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Article: Nightwalkers: victims of a hidden epidemic. (restless legs syndrome; includes related article on medications for RLS)
- Article from:
- The Saturday Evening Post
- Article date:
- November 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Saturday Evening Post Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A sensory-motor disease of unknown origin robs millions of Americans of the sleep they need. A longtime sufferer tells how to and relief
It's called restless legs syndrome (RLS), and most people who have the disease don't like its name. "It can wreck your life," complained one victim, "yet when I tell people what I've got, they laugh or just give me an odd look, as if to say, `Yeah, and I've got twitchy eyeballs.'"
Only recently, when someone I hadn't seen in several years asked what I was doing, I said that I was writing a book about restless legs. When he laughed, I admitted that it was, indeed, an odd name for a serious disease. "A disease!" he ...