Massage Gun Tips for Restless Legs Syndrome
I dealt with restless leg syndrome for many years before I knew it was called restless leg syndrome, haha. I’ve tried everything from creams, ice packs, supplements, and even using a Percussion Massager.
Sometimes one of my methods that worked before doesn’t seem to work now, and sometimes, it works better than other times.
The weirdest complicated physical problem for me to deal with seems like it’s always changing with the methods that I use that help me control it.
Massage Gun for Restless Legs
I’m writing this post because of percussion massage for restless leg syndrome, but restless leg syndrome is a much bigger topic, and you can go a lot deeper.
And there’s a lot of other things that you can use to help restless legs. I’ll try to go into as many as I can, but I’ll probably write another post more in-depth just on restless legs.
You can check my recent post. Hopefully, I will have posted directly after this one.
Real quickly, though, a percussion massager can be one of the quickest and easiest ways to relieve restless leg syndrome. Simply put, what you’re dealing with is a nervous system issue.
There can be a lot of other factors, but the stimulation applied with a percussion massager can be enough to relieve you of the irritation of restless leg syndrome.
There is no particular method. Just use a percussion massager like you would any other time work from point A to point B.
As you learn your body, you will get a feel for what feels good.
Listen to your body. It knows best, but where do I start? I just start to figure out what feels best if something hurts, back off at any point, feel pain, stop and work around the area till things loosen up.
Places to Massage for RLS
- Feet
- Arches
- Calves
- Hamstrings
- Glutes
- Quads
- Lower Back
You won’t need to spend very much time in 5 to 10 minutes tops to do your whole lower body, and you should feel tremendous relief from restless leg syndrome.
Although I have done this at times, it has made my symptoms worse, which is the biggest frustration for me.
Why isn’t it working now? It worked before, and this is the very weird part about restless leg syndrome. It’s almost a psychological thing, but it is a physical experience that is very discomforting sometimes.
I don’t know why a percussion massager would almost completely relieve me one time and not another.
I don’t know if I overdid it a couple of times or if it was just me, but this has been the case with everything. I’ve sometimes tried a hot soak bath to help, and sometimes it’s almost worse. Then another time actually makes it worse, so keep that in mind.
I don’t know if I am an extreme case of Restless leg syndrome, but there are times that it is so severe that it is keeping me from going to sleep, almost electrifying feeling shooting up and down my legs.
This might be another issue other than what is normal people deal with restless leg syndrome, but either way, I have experienced the mild and extreme sides of it.
One weird note that may help you is not eating late at night.
How Long Should You Use A Percussion Massager Don’t Over Do It?
Eating your last meal 4 to 6 hours before going to sleep tremendously helps me. I almost have no problems if I go to bed with an empty stomach weird, but and even if I am hungry and then I decide to get a snack late, then I can actually tell my restless legs get worse.
I believe there are a Lot of metabolic issues that could be causing this, and when you think restless leg syndrome is should be called nervous leg system syndrome, it is more of what you’re dealing with. Remember, whenever you eat food is a nervous stimulant.
Hence, I put two together, and I notice when I am going to bed with an empty stomach that I almost don’t have any issues unless I’ve eaten two hours were eaten right as I was going to bed.
Oh, and there is one other thing. As I’m writing this down, I just remembered caffeine speaking of stimulants any sugary pops and caffeine, which is a stimulant, really affects the severity of my restless leg symptoms,
so if you are a big chai tea drinker, maybe cut back a little bit in the afternoons, which may help you, as I did mean.
Best Leg Massager for Restless Legs
I believe a percussion massage gun is the best massager for restless legs because a percussion massager works through percussion pulsing, which is a lot different from a vibrational massager or other types of hand massager.
With a massage gun or the clinical name, percussion massage delivers a pulsating massage that will go deeper into the muscle tissue giving you a lot more tissue stimulation than if you were just using a vibrational massager.
I don’t even use the type of massager anymore; I only use a percussion massager.
The regular vibrational Massagers are nice, and they make you feel good when you use them, but they’re not going to give you what I would call a therapeutic massage.
Kind of like if you just had a soft hand massage just flowing up and down, your skin may feel nice and somewhat comforting, but when you go to a professional massager that uses a deep tissue massage, you will get better results with better healing promoted through the deep tissue release.
So for the best massager for restless leg syndrome, hands down, as a percussion massager, it will dig a lot deeper, getting into the thicker part of your thighs, which is harder to use your hands to massage out.
Now it is recommended to do any type of massage to your legs that can help relieve some of the irritating symptoms of restless leg syndrome.
I like using foam rolling or any type of roller massager, massaging the tops of your legs and the back of your legs lightly. Unfortunately for me, my restless leg syndrome is usually pretty severe when it is flaring up. Some people have experienced some relief.
I have gone as far as getting an ice bath to calm my legs down and actually when nothing else works.
I will just fill the bathtub up with cold water, which usually is cold enough I don’t need ice. However, I do get ice baths sometimes.
Filling up the tub with just cold tap water is pretty cold. I’m just dunking the lower half of my body, and it has been the best fix for restless leg syndrome Not the most pleasant by far.
It’s why it’s usually my last resort; there are times that it is so severe.
I cannot go to sleep and just get more frustrated and more anxiety building up, and I just kind of snowball effects. When I get to this point, I will jump into a tub of cold water, and instantly it fixes me.
Some of my theories behind this are because restless leg syndrome you’re dealing with nervous leg syndrome as well, I call it. Whenever you get into a cold or are exposed to cold, they now have these Chrono chambers that people go in the 40 below zero or whatever they are. Still, there are benefits to being exposed to cold therapies like this. The short version is all the blood will rush to the core of the body for survival mechanisms when this happens all your cells and tissues are being flushed in a sense. As you get out and warm up, you get new fresh blood, and this lowers inflammation.
This promotes healing and a whole host of other benefits, most importantly.
With restless leg syndrome, cold exposure like this calms the nervous system people have reported that getting ice baths have actually lowered their resting heart rate.
I believe this is related to how cold therapy affects the nervous system, so in summary, restless leg syndrome or what I like to call nervous leg syndrome when you look at it like that and start thinking about what happened to you during the day or what did you eat or even what did you think about all this can be connected to your nervous system and infect you when you’re trying to go to sleep.
Can Anxiety Cause Restless Leg Syndrome?
I am no psychiatrist, and I am no clinical doctor, but I would almost guarantee you the biggest part of restless leg syndrome is from anxiety, whether it’s mental-physical anxiety or actually nervous system anxiety.
What I mean by that is you could be sitting in your house alone, nobody around, not really doing anything, and your mind just starts wandering for no apparent reason, and you start daydreaming, I’m home alone, nobody around what if somebody breaks in…
And then your Magine nation starts running about somebody coming through the door or the window with a weapon or something to harm you, and your mind just gets racing. Before you know it, you notice your heart rate is actually elevated, and you’re kind of anxious and scared all from thought alone.
Now even after these thoughts left your mind and you have forgotten all about your crazy daydream that got your heart beating so fast, you’re lying in bed, and you’re sleeping, but your nervous system is not.
It never sleeps; it’s always firing acting; it’s breathing your lungs while you’re sleeping, and your brain is actually running off of it as well doing some physical maintenance for other parts of the body or even clearing out toxins out of the brain itself. Then you begin to dream, and then you start having this nightmare of somebody breaking in.
Now you already forgot about the daydream you had. Now you have a physical dream to get to the point anxiety can affect your conscious and subconscious nervous system and restless leg syndrome, which I’m overusing this. Still, I call it nervous leg syndrome. To best understand restless leg syndrome, you need to look at the nervous system and how it works.
but if you don’t want to dive down the rabbit hole really the nervous system is something that the medical system doesn’t even fully understand, and you could probably study it for the rest of your life and still not know everything, but the best thing to know is whatever negatively stimulates your nervous system whether it’s
people whether it’s terrible foods whether it’s just your own negative thinking which is a whole different topic that you could get stuck into, and you can be kind of trapped between your thoughts and what is actually real threats but with all that can really be part of an anxiety issue that then can become a physical restless leg syndrome issue I know I’ve said a lot but I really hope to help somebody to understand where it all could be coming from and probably more often than not restless leg syndrome is more of an anxiety issue than anything else which is interesting exercise lowers anxiety and most athletic people don’t have restless leg syndrome issues but the athletic people that have restless leg syndrome issues
Or the over-exercised and nutrient-depleted, which brings me back to the nervous system again. In summary, I think restless leg syndrome is more of an anxiety situation than it is an actual physical problem; yes, there are some physical elements to it, of course, which is a physical experience.
But I believe that we are way more connected through the nervous system, and anxiety can affect restless leg syndrome and vice versa; it can be a snowball effect you can have anxiety that intensifies your restless legs which now you have more anxiety because you have restless legs and then back-and-forth it gets worse and worse when it gets this bad for me I jump in the cold water lol and even when I have a lot of anxiety I get in a cold bath you’re not so anxious when you’re in Coldwater all you wanna do has to get out of it. Once you do, it feels pretty good. By then, usually, I forget about whatever made me anxious all I know is at this point, I just don’t want to be in Coldwater.
Hot Feet and Restless Legs at Night.
Hot feet and restless legs at night are the same things as restless leg syndrome, where are the nervous system are overactive, causing the irritation of all the things that I’ve talked about in this post above this paragraph, and below.
9 Ways to Cool Down Your Hot Feet at Night healthline
I believe will help you with hot feet at night just as good as these methods work for restless leg syndrome primarily people don’t experiencing restless leg syndrome or hot feet at night until an hour later years in life but even as a child I experienced hot feet at night and even during the day I couldn’t stand to wear shoes and at night it would get so miserable for me even as a little kid I would get a bag of ice and put it on my feet I would always sleep with a fan blowing on my feet with my feet out underneath the sheets back then we didn’t have the Internet and I was unable and my parents were unable to read an article like this to help me so I kind of try out an hour and learn things on my own but they irritation of those really disturbed the quality of sleep I would get an overall the quality of life I always was a poor sleeper and having restless legs and feet made things even worse but the same principles apply for hot restless feet as they do for your legs the only difference is I don’t believe that massaging your upper body like your legs weather that will help your hot feet at night but anything else like the stretching and the cold packs can help the biggest thing for me that help the most is actually I would turn on cold water and just let the cold bath water run over my feet for a few minutes and then get in bed right away and turn the fan on blowing directly on my feet and then just relax and rest the more that you focus on it and the more that it intensifies and the more irritated it becomes if you look at the nervous system and how it operates the sensory input to the body where attention goes energy flows.
As the saying goes lol so if you keep focusing on your feet and the irritation can get worse, so the best thing to do is try to cool your feet off and take your mind off your feet and relax and try to do any of these other remedies listed above and below this paragraph.
How to Massage Restless Leg Syndromes
I won’t go into the deep detail on how to massage for restless leg syndrome. Just watch Dr. Joe on YouTube. I’ll list the video below. She has the best video that I found, and it’s a lot easier to explain in a video than it is in text with restless leg syndrome, even if it’s just your legs for your lower legs. Do you want to work all your legs, and even if you can get some lower back stretching, it will relieve pressure off of the sciatic nerve and may relieve some restless leg syndrome farther down your legs? As I said above, you’re dealing with the nervous system, which can do some weird things known as deferred pain. The nerves can be firing and giving pain in a part of the body where the problem is not at, so it’s always good A to point B all the muscles in between to help relax the nervous system throughout the whole body.
Instant Relief for Restless Legs
My protocol for instant relief is cold water; it’s better to have warm water before bed, but when my legs get so restless with like almost like a mild electric shock going down my legs at times very annoying and irritating feeling sensations and when nothing else has worked Coldwater does the trick I just don’t use this method much because it’s very unpleasant. A lot of times, I’ll just suffer through, but if I would just go and fill the bathtub up with cold water dunk my legs in for just a few minutes, my restless leg syndrome is gone immediately something you could try that I haven’t tried yet you could use maybe ice or a wet, cold cloth wipe your legs down and actually maybe leave your legs a little damp and have a fan blowing on them that will give you the cooling effect. I believe that would work.
I have used an ice pack on my feet before just not a real good thing to have in the bed when it starts melting, LOL, but cold temperature really helps.
Magnesium for Restless Leg Syndrome
Most everyone is deficient in magnesium; we just don’t get it in our diet anymore from depleted soils and everything else with processed foods. We’re also depleted in potassium, and I believe that if you bring up your potassium and magnesium levels, your restless leg syndrome may be cured.
Potassium and magnesium relax the nervous system tremendously, and we’re all deficient.
in it, the best thing to do is go get a blood test done from your doctor and ask pacifically for a vitamin deficiency test to see where your vitamin D levels are, which most of us are depleted in that they say the only people with sufficient vitamin D levels are roofers and people who work out on boats LOL in the sun all day long every day so will never get our vitamin D I usually try to take it every day especially in the winter but if you supplement with some supplements
I would recommend first off vitamin D and magnesium and potassium vitamin D is pretty hard to get from food unless you’re consuming the food that’s fortified with vitamin D but even then that’s usually not enough for us so I recommend supplementing a little bit of vitamin D when it comes to potassium and magnesium both of these are best to obtain them from food and 7 to 10 cups of raw vegetables lol which is a lot I have ate that much before it can be done but you’ll be consuming like to really large salads a day and that’s really too hard to keep up with unless you’re vegan and that is your staple food but if not you also can do smoothies and green drink powders that can help you get the magnesium and potassium levels up and of course there are supplements that you can buy for magnesium and potassium but you want to be careful of not overdoing it with the supplements my best results I found as when I would do a big green juice and one green juice through a juicer would have my potassium and magnesium levels for the whole day rather than trying to spend a couple meals trying to get it in one drink would get it all in and I could feel my nervous system relaxing almost instantly of drinking a green juice but I have a real sensitive system like that I don’t juice as much these days but I’m trying to get one in a week I can really feel a difference and when you do this your sleep quality will prove and when your sleep quality improves so does your restless leg syndrome so it’s kind of reverses the snowball effect of the symptoms.
Conclusion
In summary I believe you can cure your restless leg syndrome through holistic practices one thing that I did not mention is CBD specially CBN is a new type of CBD relaxes the nervous system more medicinally than anything else I’ve dealt with restless leg syndrome all my life even as a child I was so bad I would prevent me from going to sleep now I know I probably have always had an hour immune disease and everything that I eight attacked my body I was a little kid I didn’t know why I felt this way I always felt this way it was kind of the norm to have sweaty stinging burning feet I couldn’t stand to wear shoes it was complete torture I wish I knew back then what I know now and stop eating all the processed foods and depleted my nutrients like potassium and magnesium even as a little kid one time I got a water balloon and it was cold water and I would just lay it on my feet at night and it would calm my legs down and help me go to sleep I wouldn’t say I am an expert on restless leg syndrome lol but I think I’ve tried everything you can try and the best thing to work instantly is the cold water are used a wet cloth before I’ve waited my feet that works pretty well what works the best is filling the top off of cold water and dunking half your body under for just a couple minutes colder the better hopefully you’ll find some relief through all my suffering LOL if you have any questions just message me through Pinterest or Instagram.
