Hey I'm Dr. Jason Barker with the Natural Athlete's Clinic. So in this video
I'm going to give you my top four natural treatments for restless leg
syndrome - otherwise known as RLS. So what is restless leg syndrome? It's actually a
neurological condition that's manifested by a creepy crawly
or unpleasant sensation in your legs where you have to move them to relieve
that sensation. It happens most often when your muscles are at rest when
you're sitting at your desk all day or most often when you're trying to fall
asleep at night. Of course it's worse at nighttime. So RLS affects about 10% of
the population - everybody from little kids with ADHD, to pregnant ladies, to
middle-aged people, on up to a lot of older folks, tend to suffer from restless
legs syndrome. Now there's a lot of things that'll make it worse - stuff like
caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, antidepressant drugs and histamine drugs - all that stuff
makes this worse. So how can you take care of restless legs syndrome? Well
there's four really important nutrients you need to consider - The first one is
magnesium. Of course that's a mineral we talk about a lot here at the Natural
Athlete's Clinic because it's so awesome at relaxing muscles and calming the
nervous system down especially in those larger muscles of the body in our legs.
So you should supplement with magnesium - probably twice a day to take care of
restless legs syndrome. Now the second most important nutrient is iron. So there
are excellent studies that show that iron deficiency is greatly associated
with restless legs syndrome. In fact the worse your iron deficiency
is, the worse your RLS is going to be. Now that brings me into my third treatment
for RLS and that is when we look at the brains of people with RLS using an MRI
there's a certain area of the brain that's more deficient in iron than
others and that area is known as the substantia nigra. So the substantial
nigras job is to create one of our most important neurotransmitters known as
dopamine. So we also know people who are deficient in dopamine also have really
bad RLS. So one of conventional medicine treatments for this is using a synthetic
analog drug of dopamine called L-Dopa to treat RLS however it comes with a lot of
side effects and a lot of people can't tolerate them. So I've got a better
solution and that is using a naturally occurring amino acid known as tyrosine.
Tyrosine is really cool stuff because it's an immediate precursor to dopamine.
So we know that if we supplement with tyrosine, we can help boost levels of
dopamine and people who are suffering from RLS. So remember magnesium, iron, and
tyrosine are big ones. Fourth one is folate. Now I'm talking about folate or
folinic acid or methylated folate that you'll see written as 5 mthf or 5-methyltetrahyrofolate.
You want to use those forms of folate not folic acid okay.
Folic acid isn't well absorbed, not really well used metabolically in our
body so look for the activated forms of folate. Now we like to use Pure
Encapsulations B6 complex because it has the activated forms of folate and b12 in
it and of course you never really want to take one B vitamin all by itself
because they all work together synergistically. And then as an aside, in
the clinic I've seen a lot of people who have some degree of adrenal dysfunction.
They also tend to wind up with RLS as well so that's why I also like to use
adrenal b-complex as another option because it does contain those activated
forms of the B vitamins plus a lot of adrenal specific herbs that can help
boost adrenal function as well. Now of course other than using supplements we
need to talk about nutrition. Okay so you could go on Google foods that are rich
in magnesium and tyrosine and iron and folate but I'll save you the time - it's
stuff like turkey, chicken, lean meats, legumes, peas, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds,
avocados, fruits, green leafies, all of those are whole foods that make up part
of your nutritional foundation. So if you're eating a packaged food diet or a
processed food diet, you're going to be deficient in a lot of these nutrients
that isn't going to help you get rid of RLS. So of course we want to have a very
strong nutritional foundation and then supplement on top of that to finish off
those symptoms of restless legs syndrome. Now other stuff you need to pay
attention to is getting exercise and I'm talking about getting up from your desk
like maybe every hour and doing a couple laps around the building or your office
something like that to keep the legs moving and the blood supply fresh down
there. And stretching after exercise is super important too. There's good studies
that show that stretching will reduce the incidence and severity of restless
leg syndrome. And last but not least, we refer a lot of people for acupuncture
with RLS because it's also great at balancing out
that nervous system and calming the muscles in that area and taking care of
it. So there you have it, there's a lot of different ways you can take care of
restless legs syndrome. If you enjoyed the video please give us a couple of
likes, subscribe to our channel of course and please do share this video a person
you know who suffers from RLS. It's very upsetting to these folks because
they can't get any sleep and of course that insomnia leads to a lot of other
conditions.