Webinar 2018 - Iron & RLS 

Low ferritin levels can mask iron overload, the opposite condition, so unless they are using a better test I wouldn’t test for iron.

Why are we determining iron status without also looking at the cofactors that are required for iron homeostasis? Could the iron insufficiency simply be a result of not enough copper and retinol in the diet?

@@dryan82 In the meantime I think it is much easier to get into a situation of permanently having too much iron than running out of other nutrients persistently. You can easily correct pretty much any nutrient problem fairly quickly with some multivitamins (with only b12 being slightly problematic), or correct an excess or even heavy metal toxicity by cessation of intake. The only substance this doesn’t work is iron, which effectively permanently stays in the body, with only minimal detox ability. You can improve iron homeostasis, but you can’t change an underlying excess overnight. Not sure how lower iron levels in the substantia nigra would be the case in RLS now, I’ll have to review. My last guess was that RLS would most likely be a reflex reaction to increase venous blood flow when someone has dvt or the like, since muscles surrounding veins literally pump the veins like a second heart. There we go: the low iron assumption is probably bogus/misdiagnosis. I got chatgpt, for whatever it’s worth, to agree with me that calcification of the substantia nigra could be mistaken for low iron in TCS/SWI imaging (because both show as hyper intensive) used to conclude in the RLS research paper that there was low iron in the substantia nigra. Really very unlikely as the subs nigra is full of iron and fairly small so shouldn’t hard to ship enough iron there to keep the dopamine production going. Conversely, iron overload leads to calcification of blood vessels, so this might be the actual problem, especially since normal substantia iron content is already very high. I can’t find much research on calcified substantia nigra, but that may be why there is a lack of understanding. The pineal gland is well known to very frequently (up to 70% of adults) have calcification issues, and coincidentally is also very high in iron. “Percentages of calcified pineal shadows from the literature, ranging from 50% to 70%. Study of 265 patients in Fiji, 135 Fijians and 130 Indians, shows a low incidence of calcified pineal shadows, 15·6% in Fijians and 19·2% in Indians.” Pineal Calcification in Indians and Fijians, 1973

Veggies often contain anti nutrients that compete/inhibit absorption of iron.

Hi I have been suffering with RLS for decades. And I tried cannabis and it did not work. Unfortunately the only thing those work are opiates.

Hi Salman! Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately, we are not a doctor's office, but we can provide you with great information and help you find a doctor in your area. Please email info@rls.org.