New to primal, restless legs-help! page

[TornadoGirl]

I am on my second week and continuing to phase into full primal. I weaned off of grains last week and this week I'm still eating limited potatoes and legumes. I had horrible symptoms when I did Fat Flush Phase 1 in the past and want to avoid that as much as I can.

I feel really good and I'm having some good results (sleeping better, losing the muffin top, and less fibromyalgia pain-yea!) BUT, I am experiencing restless legs and a bit of low blood pressure with symptoms (dizziness upon standing) that I've experienced in the past when going low carb. This time, I haven't cut out dairy yet to try to mitigate the symptoms and I am taking calcium and magnesium which has seemed to be the problem in the past.

Please let me know of any ideas you have to help with this. My theory is that I retain a lot of water when consuming grains and start to release it quickly when I stop eating them and end up "flushing" the minerals out of my body along with all of the gunk. I have been really thirsty and I have been making frequent trips to the bathroom. I know this will probably stabilize at some point but in the meantime I need something to calm my legs down.

[Coconut]

There are a lot of theories about what causes restless leg syndrome. I can only go by my own experiences. When I get eat a lot of carbs, and don't excercise, get restless legs a lot. But I find excercise seems to fix it. Thats my experience. I've tired the supplements etc, but it didn't make any difference.

[Grok]

I used to get RLS prior to going primal, but I have not had any symptoms since. In fact, I wanted to post a thread about RLS and the primal blueprint and I'm glad you brought it up because I believe that the primal lifestyle will fix this.

Try going very low carb, and doing the exercises outlined in the primal blueprint fitness e-book. I'm willing to bet that this will cure your ills.

[supersellen]

Taking a magnesium supplement can greatly help things like restless leg syndrome. My brother was miserable with RLS until I introduced him to Natural Calm at night.

[Melody]

My lifelong rls was caused by a magnesium deficiency. It's an easy supplement to take.

[lizch]

Primal fixed restless legs for me, and I think the reason was because my restless legs was a symptom of iron deficiency. Eating primally upped my dietary iron, which made it a lot better, and then when I was formally diagnosed with anemia I started cooking with cast iron and supplementing. No it's almost completely gone. I have maybe 1 or 2 very very mild incidents a month now, vs several times a day before plus being woken up at night by it.

[kennelmom]

Natural Calm helped me tremendously. Not all magnesium supplements are created equal...you may need to experiment to find what works best for you.

[TornadoGirl]

Just thought I'd update this in case this helps anyone else. Although one school of thought is that RLS gets better on primal mine were getting worse and actually have every time I've gone lower carb. I was drinking a ton of water and may have been flushing minerals out of my body? Not sure why this is, but I did get the Natural Calm and it has helped tremendously. I am positive that I, like most every other American, have a magnesium deficiency. I am planning to check out the Jigsaw magnesium that CillaKat recommends after I finish the Natural Calm.

[cillakat]

magnesium. calcium. iron. potassium occasioally. For most, magnesium will fix it. If you have low hct or hgb or ferritin, you may need to fix that first before you'll get relief....but for most, it's mg. see my links below in my sig line. if you can't access the docs, just click the 'request access' buttons and you'll be given access when I get the email requesting it.