Dr. Carolyn Dean LIVE

Dr. Carolyn Dean Live

The journal Neurology published a paper called “Prospective Study of Restless Legs Syndrome and Total and Cardiovascular Mortality Among Women.” This study proves to me that your leg cramps are telling you that your magnesium deficiency is serious and needs to be remedied. Why? Because I’ve seen countless people eliminate their symptoms of leg cramps / Restless Leg Syndrome when they take ReMag and when people have magnesium deficiency they are at risk for CV disease. The highest amounts of magnesium in the body are in the heart so if there is magnesium deficiency, the heart is at risk. The association between restless legs and CV disease places the blame on magnesium deficiency as the shared cause. RLS is said to be a sleep and a neurological sensory disorder, which tells me nothing about its cause. In fact, medicine has no idea what causes RLS or how to treat it. This latest study just makes people with RLS more anxious because they have been told there is no cure for RLS and now they are told it increases their risk of heart disease. RLS symptoms occur at rest, lying, or sitting and include creeping, crawling, tingling, pulling, twitching, tearing, aching, throbbing, prickling, or grabbing sensations in the calves. The result is an uncontrollable urge to relieve the uncomfortable sensation by moving the legs. Some research shows that people with RLS may suffer from iron deficiency. However, Professor Nordlander who came up with this theory admits that only about 15% of the RLS clinical population appears to have peripheral iron deficiency (serum ferritin < 50 mcg/l). Yet, 20-50mcg/l is said to be the optimal level for ferritin and indicates you don’t have iron overload and taking iron could increase iron toxicity in the body. Professor Nordlander won’t drop his theory and says there can exist an iron deficiency in the tissues in spite of normal serum iron. At his insistence, researchers are investigating low iron levels in the brain! Unfortunately, you can cause more problems by taking unnecessary iron. People do have to be careful of self-medicating with iron. Investigators are also looking at dopamine because drugs that stimulate dopamine production may help the symptoms of RLS. And, of course, they are investigating the role genes play in RLS. Nowhere in mainstream literature do I see magnesium being studied in the diagnosis and treatment of RLS. Yet, every day we hear stories of people who take ReMag and say their RLS symptoms disappear – which means they were suffering from magnesium deficiency. It just makes sense to investigate magnesium deficiency as a cause of RLS before taking iron or dopamine drugs or just giving up and blaming your genes.