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Friday, July 31, 2009

My RLS theories

I have Restless Leg Syndrome. Which pretty much means my legs wont stay still when am trying to sleep at night. There is still much to learn about this disease that affects millions of people all over the world. There have been some researches, some answers but still a lot of questions. Because of my little research on it and my little background in science, I have always asked questions about the cause of it. I have been wondering about 4 possible causes. Here are my theories.
Theory number one I called the poor venous return theory. If I sat down in one spot for about 30 minutes with all limbs dangling and I have no chance to walk around. At the end of those 30 minutes you will notice a lot of veins on my hands and legs. This tells me that the veins in my limbs are not doing their jobs of returning blood to my heart for more circulation correctly. I might have what is called poor venous return. One thing that helps the body in poor venous return is muscle movement. The contraction of muscles help squeeze blood out of veins towards the heart, therefore I believe when I am asleep at night and am not moving and my veins as usual are slacking in their jobs. My heart my heart might panic because it has less blood to work with and their for the brain would come in to help by signaling my leg muscle to start moving so the heart might get some blood to circulate to other part of the body that needs it
Theory Number two I named the low iron theory. Some of the few researches I have seen on RLS have linked it to anemia. A condition in which all or some components of your blood are low in amount, in RLS, iron is the culprit. It turns out iron is important for the brain to synthesis dopamine, and dopamine is important in limbs movement. People with Parkinson’s disease have low level of it. Therefore a low level of iron in my body also could lead to RLS symptoms.
Theory number three I named ‘nerve misfiring,’ which simply translates to mean that my nerves are just misfiring when I have these symptoms.
Theory number four is what I called hyper-metabolism. Since I was little I have never sit still. I am always running around burning calories. So I think my leg muscles might have gotten used to moving and burning calories that even when I am trying to rest them they still would insist on moving.

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