One of the most odd drugs on the market is something called REQUIP which treats a “disease” known as restless leg syndrome. You know, bouncing your leg the ways kids do when they are bored or impatient. Apparently now this is a syndrome instead of a bad habit. The most curious thing about the drug, REQUIP, used to treat the syndrome, exists in the fine print in the drug literature, get this:
A small number of patients taking medicines to treat Parkinson’s disease, including REQUIP, have developed a problem with gambling. It is not known whether this problem is directly related to the medicines or is due to other reasons. If you or your family notices that you have an unusal urge to gamble, talk to your doctor.
Are they kidding?
I’m going to have agree here with the first poster. I also have restless leg syndrome, and it has nothing to do with “bouncing your leg the ways kids do when they are bored or impatient”. I actually do take this medication for it. When I do not take medication I cannot get a good night sleep. the whole night my legs flail about which keeps from getting into a deep sleep. Not to mention the fact that I’ll kick the crud out of anyone who may be in the bed with me. So John, I’m going to bet that in this case you do not know what your talking about. Oh crap I just made a bet!
John,
I’m a family physician with interest and experience in RLS. I had a lady who started craving daily strawberry sundaes and got compulsive about house cleaning after starting Requip. On the advice of a friend with RLS who had compulsions with Requip, she came and told me about it.
I did a literature search, and that very month Mayo Clinic Proceedings had a paper on a dozen or so people with compulsive gambling (including a retired minister who gambled away $40,000 in no time), clearly attributable to Requip, since the symptoms abated after changing drugs. So it’s for real and I’ve seen it.
John, did it ever occur to you to do maybe *one* google search about RLS before you dismissed it so ignorantly? I’d like to know the thought process that leads someone to so emphatically state, with disdain and authority, something that is just so very not true and easily researched in less time than it took me to write this question.
John, stop trivializing things you don’t understand.
I know two people that habve RLS and it is torture trying to sleep when you constantly feel the need to move your legs. There are medical conditions that sound silly on the surface but turn out to be quite serious for the people suffering from it.
Like your RMS… Restless Mouth Syndrom
I myself have found that relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and mostly a workout regimen has greatly reduced my RSL. Its very mild these days. To the point that I dont notice it, all though some people sitting beside me will ocassionally reach over and grab me knee to stop it. At least when I sit in a resturant booth I dont have someone on the other side peek over and yell “who shaking their legs” lol. I did read a study that people who did figit continously such as leg bounciing did burn more calories each day and tended to be less heavy.
Imagine you have an itch, just a mild one that you can’t quite reach but can ignore. Then it starts to get worse, and worse and finally you just have to do something about it. Well, RLS is like that – it feels something like an itch (or a crawling sensation) deep within the leg and the only way to relieve it is to jerk the muscle. Oh sure, you try very hard to keep still, but eventually the body just does it for you. It’s not a tic, it’s not fidgiting, and it can move up into the arms.
Lucky me – I only get it infrequently, infrequently enough that I never even knew the term “RLS” until it hit me while in the presence of a doctor friend. I imagine those who suffer from it constantly are relieved to have a medicine that works.
It may, apparently, be related to Fibromialgia in which case biofeedback may be of some value.
John,
Please, please, please don’t comment on subjects that you know absolutely nothing about. It painfully obvious that you don’t know the first thing about RLS.
You sound alot like Tom Cruise, and that’s pretty damned disappointing for a man of your intelligence.
One Google or Wikipedia search would have given you the information you needed to speak about the issue intelligently… Or were you just looking to upset the apple cart so you could build some interest in your blog?
Maybe someday they’ll find a drug that treats “Fibromyalgia” or “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”.
/sarcasm
There is a real investigation into this. There was a Mayo Clinic study that seemed to show that the drug Mirapex had some strange association with compulsive gambling disorders.
M. Leann Dodd, M.D, Kevin J. Klos, MD, James H. Bower, MD, Yonas E. Geda, MD, Keith A. Josephs, MST, MD, J. Eric Ahlskog, PhD, MD, Pathological Gambling Caused by Drugs Used to Treat Parkinson Disease, Archives of Neurology, Vol. 62, Sept. 2005.
John, restless leg syndrome is really common. It is typically due to low dopamine levels, and anyone who has low iron levels has lower dopamine levels. RLS is incredibly common among meunstrating women. There were many men who thanked me for treating their wives because they were getting kicked all night.
Mirapex increases dopamine levels, but you didn’t hear much about RLS until the FDA approved its use. I personally use generic Sinemet and thinks it worked much better than Mirapex, so some of the drug company criticisms are real. The drug companies didn’t invent this disease. They just publicized it much more once they could make some money off of it.
When dopamine levels get really low, you start to see symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and one of the symptoms are blank facies. This is a polite way of describing patients whose faces are devoid of emotions or passion. So it’s zero surprise to me that higher dopamine levels are associated with more passionate activities like gambling or the desire to have more sex, another side effect seen with drugs that raise dopamine levels.
People think they can control their behavior, passions, and sins, but I think they just do not understand the power of the brian’s chemicals. I personally think lowering dopamine levels would do a lot more for a gambling or sex addiction than any twelve step program.