Natural Complementary Therapies - your key to improved health and well-being. A breakthrough treatment is now being trialled at The Haven Healing Centre - come and try for yourself! Restless Leg Syndrome RLS is a strange condition where you may experience unpleasant sensations in the muscles and the legs, during which you will find you have a desperate need to move them.
More than 5 million people in the UK are affected by the condition at any one time. This seems to come about mostly when you are resting and is relieved by moving your legs around. It is worse at night, and following periods of inactivity. Restless leg can also be made worse by travelling long distances in a car or plane, sitting for long periods, at work or at the cinema, or theatre, or when imobilized, such as during the plaster period of a leg break.
The range of sensations due to restless leg syndrome can vary from a mild ache, to itching and tingling, up to very unpleasant sensations like weird electrical sensations in your legs, or like something creeping and crawling under the skin, a desperate burning in the muscles, or even pain. It's not unusual for people to have great difficulty describing their sensations or what is happening to them.
But there is no doubt, restless leg syndrome can be very unpleasant. It affects both men and women, and gets worse with age, so at its worst, more retired people refer themselves to their GP, than younger people.
Restless leg is characterized by an inability to sleep properly. Sleep deprivation is a serious problem and can lead to accidents, lack of concentration at work or school, and health problems can result from the lack of nerve energy in the body, brought on by insomnia.
