There is an estimated 2,5-15 % probability that anyone reading this have restless legs syndrome. If you are one of those people you already know what it is, but for those who don’t here is the definition from Wikipedia.
“Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological disorder characterized by an irresistible urge to move one's body to stop uncomfortable or odd sensations.[2] It most commonly affects the legs, but can affect the arms, torso, head, and even phantom limbs.[3] Moving the affected body part modulates the sensations, providing temporary relief.”
This is my story about having RLS and curing it. About 10 years ago I began having symptoms of RLS. It felt like needles in my legs, and the only thing that helped was getting up and moving around. The problem was that it never happened during the day when I was supposed to be moving around. It always happened in the evening or night when I needed to sleep. There were nights were I didn’t sleep at all, and often I only slept a few hours and went to school extremely tired. After some time I found out that if I slept in a special kind of pants I would have very few symptoms, so I slept in those pants almost every night for probably around a year. Yes I know it sounds weird but it really helped sleeping in those pants. I also went to the doctor and got two prescription medications for it. If I remember correctly the first medication was something that was supposed to alleviate the symptoms of RLS, and the second one was an antidepressant(I didn’t have a depression) which was supposed to increase the effectiveness of the first medication. I have no idea if it worked, because it made me feel sick so I stopped taking it. In addition to RLS I also had(and still have) a skin condition called keratosis pilaris. When it first appeared I absolutely hated it, and was desperately searching for a cure on the internet. After searching for a long time I found a post in a forum where a woman claimed to have cured her keratosis pilaris by avoiding gluten. From that point on I avoided gluten 100 % for a period. No, cake for me, No pasta, no bread. No anything containing gluten. It didn’t have much of an effect on my keratosis pilaris, but after a few days or weeks on this diet, I noticed that I no longer had restless legs syndrome. I was 100 % cured! No symptoms at all as long as I avoided gluten or didn’t eat it in large amounts. I have tested it several times and if I eat too much food with gluten the RLS comes back. I don’t know for sure if it’s gluten or something else in gluten containing foods that causes the problem, but no matter what it is I am now 100 % cured. I have also found out that it isn’t just me that it has worked for. On a forum I visited many years ago other people with RLS had also noticed that since going gluten free their symptoms had disappeared, and just like me RLS wasn’t the reason that they went gluten free, so it’s probably not a placebo effect. I hope that this post can be of benefit to someone. I would wish that someone had told it to me so I didn’t have to suffer all those nights. Sometimes the solution for a medical problems isn’t to take another pill.