Both my parents suffer from cardiovascular disease. Both also occasionally suffer from RLS. Especially my mother.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the two conditions have anything to do with each other. I’ve read that this is sometimes the case though.
In this blog I will discuss the topic of cardiovascular disease in more detail. I look at which diseases fall under this and to what extent they are associated with restless legs in some cases.
What is heart disease
When you talk about cardiovascular disease, you can distinguish between a number of categories.
The first is the heart disease category. Heart diseases include angina pectoris (chest pain), a heart attack, cardiac arrhythmias or cardiac arrest.
The second is the stroke category. Strokes include a TIA, a cerebral infarction and a cerebral haemorrhage.
The third category is vascular disease. Examples include thrombosis, shop windows, varicose veins and arteriosclerosis.
Some heart defects are congenital or hereditary. Others arise during life.
There are also many variants of cardiac arrhythmias. You can think of atrial fibrillation or palpitations, but there are many more.
The risk of cardiovascular disease is smaller if you have a healthy lifestyle. It helps to eat healthy, exercise enough and not to smoke. Not too much stress is also beneficial.
High blood pressure, obesity and diabetes are risk factors.
In women, hormonal changes can also be a factor in the development of cardiovascular disease, for example during pregnancy or menopause.
Elderly
Although my parents prefer not to hear it, they have been categorized as ‘elderly’ for quite some time now. As the saying goes, old age comes with flaws and so do they.
As mentioned, they both have to deal with cardiovascular disease. Both also have some form of neuropathy.
The older you get, the more likely you are to develop all kinds of illnesses and discomforts. The body no longer recovers so quickly.
Restless legs is also something that is relatively common in the elderly. Many people over the age of 60 suffer from this. One more often than the other.
Restless legs
At the beginning of this blog, I actually assumed that cardiovascular disease might play a role in some form of secondary RLS. This would lead to cardiovascular disease and restless legs as a result. I read that more than once in an article.
However, when I look further for information about this, I discover that the relationship could also be the other way around. So restless legs as a reason for cardiovascular disease.
I find an article that refers to a 2008 American study that showed that people with RLS are twice as likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease or a stroke. This chance is relatively greater the more someone suffers from restless legs.
Another article from a few years later deals with a study of a large population of women with RLS. That study showed that in these women there is a connection between their restless legs and their blood pressure. The more severe and frequent the RLS, the higher the blood pressure.
My preliminary conclusion is therefore that there may be an interaction between restless legs and cardiovascular disease.
