Restless Legs Syndrome: Check Your Iron Before You Reach for a Drug

Summary

Restless legs syndrome is a **real neurological sensorimotor disorder** with a brain-iron substrate, not anxiety, "growing pains," or something in your head — so the single most under-used move is to **check ferritin and replete iron toward roughly 75–100 µg/L when it is low**, then screen for a removable trigger (a sedating antihistamine, an SSRI/SNRI, alcohol) before adding any chronic drug; if medication is needed, modern guidance favours the alpha-2-delta ligands (gabapentin/pregabalin) over the old first-line dopamine agonists, **because the agonists buy short-term relief at the cost of l