I belong to several sleep disorder lists. A couple of them are lists that deal with restless legs syndrome. Here we find people posting messages about the creepy, crawly sensations that force them to keep moving their legs in the night. Often they have to get up and pace the floor, unable to sleep because of these sensations.
Then someone will write in and ask: "But what about the pain? How do you stand the pain in your feet and legs?"
For many people with restless legs, however, there is no pain. They suffer, instead, from what is known as paresthesia. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke describes paresthesia as "a term that refers to an abnormal burning or prickling sensation which is generally felt in the hands, arms, legs, or feet, but may occur in any part of the body. The sensation arises spontaneously without apparent stimulus and is usually not painful."
I had wondered about this seeming discrepancy in the symptoms. Recent news has offered an explanation: Not all types of restless legs syndrome react to the same trigger.
A recent study has shown one kind of restless legs syndrome may be triggered by pain and small sensory fiber loss, while another type does not involve small sensory fiber loss or the trigger of pain. In addition, the type with small sensory fiber loss tends to be late onset, whereas the type without small sensory fiber loss tends to be hereditary and appear early in life. Once again, we take a step forward in our knowledge about restless legs syndrome, but we are constantly reminded of how different everyone's experience is.
On the next page, I list several ways to cope with restless legs syndrome.
