Traditional Western Medicine's Response To RLS

Before discussing the treatments available by traditional North American doctors it is important to understand their motivations.

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In our society today, physicians typically treat the symptoms of a problem and not the root cause of it.  Although society is changing, your physician will usually not treat your body in a holistic way. If you have chronic headaches, they chronically prescribe pain medications or anti-inflammatory's. Although it is nice to be able to get rid of your headache quickly wouldn't you rather get to the root of the problem? Wouldn't you like to get rid of your headaches for good?

So why don't most physicians take the time to treat their patients holistically? I believe it is simply efficiency. The human body is so complex that it can be very time consuming to get to the root of any given problem.

The more patients that your doctor sees, the money they make. As there is only so many hours in the day, the more efficient they are with each patient, the more patients they see and consequently the more income they take in.

As you can see, efficiency does not necessarily equal effectiveness. So, our doctors get in the habit of treating the patients symptoms by writing prescriptions rather than getting to the underlying issues.

Also, it is a well known fact that pharmaceutical companies provide compensation to physicians for promoting their products. I am not speaking necessarily about monetary compensation (although that does happen) but other types of incentives such as trips, office furniture, dinners etc.

Now, I want to be careful to point out that I am not saying that all doctors are crooks, I am sure that the vast majority are honest hardworking individuals that care about their patients but there is powerful motivation in some circumstances to prescribe medication.

What I am saying is that due to time constraints and the way the pharmaceutical system set up, it is easy to see how a physician's first thought when encountering RLS is to prescribe medication that treats the symptoms and does not treat the underlying causes.

I am not suggesting that medication does not have a place in treating RLS, in fact I take medication as part of my overall coping strategy. I am suggesting that medication is not necessarily right for everybody and it should only be one part of your overall fight against Restless Legs Syndrome.