Alternative Treatments For Restless Legs Syndrome

Before considering medications, it is a good idea to look at natural remedies for Restless Legs Syndrome.

Menopause Symptoms
Weight loss becomes very difficult when the woman starts experiencing menopause symptoms. This is mainly due to the hormone balance that is disrupted.

Lifestyle Changes: There are many everyday activities that can greatly exacerbate your Restless Legs Syndrome. Consider:

Diet - different foods can trigger RLS for different people. Any of the following foods should be discontinued and reintroduced individually one at a time to see if they have an adverse affect on your RLS. These foods are (but not limited to): sugar, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, triglycerides, gluten and aspartame. Again, different foods trigger RLS for different people and it behooves you to spend some time figuring out which ones are bad for your RLS.

In addition to eliminating some foods, it is a good idea to look at adding in some that you may be missing. Many people believe that RLS is due to an iron deficiency. Particularly one Penn State/John's Hopkins University found that RLS came from not enough iron getting to the cells of the mid brain causing misfiring neural signals. It may be impossible to look into your RLS in that depth but you may try adding some kind of multivitamin with iron. Be careful when doing this though, particularly if you are a man. Men usually get enough iron in their diets and excess iron can be harmful and cause severe headaches.

Other supplements that have been shown (mostly anecdotally) to improve RLS symptoms are: potassium, magnesium, B12, folate, vitamin E and calcium. As you can see there are many possibilities and one has to proceed slowly making one change at a time to see if it produces the desired affect.

Exercise is also an important factor in coping with Restless Legs Syndrome. Both exercising too much or too little can increase incidence of RLS. Once again, you have to find the right combination for you. Counter-intuitively, exercising right before bed seems to trigger RLS in many people. As with diet, you need to experiment to find the right exercise levels and times for you.