Restless leg syndrome is a fairly common condition that affects about 10% of the population. With that said, let’s talk about how we can help you or anyone you know that has restless leg syndrome.
With restless leg syndrome, the individual patient will feel the need to continually move their legs because of uncomfortable sensations especially at night when they’re in bed. While it is a condition that could affect people of any age or gender, it is more common among women and those of middle age and older.
In many cases, the condition will also get worse as the individual advances in age. With RLS, the symptoms vary from person to person, and it can affect people to varying degrees. Among some of the symptoms you may experience, or have feelings of itchiness, tingling, numbness or feelings in the legs that are similar to what you would feel if insects were crawling on the skin.
These sensations cause the person to want to move their legs repeatedly, and it can be quite disruptive to the life of the individual.
With many people, the condition is at its worst in the evening like I said, and it can interfere with their sleep. For this reason, restless leg syndrome is also considered a type of sleep disorder. Many patients that have restless leg syndrome will also experience what are known as periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS), which are essentially the involuntary jerking or twitching of the limbs.
This is another way that RLS can be disruptive to your sleep.
While the exact causes of restless leg syndrome have yet to be discovered, it is believed that most cases are connected to some form of nervous system dysfunction. For this reason, our type of specialized RLS care can be one of the best forms of treatment for people that are looking for relief from restless leg syndrome.
When a person is getting these sensations in the legs that cause restless leg syndrome, it is essentially because the brain is receiving mixed or “false signals” from their nerves. Part of the purpose of chiropractic adjustments is to restore proper nerve function, and this can provide some relief.
The nerve supply to the legs comes from your spine, so a chiropractic adjustment can relieve pressure or irritation to these affected nerves, and for many patients, this can be the key to getting the relief that they need.
In addition to this, we can help to improve your sleep. A lot of people are not aware of how adjustments can improve their sleep. Since the problem is usually at its most intense when the individual is trying to sleep, this may be point of importance for this office as your chiropractic doctor.
In this, we might recommend making changes to your sleep routine or we might offer advice that can help you to sleep more comfortably.
Beyond the chiropractic adjustments and sleep counseling, we may also employ the use of various other treatment options. For a person that has restless leg syndrome, nutritional counseling may be a part of the treatment plan. We may also use treatment options like massage or we might apply heat therapy to legs in order to relax your leg muscles.
In treating restless leg syndrome, exercise can be an important component of the treatment strategy. To assist you as the patient in dealing with restless leg syndrome, we may prescribe a number of different exercises that can help to address the condition.
Restless leg syndrome is a complicated condition, and it will generally take at least a few sessions to get the problem under control. However, there have been many patients that have experienced positive results when it comes to chiropractic care for restless leg syndrome. If you have restless leg syndrome, talk to me about your treatment options and what you can expect moving forward.