Restless Leg Syndrome – Physiology

Transcript

What’s going on with restless leg syndrome is a little neurologic glitch in the brain. There’s an area that controls movement and it’s got some neuro-transmitters that give chemical messages about movement. One of them that’s key is called dopamine. And for whatever reason, this little glitch in the brain doesn’t allow movement to occur naturally. So the sensation occurs and then the person has to move on naturally when they don’t want to, when they would voluntarily stay still, they feel the irresistible urge to move. They’ve got to move and then the uncomfortable sensation goes away. Sometimes there’s actually no sensation. They just have the need to move, which is also confusing and makes the diagnosis a little bit harder.