Restless legs syndrome (RLS) or Willis-Ekbom disease is a neurological disorder characterized by an irresistible urge to move one's body to stop uncomfortable or odd sensations. It most commonly affects the legs, but can affect the arms, torso, and even phantom limbs. Moving the affected body part modulates the sensations, providing temporary relief.
RLS sensations could be pain, an aching, an itching or tickling in the muscles, like "an itch you can't scratch" or an unpleasant "tickle that won't stop", or even a "crawling" feeling. The sensations typically begin or intensify during quiet wakefulness, such as when relaxing, reading, studying, or trying to sleep. In addition, most individuals with RLS have limb jerking during sleep, which is an objective physiologic marker of the disorder and is associated with sleep disruption. Some controversy surrounds the marketing of drug treatments for RLS. It is a "spectrum" disease with some people experiencing only a minor annoyance and others experiencing major disruption of sleep and significant impairments in quality of life.
Read more about Restless Legs Syndrome: Signs and Symptoms, Diagnosis, Prevention, Treatment, Prognosis, Epidemiology, History, Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words restless, legs and/or syndrome:
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I see slip to the curb the long machines
Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette
Shellacked with silk and light
The hard legs of our women.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)