The New Restless Leg Syndrome Drug?

[Herbmountain]

Are any of you catching the new advertizement for "Restless Leg Syndrome". What a crock and way for the pharma's to make a fortune on people that are not getting enough calcuim/magnesium. I just about hit the floor. I wish I could make ads counter-acting the drug ads and laughing in the background of just how easy it is to use supplements to fix so many problems.

Here are two ways you get restless leg syndrome and leg cramps. The leg cramps are usually due to a loss of potassium. This happens to construction workers and people who work in the heat. They sweat a good deal and lose potassium due to the body will hang on to salt at all costs. So instead of sweating salt, which the body does some, the kidneys will trade potassium for salt. This causes a loss of potassium the muscles need to work. The muscles start or are easily stimulated to contract and you have a muscle spasm.

As for restless leg syndrome? You can take calcium/magnesium and this will stop. It smooths and relaxes the striated muscles. It also calms stress. Now Im wondering if this new drug is nothing more than a calcium/mag combination under the guise of a new drug. Go figure!

Look for a combination of 2/1 cal/mag. that would be 400 mg calcium to 200 mg magnesium. Look for citrate, malate, ascorbate. The phosphate is the cheap form of calcium and is not enough to do the job. Look for a little vitamin D to be able to asimilate the calcium in the formula.

 

[blue gecko]

RLS can also be cause by side-effects of certain drugs particularly those used to treat neurapathy. There is so much over medicating going on it's no wonder that the drug companies are coming up with ways to treat those side-effects...and the wheel goes on and on.
I agree with the magnesium Herbmountain though recently I understand that the recommendation is leaning more toward 1:1. The good thing about Mg is that it's difficult to over do it...you're body err sorta tells you if you've taken to much...nothing like a good ole fashioned spring cleaning.

 

[monkeyface]

Ahh, restless legs syndrome. I love it. Having taken magnesium/calcium and potassium ever since I was a teenager--many many years ago, I will take my REQUIP and still take the others. But the meds work for me, and the others haven't . But it's true, too much magnesium works wonders for the bode!! Seriously, if the above would work for me now, I would stop with the meds and continue with them. But i have had too many years of no sleep due to my legs and it feels good to get some rest.

 

[Herbmountain]

No kidding Blue Gecko. I had an old herbalist tell me the measurement to cal/mag for your personal dose is;
Take the amount reccomended on the lable. See how that works for you. Then slowly increase it until you get diarrhea. From that point, decrease one tab a day until you have a nice stool. It is the magnesium that gives you the diarrhea. So now it is one to one. Good deal. I will remember that. I do take extra magnesium and hubby is the one who had the restless leg syndrome. He actually would shift all night. He is a truck driver and has been for 29 years. It is his left foot that extends down and sometimes I get kicked. Poor guy. It is worse in the summer as he is out in the heat all day long operating a "Sky Track". So he is not driving all the time. The phosphate did not do the job. I had to look for one that had citrate, malate and ascorbate. From what I have learned different parts of the body up-take the different forms of calcium. The phosphate passes through the body pretty fast and is not that good. But hey! It says calcium! The sheeple buy it and think they are getting the calcium needed.

I had to add herbal potassium along with the cal/mag and it did the trick for him. Now he swears by it and passes the info to all the crews who complain about the same problem. All that sweating ya know.

 

[blue gecko]

Honestly I think your herbalist's advice is the way to go! It makes sense to me to tailor the dosage particularly when the results are so obvious.
I'm not particularly a fan of supplementing individual vitamins and minerals in anyway other than short term therapeutics...I'd rather see folks looking to food as medicine. Not only do you increase the magnesium by eating Mg rich foods (dried seaweeds, beans, WHOLE grains, nuts and seeds and high-chlorophyll foods) but you are also getting a much broader range of minerals, vitamins and enzymes that actually contribute to the overall action and absorption of the mineral. BG

 

[rockcreek]

I agree we should be getting our vitamins from food but lately food is not so good. I bought some apples at the grocery store and they had like almost no taste. The taste it did have was not fruit but more like some kind of medicine. Tomatos are tasteless rocks. We do try to have a garden every year but the weather has not been cooperating. I feel like if I didn't take supplements I wouldn't feel half as good as I do.

 

[blue gecko]

I know what you mean rockcreek. I try to buy fresh and local whenever possible and prepare a wide variety of everything. Whenever I feel we are entering a stressful time I supplement my family. Even then though I use products like Ultra Juice and Green Magma over individual vitamins. When I cook I try to increase the nutritional value when possible by adding things like seaweeds and nutritional yeast. I figure every little bit counts. BG

 

[Herbmountain]

Rookcreek. My point exactly and I get tired of repeating the same old stats over and over again about how our food is processed and the conditions of the growing fields. Most of the veggies do not contain the needed minerals and vitamins as no longer do the farmers till the old crops back into the soil. Most are burned off and chemical fertilizer is added back to the dirt and trace elements are null and void.

As for the tasteless apples? It might have been last years crop. From what I hear apples are stored in silo's for up to 2 years before making it to market. The reason we have so many people deficient in nutrients is because of the above so we need to supplement.

I do have a garden and my hubby is loaded with zinc as he loves the home grown tomatoes. I try to grow as much as I can but the root foods? The gophers get most of it.

So keep supplementing. Better safe than sorry.