Restless Leg Syndrome – Associated Conditions

Transcript

There are a variety of other medical problems that are associated with restless leg syndrome. One of them is attention deficit, hyperactivity, disorder, ADHD. It’s not something we would think of, but there’s a big association. There’s also diseases like Parkinson’s disease, which is on that spectrum of movement disorder, peripheral neuropathy, kidney failure. As I mentioned earlier, diabetes, thyroid disease, certain autoimmune diseases like Sjogren’s syndrome, celiac disease, and even rheumatoid arthritis, there tends to be an increased risk of those things. So certainly if anybody comes in with kidney disease, I’m also going to be asking about restless legs, whether the patients bringing it up to me or not, because I know they’re common. If we can fix the underlying thing, we can often fix the restless legs. Restless leg syndrome is highly treatable and it’s really gratifying to treat. Sometimes people can’t sleep at night, they’re uncomfortable. And once we give them the right treatment, they’re very grateful to get back the quality of their lives and their sleep.