Conquering Restless Legs: Victory over Defeat

Do your legs have the heebie-jeebies and creepy-crawlies, especially at night? Do you just have to move them? Do these symptoms play heck with your sleep? Then you just might have restless legs syndrome (RLS), a condition for which treatment is available.

While I was still in training to become a neurologist, I got excited when I made a diagnosis of Ekbom's syndrome, as RLS was then known. In those days, the condition seemed rare and exotic, something a doctor almost never encountered.

Nowadays, in my community practice of neurology, I see cases of RLS almost every day. So where were all these people 25 years ago? Unless the disease has suddenly started propagating like mad, one has to conclude that previously the patients weren't talking, the doctors weren't listening