On Restless Legs

I just walked out of my job. I had held it for a couple of months, about my average. On my way home, a guy bumped into me on the train so I kicked his ass. When I got home, my girlfriend had mistaken my plantains for bananas—who does that?—so, of course, I had to walk out on her. Last night I was watching TV when I realized I have a problem.

Doctor, Doctor, I think I have Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS).

Also called Heebeejeebees, Jimmy Jams, Jiggly Legs, and Spare Legs, Wikipedia describes the condition as “uncontrollable urges to move the limbs in response to uncomfortable or odd sensations in the body.” Yeah, that’s me right there.

Whew! How do they come up with this stuff? Well, they say medical researchers invent diseases and the drug companies manufacture them. But freaking Heebeejeebees? Seriously?
Seriously, I wonder what the process of finding new treatments and cures is. I can imagine how big PhRMA would invest billions of R&D dollars for diseases of life and death like cancer, heart disease, ED (yes, think about it), AIDS, etc. There’s demand for them. People don’t want to die. But, with all due respect to the hyper-ambulatory population, Jiggly Legs? Are there really that many Americans running to their doctors for treatment for their restless legs? Well, if you’re not, then you probably should. One in ten adult Americans may experience Spare Legs, according to some researchers.

Maybe the drug companies discover these dumb luck drugs in the process of finding cures for real diseases. Maybe a rat was given a new chemical concoction for, say, headache and it just stood still for hours, and some excited researcher said “Hey, can I get my husband to do that?” And the light bulbs went off in some marketing genius’ head.

They also say the media makes people sick (in more ways than one, I would argue).When I first came to this country, I used to be baffled when people would tell me they were sick and it turned out they had a cold. You know, no offense, but back home in Ghana having a cold is not considered being sick. It’s just…a cold. Malaria, now that’s sick. I’ve had it, maybe, 10 to 15 times in my life and that’s about average for people in their late twenties, and when you’ve had malaria that many times—and you learn to expect and live with it—a cold becomes… a cold. And then I came to this country, started watching TV, started discovering so many diseases and conditions I had and hadn’t even know about them and wondered where in the world they had been all my life: stress, anxiety, sleep disorder, severe heartburn, severe itch, extreme this, extreme that. I even got diagnosed for depression in my first year in this country. That was nine years ago. Shhhhh, I’ve never taken the pills I was prescribed. And now Jimmy Jams?

Come to think of it, there is a market for RLS. If you educate the customer about it! In fact, apparently approximately 10 percent of Europeans and Americans suffer from it, compared to 0.1 percent of Singaporeans and two percent of Ecuadoreans. I’m pretty certain if you educated Singaporeans hard and long enough you would find the real percentage of sufferers to be much higher.

On the upside, patients commonly experience the urge to move their feet after long periods of inactivity such as watching television. Well, Amen to that. Maybe this is God’s way of checking a certain, more common, condition in this country. But on the other hand, RLS may be contributing to the high divorce rate in this country as many-a-spouse have reportedly been kicked out of their marital bed.

In validation of the RLS community, there’s now proof that it’s genetic. According to recent news reports, researchers linked to the Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation have linked RLS to the broad complex-tramtrack-bric-a-brac-domain9 (BTBD9) gene. Of course, it makes sense. It’s in the genes. When I was a kid my big brother was quick to kick my butt when I messed up his room. He’s got restless leg syndrome too.

So if you can’t keep your legs still—can’t keep a job, can’t stay in a stable relationship, can’t keep yourself from kicking people’s asses, and run away from responsibility—then guess what? You’re not pathetic, you’re just peripatetic. Your BTBD9 is screwed up. And guess what again? GlaxoSmithKline has just what you need. For $140 you can get 100 1mg tablets of Requip (ropinirole HCI). Ask your doctor about Requip.