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It’s old (85) But in clinical psych when first when getting the depression diagnosis, within 5 years for most of them, 8 years the last time. I am well aware of how serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine interact with deficiencies or imbalances leading to not nice stuff. Well aware dopamine is involved with some forms of RLS. Still undetermined if all as there are quite a few varieties, mine is a combo of genetic, iron-related, medication-associated, pregnancy-associated and possibly trauma as I was in a car accident at thirteen and my head crashed against the dashboard. I studied dopamine deeply when looking for alternatives to the Parkinson drugs that were driving me insane. Iron is tested because it’s indicated for dopamine synthesis. Please explain the connection between depression and RLS as you see it. Always interested in learning. I am assuming it’s more than just dopamine is involved.

And I would have a very good case for malpractice. And would be out looking for another doctor before you finished typing it in. Ever heard of augmentation? And projectile vomiting? That would be a horrendously obvious case of a doctor refusing to listen to his patient.

Wow. Okay… RLS is technically defined as a sleep disorder because it interferes with sleep. RLS is technically a movement disorder because it affects movement. RLS is a neurological disorder because there is something dysfunctional in the nervous system. Guess what, it can fall into all three categories at once. I personally prefer “sleep-related neurological sensorimotor disorder” myself. Hits all relevant major categories at once, A disorder can belong in more than one category at a time, And btw, it’s not just “often” happening while you are awake, probably it is “only” as it is defined as sensations experienced while conscious delaying or preventing sleep.*** Of course, that includes being half or barely conscious, but your brainwaves probably wouldn’t show in a solid sleep cycle yet. At most fluctuating between alpha and theta (think that’s waking and light sleep, been awhile, so could be wrong on the label). Everyone I have heard describing them said it was preventing them from sleeping. Never mentioned they felt them while sleeping. That is something I should research. Though I have dreamed talking about the sensations at times, I have never had a trying to find relief for RLS dream like I have had trying to find a restroom with a functional toilet dream when I have been asleep with a full bladder. Pretty sure it was the PLMD that was throwing me out of my bed. That’s what pushes the blankets and pillows on the floor, tears holes in the sheets, and has my head off the side or down at the bottom instead of the top. RLS makes me twitch and scratch and then give up and bang my body against the wall or just rock and rock with loud music with a strong, consistent drum beat. Oh, and kick people who just lightly touch me. I actually hit someone once too, but generally it’s my legs that are trigger happy. I have said 24/7 in describing my RLS, you made me think about this and maybe I need to switch it to 18-20/7 for precision.

Right, so if you have a psych degree, you should be familiar with the monoamine hypothesis for depression. Since you didn't make the connection between my initial comment regarding the similarity RLS has to depression, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your degree didn't actually got into the physiology or it's very much out of date.

Distinction without a difference. The point is that you didn't natively know it and had to consult material outside yourself, hence the term "looking it up". You had to look up the doctor who eventually gave it to you, yes? Note that I didn't say that that sleep study was entirely useless, just pointless. As I asked before, why would I bother ordering a sleep study on something that isn't a sleep disorder? If insurance companies are supposedly making it unprofitable to listen to your patients, why are you acting like ordering superfluous tests that will cost you more as a patient is somehow a good thing? If you come to me with RLS, I'm not going to order all that. I'd just give you a low-dose dopamine agonist and reevaluate in 6-ish weeks.

Again, why would a sleep study be particularly relevant to RLS when it isn't a sleep disorder and can often occur when awake? It's a movement disorder like Parkinson's.

Monoamine problem. In the case of RLS, a deficiency of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Sorry to observers, please ignore… Who told you this? Please explain in detail your reasoning for this conclusion.

This is still making me laugh. How often do you do this kind of thing? Back between 97-05 when I was getting shuffled between doctors because they finally knew it wasn’t hypochondria after all, but weren’t comfortable drawing outside the very limited lines that were available to GPs and sleep specialists on it at that time, at least in Canada (at least the Canadians never treated it as depression, by then I had got the Chronic Fatigue label which was a step in the right direction). I would last 2 or 3 appointments and then get pointed in the direction of the next specialist. At that time a couple of these doctors assumed I was a medical professional (I used the correct terms in the correct way, was able to anticipate protocol suggestions and discuss with them why and why not for certain treatments, etc). Two said I was much better informed than they were and I know they weren’t just being nice because they were asking my advice of where they should go find the info. And one discussed with me in detail what his then experimental treatment he was thinking might be useful for rls and why and if he could use me to test it. I let him know it probably wouldn’t be that effective (more hinted as I didn’t want to discourage him from trying to find something that worked), but fun to try. That lasted a few times until he went to a conference and heard from the experts that I was right about the likely effectiveness. He then passed me on to a neurologist and that sleep study had that doctor telling me I ran a marathon every night….on the drug, which was validating, but disappointing because I wasn’t given any other option with his apology even though he knew there was one that worked for me (all the doctors knew, but Canada apparently said no…and I understand why). Still no questioning on the doctor’s part that maybe their preferred drug was actually making it worse like I said it was likely going to based on the experts and my experience with the first two versions. I am grateful that the US was much more careless (seems like another all or nothing case, selfishly yay! for stupidity working in my favor for once, tragic that many others have died because they shouldn’t have gotten the drug at least in the manner they did. I don’t think I could have lasted without the change to the med that doesn’t make things bearable at the cost of long term making it worst as too many things were breaking down due to the nightly trauma. Been going to the same doc for sleep for 20+ years now. We talk about the conferences he attends and research we both do, shares insights from other patients, and I used to let him experiment me with the latest thing. Nothing else has worked though and now with my fibro, experimenting is too costly. But please, tell me what I don’t know about RLS and the half dozen or more sleep studies I have been involved with over the years from various doctors once rls became known. 😛

Or because it’s expensive and time consuming to do it right (you have get wired up in a lab, head and legs…or at least they used to, haven’t had one for 15 years) and with a chance of it failing due to…lack of sleep. My daughter had a traumatic experience because the nurses would come in and scold her for not falling asleep…like that’s helpful telling a kid they will cause trouble if the can’t fall asleep in a strange room and bed all tangled up with wires? I finally went out and got her melatonin which she never used as too sedating and therefore that test provided very limited info, but they got to check the check boxes and not have to have the expense of booking her for another night. If she hadn’t slept, insurance wouldn’t have paid for it and the clinic would have had to swallow the loss. If we tried it again and it again didn’t work, we would have had to pay for it, so no more lab studies for her.

No, I wasn’t depressed and specifically told different doctors I wasn’t depressed and why they should not assume that (I have a psych degree, I know the signs of depression and let them know they were missing except for sleep disturbances). The only sleep symptoms they asked about and responded to for more details was how long I slept, when I fell asleep and woke up and if I fell asleep unexpectedly (it took hours to get to sleep). And once the first doctor wrote depression, no one questioned it until I insisted it was flat out wrong (with expert medical documentation describing protocol for diagnosis and treatment and presented it very diplomatically as I used to hate disagreeing with people) …and got ignored (I watched her eyes during the appointment expecting her to turn to the document to at least read what it was and where I got ot from. She never even looked at the file, but looked at my face the full appointment, leaning forward conveying attentiveness, speaking in her reassuring tone as if she was actuakiy listening to me instead of running through her routine…which was probably very useful much of the time as it was my first and only complaint I had of her…and then dropped by my doctor.

Nah, I didn’t look that one up. It was handed to me when I found my haven. There were doctors and nurses and researchers in the email group I belonged to that, everyone contributed what expertise they had, even if it was only what they found helpful or not in their own experience. And this shows you don’t know much of what you are talking about. Which is fine. It’s great you didn’t have to spend decades researching and experimenting yourself, thank goodness you didn’t, I wish no one had to experience this at severe or even just moderate level given sleep problems tend to expand into other areas of one’s life, but you need to recognize there are gaps in a brief summary that AI or a website might give you after ten minutes effort. I prefer doctors who have the same issue as what I or my family member is seeing them for. Makes such a massive difference in communication and detailed treatment. My daughter’s second diabetes doctor had juvenile diabetes. She has had 5 so far and he was the best. Our current pain management doctor has migraines himself and his wife has fibro and rls and he shares info on what has worked for him and family and does research on questions we come up with in part because it could help him and his family to expand his knowledge…plus he is just a really great guy. Most of my doctors couldn’t be bothered to look up what was beyond standard protocol. In the email RLS group, the people who came up with the best info were the sufferers; caregivers may have motivation, but they don’t usually have the intense focus and ability to pick up on small details in my experience. That group was years ahead of the usual online stuff in finding info. As part of the elimination of other possibilities as well as to see what other issues might be along side RLS (Periodic Limb Movement Disorder is often connected with RLS), a thorough work up for the diagnosis of RLS should include a sleep study even if a sleep study can’t demonstrate one has RLS. https://www.rls.org/diagnosis-treatment It’s not required for an official diagnosis, but given the likelihood of additional issues, it’s wise to get it done and if insurance covers it, the good doctors I know and have heard of will do them. One way to help rls is to remove as much stress as possible and especially to improve sleep. Finding out other issues through a sleep study helps that big time. Over 80% of those with rls also have PLMD, up to 30% may have sleep apea (I do, but not enough to require a cpap). Dismissing a sleep study as not that useful is viewing rls in isolation, which is rarely the reality Same with ferritin levels. If insurance covers it, it’s foolish not to do the test. My ferritin was just on the wrong side of ‘too low, pump it in’ to get insurance to pay for an iron infusion. Daughter got one off her ferritin test this last November, very helpful for several months, cut her meds in half. If I hadn’t insisted my doctors test me for that based on the experts’ advice at that time, I wouldn’t have a clue why contrary to expectations, my rls has improved in the last 6 years and I would likely be wasting money and causing other issues due to a couple of supplements I thought were helping as the only visible change in my routine, but weren’t and instead did cause issues for my tinnitus and could have potentially liver (ferritin levels have shot up recently).

It isn't unique to them, but this is certainly a case where the Skinner meme applies. "Am I the problem? No, it's the bigger group that is the problem". Look at all of the excuses made for it. Racism Sexism -phobia Affluenza Poverty The first three are especially popular, and when it's pointed out that the labels are illogical or that past realities are no longer reality, other concepts have to be introduced. See the concept of "microaggression". See "equality" being replaced with "equity" with nary a word said about when those things will be satisfied, almost like the advocates of such don't want it to be satisfied. They just want an excuse to do as they please based on past problems they never faced and current "problems" they have to either exaggerate or manufacture whole cloth without any regard for the damage it will cause. While I think their politics are atrocious, Key and Peele did a skit about 12 years ago called "Office Homophobe". The last 20 seconds or so is something that never seems to be considered by the population at large.

Of course I looked it up, why wouldn't I have? You certainly didn't know that it had been described as early as the 1600s without looking it up yourself. The issue is that you're missing the point. While it may have been described that long ago, the description provided can be applied to several other conditions as well, which makes bringing it up a pointless argument. A doctor likely didn't recommend a sleep study because a sleep study generally isn't used to diagnose restless leg syndrome at all. It CAN be used, but it usually isn't because it isn't all that useful. He likely thought you were depressed because you were describing symptoms that go right along with it. Even then, the current prevailing hypothesis for RLS is similar to depression No one here's arguing that pointing out stagnation is equivalent to saying there's no value. The point is that everything is a two-way street, and the popular opinion is that institutions are always held to a higher standard while those that inhabit them who aren't in leadership/provider roles aren't. Again, see RLS. You complain that a sleep study wasn't done, but you lack sufficient knowledge about the usefulness of a sleep study in diagnosing RLS to justify your criticism. Hint: A sleep study won't help work out a dopamine deficiency, which is the current prevailing hypothesis for the cause of RLS. It would've been a pointless study and therefore a pointless expense. It isn't really a sleep disorder at all (especially since it can occur while awake but still), but something more akin to Parkinson's. Insurance companies haven't made listening to patients unprofitable. If anything, the opposite is the more likely case. If doctors don't listen to their patients, they wouldn't make any money at all as people would stop going.

I don’t have as much experience talking to men about these kinds of things so I didn’t feel comfortable in speaking for them in this way, but I have only met a handful of women who didn’t self blame at least at the start of realizing they had some issues…not in everything, but to act like everyone shifts blame these days, refusing to be accountable for oneself is ignoring why a good portion of people need to get to therapy. If people’s behaviour was as similar as some of these global descriptions suggest, there would be a lot less miscommunications and false expectations in the world because people would be a lot more predictable than they actually are. I do believe if someone gets connected to a group that sets up the dialogue into blaming others as I have seen with some former member groups, people start picking up the language and focus of that group***. And that can lead to some unhealthy habits. Always a good reason to stop and look at what kind of group one is joining, how they talk about themselves and others before the connections are too solid. Also there should a a distinction between behaviour in a group and behaviour on one’s own. Adopting a group’s language while interacting with them does not always mean you define life in the same way as others in that group or would describe things that way if outside the group. ***this can happen with members too. Preaching that exmembers who point to the Church as the reason they left are habituallly shifting the responsibility to others rather than accepting responsibility for oneself…how is that not doing the same thing, dumping all the responsibility on the individuals leaving rather then recognizing weaknesses and trying to improve the institution one belongs too?

Chapter 4 is especially concerning since it opens the door for pointing out the likely possibility of not only infiltration of the medical system by ideologues, but external pressure from special interest groups to effectively force prioritization of affirmative care. We already know that doctors have been successfully sued for refusing to provide, and while the lawsuit was based on non-discrimination laws, that creates other problems, namely at what point does that end and "do no harm" begin? They'll get sued for not providing the care and then get sued again years later by the same people for providing the care that has caused them harm. It's a constant Catch-22 brought about by the shrill, jackbooted trans lobby.

Especially women who are or have been members of the church. But really, a lot of people, including men, have spent a long time wondering what was wrong with themselves when they started to have faith stuggles.

Is this something you just looked up? If you haven’t experienced significant rls and attempted to go through diagnosis time and time again, you don’t know what you are talking about. While it is a syndrome that gets diagnosed by elimination, the only difficulty is getting insurance and/or doctors to be willing to give one the tests to eliminate the other possibilities. If you have it, it’s damn easy to identify, especially by the time you are throwing yourself out of bed in despair. I told doctors I was sleeping 16 hours a day, no sleep test offered. I told them 20 years later I was sleeping 30 minutes at a time a couple of times a day. Again, not one offered a sleep test. Nope, I was depressed, here’s more drugs. That last time, all I needed to do was type in ‘sensations in legs prevent sleep’ or something similar and RLS popped up. Less then 5 minutes after realizing I was going to have to solve it myself, I found all the info needed to get it diagnosed and on the right drugs. Unfortunately because the doctors didn’t bother to read the same professional medical info, took another 5 years and cranking my disorder up to unbearable 24/7 to get those recommended by the actual experts to pay attention…even after doctors told me I knew much more about it than they did. We are begging to be taken seriously and have rigorous studies done. Lots of us have donated our brains and bodies to the cause (after we no longer need them). Then there are all the women who have died over the years because of heart attacks being missed and other stuff. No one forced the researchers to only use men or to define diseases by how they were experienced by men. Then there’s stem cells in menstrual blood. We probably could have skipped the whole debacle over embryonic stem cells if someone had just bothered to treat menstrual blood as something besides icky waste. No one studied it until 2010’s because people just assumed the wisdom of ages on the subject was enough. https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/oct/27/menstrual-period-blood-testing-womens-health https://www.cellmedicine.com/endometrial-stromal-cells/ Recognizing institutions tend to get stagnant and rely on authority and go down familiar, safer paths is not saying institutions don’t have value. Doctors saved my daughter’s life multiple times, I survived birth due to a doctor’s intervention. I love doctors, vaccines, tests (if I had the money I would have been in there demanding everything possible just out of curiosity) and anything I can do for medical research (within reason of course) I would love to do. Unfortunately there is rarely something that needs me and works with my dependency on drugs to survive and inability to travel. But man, doctors are also the reason I also live a very limited life, never got to get my doctorate or have a career and even if they had just said “I don’t know, I can’t help you right now” instead of handing out antidepressants and guilting me into taking them and only then giving up, my life would much better. And look at women’s stories in general and those with chronic disorders online. I am not that unusual. Insurance companies making actually listening to patients not that profitable has really messed up the medical profession. Social medicine has the same issue. Burnout for doctors is ridiculous in some places. There was a pediatric surgical neurologist in our Canadian ward who couldn’t afford to send his kids to both missions and college because he had a cap on his salary. The house they lived in was tiny and old (he had a large family, 6 or 7 kids). He basically worked for free for the last three months of the year rather than let kids die. He ended up moving to the States even though he loved Canada. I really wish I could pick and choose the best of both systems as there is good and stupid in both (I would definitely put a major cap on malpractice).

What do you make of the verses in Exodus regarding the treatment of slaves? Do you think that such verses mean that slavery is also not wrong by default?

You don’t hang around women much, I guess.

Of course sometimes doctors are to blame, but how often are institutions blamed for the failings of those that make them up versus the individuals themselves in popular discourse? It's almost always "the system", "the man", "the establishment", etc. Self-criticism and accountability are anathema to the modern human ego. Strictly speaking, restless leg syndrome wasn't "ignored", it was just very difficult to diagnose properly as it relied entirely on subjective information. It was only described in a most basic sense in 1672, and based on the description, there's no way to differentiate it from a host of other conditions that present similarly. Even now the cause is unknown, and part of that is due to the difficulty of doing any kind of human testing. Much of the same crowd who will complain about doctors ignoring them on one hand will make it more difficult for doctors to conduct rigorous study on humans with the other. There doesn't need to be active promotion or a list of recommendations. Sure, they're helpful, but you can still go out and assess material on your own. No one worth listening to is going to rag on you for not having time, but you should take that lack of time into account when developing your feelings about something. I do not have much experience with car engines and I don't feel like I have the time to devote to studying them. Therefore, I do not try to work out an opinion on the quality of any particular engine. Futhermore, as no mechanic is infallible, I'm not going to take the word of any single one at face value. This goes beyond the "leading a horse to water". At some point, the horse is going to have to walk itself to the water.

But what about the examples Analytics posted? I agree with all but probably one of your pictures, maybe two, but that would depend on actual behaviour, not stills. I bet everyone can guess which one I would be okay about. If they are feminine caricatures rather than just trying to be ordinary women, that makes a difference to me. That is calling attention to their choice, that’s more than just a struggle to be something that doesn’t fit well with your biology. Those who don’t want to be noticed, but can’t help it because of biology, but still put the effort in to look like the average every day woman…they are not going to be flashing penises around, so in the majority of cases I think should be okay.

I hope they are tracking the number of biological women that will be harrassed. I used to go out without my wallet all the time if not driving in Kansas. Now I would need an ID to be sure I could use the restrooms at the zoo and libraries and church (trying to remember what places I used the facilities when living in Wichita. (I choose to wear men’s clothing, don’t wear makeup and have a man’s haircut at times and have been mistaken for a man from the back).

Nope, my view is practical. I don’t see how anything other than the past appearance based honor system, report the occasional problem to the police and let a judge decide if a bad actor, mistake that will be corrected in the future, or false report could feasibly work. IDs are useless without a system checking them. The number of passing transgender women that would be harrassed or assaulted if forced to use men’s restrooms are significantly higher in numbers than biological males taking advantage of transgenders being able to use the restroom that matches their outward appearance. Therefore, cost is higher with the first than the second just as cost is higher if obviously non passing transgendered individuals were allowed to use restrooms of choice and a large number of them chose to use their gender’s restroom rather than their sex….though from what I hear most are respectful of others’ trauma and fears and don’t, so perhaps I am wrong to just measure by numbers of assaulted and harassed women vs numbers of transgender women of all appearances.

Please no.