RLS' Impact on Our Lives and Others' Lives

It is quite outstanding how restless legs syndrome (RLS) impacts our lives in so many ways. The creepiness alongside the urge to move give us an almost immediate need to move.

If just your legs are suffering, the urge may be satisfied by walking round the house. If it is an expanded sensation situation, then you walk round the house flailing arms around like you are practicing your nunchuck technique!

No more date nights

As RLS can creep up without warning (no pun intended!), we tend to remove ourselves from social situations. It is not so hard when you are with friends or family who understand your symptoms.

Alas, evenings out, such as date night, are left in the dust. There’s no point going to the cinema when you can only sit still for 5 minutes at a time.

Impact on mood and mental health

Has anyone else found anticipation makes it worse? If an evening out has just been suggested, your brain gets so worked up at the thought of being made to sit still that your symptoms ramp themselves up weeks or months in advance!

The creepiness and urge to move can lead to sleep disturbances and fluctuations in mood. Being tired can make you seriously cranky! Not to mention the anxiety and depression that encroach on life, affecting not just you but everyone around you.

Risk of more accidents

Have you tried to be a hero and dose yourself up with coffee and/or energy drinks? You try to ensure you physically go to bed later in the day (forgetting that the minus side is that both contain caffeine which aggravates symptoms tenfold!) just to get to mid-afternoon, then decide to prepare dinner?

Do you still have all 10 fingers intact?! The number of accidents that happen when you are half asleep is no joke! We need to buy shares in an adhesive plaster business!

Maintaining relationships

Our quality of life with RLS is dramatically impacted. How many still have an intimate relationship with their partners? When you cannot stay in bed, it is hard to keep that side of your relationship healthy.

Visiting family or friends, or even going on holiday? Those suggestions become a joke as spending more than 15 minutes in a forced seated position makes my limbs burn. Try sitting on an aeroplane for hours on end, dealing with those sensations.

Health impacts

Health is a factor we rarely think about whilst we are in the middle of a flare-up. The side effects from the prescribed medication we take each night – we don’t care as long as we sleep! Or how our circadian rhythm gets messed around with, so we end up thoroughly exhausted in the middle of the afternoon.

Challenges in the workplace

Careers can be obliterated as much as our home lives. Inability to sleep mixed with reduced alertness makes a job nigh on impossible at a decent standard unless you have a thoroughly understanding employer.

Other people are impacted too

All in all, RLS impacts our lives massively and those of our partners and children. Unfortunately, there seems to be no government benefits we can claim, as they deem it not serious enough. You can tell they don’t live with it.