Heat Therapy Treatment for Restless Leg Syndrome

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Dr. Susan Jewell and on behalf of Expert Village I am going to talk to you about ways to alleviate the symptoms of Restless Leg Syndrome. Now sometimes Restless Leg Syndrome causes patients to come in and complain of creepy crawly leg symptoms but most times they have associated symptoms of pain and muscle pain so some of the ways to alleviate these symptoms are to buy products over-the-counter in pharmacies or grocery stores that will help you to alleviate the muscular aches and the creepy crawly sensations. Heat and cold therapies have been shown to be effective in helping in this condition. What I have here on the table are several items that can be readily purchased in the stores. Here is a Thermacare or these are like heat packs that you can wrap around particular areas of your body and in particular we are talking about Restless Leg Syndrome so you could wrap this around the lower abdominal area where if you have sat for long periods of time during the day or where you have compressed and caused a lot of tension and restricted circulation to the lower legs and then you've got muscular pain associated with it, you can buy these packs to wrap around that particular area to reduce the aches and pains and also to give yourself a relaxation. These come in separate packs, they are sanitized and cleansed so once you have used these you can throw them away. Other products here are pain relieving patches that you can put on to certain areas of your body and that also is a good way to relieve the muscular aches and pains associated with Restless Leg Syndrome. Here, I felt this was interesting, was what I found in one store, an instant cold pack. What it is is they come in separate packs and it is good if you are out traveling or hiking and you have Restless Leg Syndrome because it comes readily made in a pack. What you do is you squeeze the pack and inside this pack there is this liquid and also powder and when you squeeze the pack really hard it breaks the seal on the liquid and then mixes with the powder and it causes a reaction to cause this very ice cold sensation so you have an instant ice pack but before you apply it to your body you need to wrap it in some type of insulating towel, you don't apply it directly to your body. These are some of the ways that you can help alleviate the symptoms of Restless Leg Syndrome."