Is Cycling Good for Restless Legs?

A while ago, a fellow sufferer told that she got such pain in her legs when she went cycling. She was really in pain.

I immediately thought that was a strange story. In itself, it may of course be the case that your body cannot tolerate cycling. However, I suspect that the cause does not have much to do with restless legs. A hallmark of RLS is that exercise actually reduces your symptoms.

What I can imagine is that one kind of movement suits someone better than the other.

Physical exercise

I think it is well known that exercise is beneficial if you suffer from restless legs. How you do that is another question.

Personally, I think mild exercise is best for most people. Walking is a good example of this. Cycling is also possible, I think.

I myself am a fan of running. I am not a competitive runner, but I do run quite a distance. Almost daily. It does me good, both physically and mentally.

I also do some yoga before going to sleep. This is exercise, but just a little bit different. At night I also regularly do some of the same exercises when I have restless legs.

I know of others that they do stretching exercises for their RLS that they received from physiotherapy. These exercises have not been specially devised by the physiotherapist, but of course that does not really matter. If it works then it works.

Fellow sufferer

For me it remains a question why it is that the above-mentioned fellow sufferer has such a physical problem when she cycles.

From running and walking I know that people with intermittent claudication have to deal with pain. This does not mean that they should not do any physical activity at all.

Intermittent claudication is a vascular disorder and is sometimes confused with restless legs. Maybe the fellow sufferer actually suffers from this disease if she thinks it’s her restless legs.

Anyway, I hope she knows how best to deal with it by now. RLS in itself is difficult enough.

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