Last Friday of Restless Leg Awareness Week.
September 23-29, 2007 is Restless Leg Awareness Week.
1. Do I have restless legs syndrome (RLS)?
h/t
1. Do I have restless legs syndrome (RLS)?
Chances are, if you are reading this answer, it is because you are concerned that you or someone you love may have restless legs syndrome (RLS). How many of the questions below are true for you?
- When you sit or lie down, do you have a strong desire to move your legs?
- Does your desire to move your legs feel impossible to resist?
- Have you ever used the words unpleasant, creepy crawly, creeping, itching, pulling, or tugging to describe your symptoms to others?
h/t
11 Comments:
Lol, what a silly ailment. The only thing that hurts me more than rls, is restless eyelid blinking syndrome that nancy pelosi gave to me after the SOTU, i cant stop!
It might be a funny ailment but try sleeping when you feel like your legs have things crawling all over them constantly and you have to get up and walk around to make it stop (or at least make it tolerable).
I absolutely LOVE the word "tugging". I use it all the time.
This post has been removed by the author.
This post has been removed by the author.
What do you do if you have both "Restless Leg" and "Social Anxiety" disorder? Restless but can't go anywhere.
There must a magic bullet from some corporate angel.
Have you ever used the words unpleasant, creepy crawly, creeping, itching, pulling, or tugging to describe your symptoms to others?
Nope! When I sit at the computer and thoughts are racing through my head, my right leg taps up and down like an oilrig plumbing for black gold. I never thought of this as an ailment, perhaps a manifestation of an intense Type A+ personality accompanied by caffeine and chain smoking.
According to the DSM-IV, a condition is considered a “disorder” when it causes emotional, social, or economic impairment, or when it stresses relationships with associates and family.
I can’t say that my restless right leg has caused these kinds of impairments or meets this definition of a “disorder.” As I am writing this comment, my feet are firmly planted under my chair in relaxed silence. Perhaps I am not a true RLS sufferer, nor is it my attention to belittle the suffering of those for whom this may be a real disorder.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but be struck by our national tendency to engage in marketing schemes that siphon money out of the pockets of country bumpkins, or that scare those who do not have a real disorder into thinking they do.
I have not checked the merchandise offerings of the RLS Foundation. Am I missing something? Despite rushing thoughts and piston legs, I am actually a lazy researcher.
Is the medicine show so ingrained in our national psyche that we loose all perspective?
This post has been removed by the author.
Rich, "corporate angel" sounds like an oxymoron. Your MD (or referral to a specialist) might be a more appropriate option.
Speaking as someone who lives in a country where medicine is at least at two removes from the profit motive, you folks are weirding me out.
You do realise that RLS basically has the same effects as most sleep disorders, right? You can never really get a good night's sleep, and don't usually sleep long enough to get a good REM cycle going.
As to health consequenses, people who are chronically sleep-deprived are 50% more likely than their non-sleep-deprived colleagues to be hurt or killed on the job, for one thing. For another, there's a demonstrable link between sleep disorders and obesity. And somehow this isn't a health problem?
I don't actually have RLS, but I have a similar neurological condition that makes me twitch uncontrollably at times (not Tourette's). Able-bodied people just have no clue, sometimes.
Interrobang, please accept my apologies. It was not my intention to weird you out over RLS or to belittle the suffering of those for whom this may be a real disorder.
Through high school, I had a friend and classmate who had a tic disorder. As adolescent brats are prone to do, we were sometimes cruel and poked fun at him. Regardless, he never allowed the disorder or his peers to bring down his self-esteem or invoke any feelings of shame. Today, he is an MD married to a PsyD.
My comment was intended to focus on hypochondriacs who think they have a disorder when they don't, and on our silly merchandising culture that turns everything into a T-shirt.
Post a Comment
<< Home