I'm sitting on the bus right now and RLS is driving me insane, or at least it was until I started doing some isometric exercises.

Isometric exercises are where you flex your leg muscles but don't actually move your legs at all. For example, I'm sitting here typing this article on my laptop, while pushing as hard as I can down on the floor, with my foot slightly raised in the air about an inch. Nobody on the bus can tell that I'm exerting myself, because my leg isn't moving - it's just flexed.

If you find yourself stuck on a bus ride or long plane trip and your RLS symptoms are acting up, try this easy method to provide some temporary relief. This shouldn't be a substitute for your regular medication, but it can be a big help because it can sometimes take up to an hour for meds to kick in and relieve symptoms.

Isometric exercises are also a great way to build strength in your muscles

The Oregonian recently published a blurp about a popular RLS technique in their "People's Pharmacy" Advice section:

Q: I finally fell asleep last night but woke back up an hour and a half later. I had started getting cramps and a creep-crawly feeling in my legs. I know some people who have RLS (restless leg syndrome), so I decided to look it up and see if there were any remedies. I'm sitting at the computer right now with a bar of soap under each leg, and it seems to be working! (I thought this idea was crazy, but I figured I had nothing to lose.) Thank you.

A: (from The Oregonian) Placing a bar of soap under the bottom sheet, near where the legs will rest, is one of the wackiest remedies we've come across. We have heard from so many people that is helps, however, that it is clear some folks do benefit. Besides, soap is inexpensive and doesn't have side effects. That cannot be said about the medications prescribed for RLS.

I got a chuckle out of this one, because it sounds so absolutely ridiculous... but I figured "what the heck" - it's worth a shot. But since the soap was recommended to be put under the sheet, I figured it was more of a pressure point related solution than the contents of the soap. And if that's the case, then it should work with any object that's about an inch thick and three inches long by two inches wide.

If you're starting to grab the car keys to run to the store and buy soap - save your gas. Sure, you may find temporary relief merely due to the well known placebo effect, where symptoms seem to magically go away even though no actual treatment was performed (a mind-over-matter trick that the brain and psyche occasionally plays on us).

Or the mere act of getting up and walking over to the sink to get a bar of soap may be enough of a physical and mental distraction to provide some temporary relief. But the relief will be just that - temporary. Your symptoms are likely to return, and with a vengeance if you decided to hold off on your regular medication in hopes that this myth might just do the trick for you.

This last weekend I rode 75 miles on my bicycle over Mt. Hood and out to Hood River, Oregon to raise money for the American Diabetes Association.  It was one of the most physically challenging thing I've ever done and an effort that I definitely consider "extreme exercise".

After the ride my legs were very tired and worn out, but the creepy, crawly sensations hit with a strong vengeance.  They even went up into my arms and hands and turned into explosive jerks that left me shaking my limbs every few seconds as if I was having a seizure.

Despite my regular dosages of Requip that day, the vigorous exercise from the ride aggravated my restless legs symptoms.

This might seem contrary to what many people think would be the case, but it just goes to prove that RLS is not primarily a muscular condition.  It's primarily a neurological disorder, although exercise clearly has some affect (negatively in my case).

Some recent studies have shown a correlation between moderate exercise and a decrease in RLS symptoms, but generally people have reported that strenuous exercise worsens their RLS. That certainly fits my experience this weekend and many other times as well.

I'm a computer programmer so I have to sit at a desk most of the day.  Requip works well to mask my RLS symptoms, but lately I've been catching myself nodding off at work.  I'll literally start to momentarily doze off and will wake up as my head starts to dive for the keyboard.  I just started a new job about a month ago, and I'm worried that I might be giving the impression that I'm bored with the work.

I've noticed that the drowsiness is the most dramatic about an hour after taking a dose of Requip – right about the time it starts to take affect and calm my legs.  It's a catch 22 – I'm miserable and squirmy if I don't take Requip, but half asleep if I do!

This week I'm experimenting with half-dosages of Requip.  I cut each 1 mg pill down the middle using a sharp knife, and then take one half every 2 hours instead of one whole pill every 4 hours.  I've noticed that the drowsiness is much less pronounced this way, because I'm not loading up my system with as much dopamine at a time.

It means that I have to keep much closer tabs on my Requip intake though, because if I miss one of the half doses then I'm really miserable with not as much Requip in my system.  But I'm hoping it helps me stay more alert during the day. I've set up recurring Outlook meeting invitations at 2 hour intervals to help remind me to take my meds on time.

WebMD recently published an article titled Restless Legs Syndrome, Heart Risk Tied that suggests a possible link between RLS and heart disease.

According to the article, RLS patients have been shown to have an increased risk for high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart disease in several previous studies.  The University of Montreal researchers asked 10 patients with untreated RLS to spend the night in a sleep lab, where researchers monitored leg movements and blood pressure changes. None of the patients had heart disease or hypertension, and none were taking blood pressure-lowering drugs.

The researchers found that blood pressure rates linked to sleep-related periodic leg movement rose by an average of 22 points for the systolic reading (top number of a blood pressure reading) and 11 points for the diastolic reading (bottom number of blood pressure reading).

They concluded that this degree of elevation, occurring frequently over time, could lead to heart and blood vessel damage. Their findings are published in the April 10, 2007 issue of the journal Neurology.

Did you know that RLS is common in Diabetes?

According to the Doc News Diabetes Journal, Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is common in type 2 diabetes, particularly among those with peripheral neuropathy.

A group of researchers at the Federal University of Ceara in Brazil studied RLS in 100 consecutive patients regularly attending their diabetes clinic. They assessed sleep quality and daytime sleepiness of each participant, and evaluated for RLS. Overall, 27% of the participants had RLS. Nearly half of all participants reported poor sleep quality, which was associated with peripheral neuropathy, advancing age, and RLS. More than one-quarter of all participants reported excessive daytime sleepiness.

Wow, that's a huge correlation!

If you have diabetes, or know of someone who does, then you know how important it is to help Diabetes associations like The American Diabetes Association.

Scott Hanselman is a local Portlander who I used to work with at a technology company a few years ago.  He suffers from Diabetes and has set a goal to raise $50,000 for The American Diabetes Association (and with over 14,000 readers of his blog, I really think he'll do it!

Please check out his blog at http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes and learn about diabetes and how you can help fight diabetes.

I stumbled across Adria's blog title The Ergonomen this morning after doing a Google search on "walking while working".  I remembered a while back there being some hype on MSN about hooking up a computer to a treadmill and losing weight while working, and it made me wonder if it would help with RLS symptoms as well.

In theory it should help a lot, since walking provides temporary relief of RLS symptoms.  Unfortunately those symptoms return after a few minutes of resting, but with this contraption you'd be walking all day long.

I like the sounds of it, and Adria did a good job covering the story. 

Can you imagine dragging a treadmill into your cubicle at work though?... let alone convincing your boss to support the idea financially? 

We gained an extra hour recently with Daylight Savings here in the U.S. which can be a life changing event for many of us suffering from RLS.  Our bodies don't automatically jump ahead or behind an hour like the clock does, and it can take a few weeks to adjust to the time change.

For me it means I take my Requip pills an hour earlier than normal in the fall, and an hour later in the spring.  I usually take my first dose at around noon, which meant I had to switch to 11 a.m. last fall when we fell back an hour for Daylight Savings, and then another every four hours until my 10 p.m. dose before bed. 

My last evening dose is a whopping 3 mg of Requip, which leaves me feeling very drowsy within an hour. I didn't start going to bed an hour earlier however, so that left me struggling to stay awake on dinner dates with my wife or friends.

I always look forward to the "spring forward" Daylight Savings change because the situation is reversed.  I can take my meds an hour later than normal and still be in sync with my body's time schedule.  I can stay up an hour later without feeling drowsy too, which came in handy this last weekend when my wife and I had dinner with a couple friends and stayed out until about 10:30 p.m.

How pronounced is your reaction to the recent time change?

I've wrestled (no pun intended) with RLS for as long as I can remember - even as a small child I can remember squirming around in the back seat of our red Ford Maverick.  About 5 years ago I was diagnosed with RLS and was very relieved to learn that it was a treatable affliction.  That excitement was short-lived though after quickly discovering a year later that my body had developed a tolerance for Sinemet.  My symptoms had actually worsened as a result of taking this drug!

I switched over the Requip about 3 years ago, which has worked much better for me.  Requip is the only FDA approved medication for treating RLS symptoms, but even Requip has not been the wonder drug that I had hoped it would be.  I have learned that there are numerous factors that affect my quality of life - factors that I must manage on a daily, even hourly basis.

Here's my personal top-5 list of things I do to minimize my Restless Legs symptoms (beyond taking Requip judiciously):

Earlier this week while waiting in the lobby of my hair salon, I saw a full page Requip advertisement in Sports Illustrated magazine. Requip is currently the only FDA-approved medication for treating restless legs syndrome (RLS).

It's encouraging to see this kind of publicity for RLS. It increases the chance of other pharmaceutical companies investing in RLS research and medication, and it makes it less awkward or embarrassing when explaining the disorder to my friends and colleagues!

They had a good, understandable description of RLS (creepy, crawly, tickling sensations in the legs that are temporarily relieved by walking - but they always comes back, and usually worsen in the evenings).

They categorized moderate to severe RLS as occurring up to 15 times a month. I had to chuckle at those statistics, because I experience RLS episodes numerous times daily, starting as early as 11 in the morning, and sometimes earlier if I didn't get enough sleep the night before or am stressed out about something or anything.