much science behind what the body does and goes through while fasting. It really can heal itself if you take away the cause of the irritation long enough!
A few months ago I also added fresh organic carrot and celery juice to the mix and my RLS has gotten even mroe quiet. I read about the juicing on rlcure.com
You may have already seen these, but they were helpful vidoes for me on my journey.
youtube.com/watch?v=Ihhj_VS...
youtube.com/watch?v=t1b08X-...
check out Dr. Jason Fung too!
I'm actually concidering doing a longer fast to see if I can knock out the RLS completely!
Well, I just wanted to say well done! I applaud your efforts.
I've visited the rlscure link and found that he suggests antiinflammatory remedys, but just a few. Anthony Williams wrote the book "Thyroid Healing" and suggests those as well but his list is much longer. Maybe this is interesting for you.
yeah, I was already doing most of the things suggested on rlcure.com, but I wasn't juicing. I figured it was worth a try. and I have been impressed with the results.
The idea behind that website and many other natural health practitioners is that a large portion of disease is caused by chronic widespread inflammation in the body that overtime cause damage. Once the damage has gone too far we start experiencing the symptoms of that damage in all sorts of different ways. And their solution to this problem is pretty simple. Stop fueling the fire of inflammation long enough for it to calm down, then your body can begin the work of healing itself. And you can feed your body with the nutrition it needs to help that process along.
Fasting, along the same lines, is removing the fuel, giving your body an chance to calm down, but it seems to take it a step further as there are processes in the body that seem to only occur in starvation. Its very interesting. Unfortunately there really isn’t any interest (or money) in researching fasting so there is still so much we don’t know about it.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to look into that book.
Thanks For That News........
Hi silkyreg, are you still doing the fasting? What is your regime now and are you still getting benefits? My RLS has got worse and worse and my wife mentioned fasting so I thought I would search on here.
Yes I still do my fasting 16 hours per day from 8 p.m. till noon next day and it really helps me a lot, it really reduces my RLS symptoms so much. And I avoid Aspartame as I found out that it causes my RLS during daytime. So I was able to reduce my medication from 1,05 mg Pramipexol prolong to 0,35 mg Pramipexol normal in the evening for sleep. On the 1-10 scale it is now 3-4, so it is well bearable.
I also suffered RLS. I implemented all recommendations for healthy life stile: vegetarian meals, without alcohol coffee sugar saturated fats. Daily 30min. exercises. I consumed iron/magnesium suplements, full vitamin complex. I made massages and drunk a lot of water. After all that: NOTHING, NO RESULT
What the f...k is RLS ?? I was totally disappointed. I decided to try something different "fasting". Internet researchers told that reducing daily calory intake reduce body inflammation. So, I cut in half my calories. I start eating two meals a day 7am. - 3pm (16h interval) This regimen forced me to get to bed (10pm) nearly with empty stomach. First three days were horrible. The body resisted. Big discomfort, irritabilities, pains, sleepless nights. RLS worsened. I continued this way on and on. My body began to accustom. RLS slowly diminishes. Finally after three weeks I was colm down and RLS disappeared to 90%. It was enough for me to sleep normally. Still I make 30 min daily exercises. I adhere to vegetarian meals. Now I don't consume iron, magnesium supplements. No vitamin suplements. Evening I drink one glass wine. Very rarely I feel trembling of my legs. Seven months since I started this regimen (fasting), RLS doesn't appear any more. Good bye.
Sounds to me like you up-regulated your genetically lousy dopamine receptors. The way you did it is not for the faint of heart. Thank you for sharing this information. I have often wondered if severe calorie restriction/intermittent fasting could even work on us. There’s people all over the internet trying to “up-regulate” their dopamine receptors because they’ve down-regulated them via too much drugs, sex, and rock and roll. But their receptors are at least “normal” to begin with and I can see fasting helping them get back to their pretty great, non-RLS, baseline. Our baseline is lousy and I wasn’t sure if fasting or much of anything could build them up. I am now leaning towards yes we can build them up with things like fasting or D2 dopamine antagonists (ie berberine, Benedryl)
You might even be able to go to maintenance mode for awhile? Some people on here fast from their evening meal to breakfast time because they find eating anything in late evening will make their symptoms of RLS worse. So, a much shorter fast than you are doing and not necessarily calorie restriction at their meals as you seem to be doing. Also, if you’re gonna take iron I recommend using a form known as ferrous bisglycinate (25 to 50mg). It should be taken an hour before bed on an empty stomach and away from other supplements. Doing this relieves my RLS in one hour and for the whole night. If I were to take a different form of iron or take it at a different time of day it wouldn’t work.
Keep up the good work!
That's fantastic that you're having such a great result with fasting.One thing I'm curious about is the wine in the evening. Wine has calories/kilojoules which means that you're coming out of a fasting state when you drink it. So it may be that the calorie reduction is what is working as opposed to 'fasting'.
Hello. I was sensitive drinking wine, so as the wine boosted my RLS. It was seven months ago. And I didn't drink wine. Now, after the situation changed, I allow myself to consume it without bad consequences. Wine contain negligible quantity calories, and doesn't affect fasting. I want to focus your mind on two things.1. Restriction of calory intake
2. Enough big interval (16h) left, after the last meal.
You must free from all irritations. Go to bed with possible smallest amount of food. Your body resist. It will last two or more weeks. Don't surrender!
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