RLS is a condition described as a neurological disorder characterized by unpleasant sensations in the legs and an uncontrollable urge to move when at rest in an effort to relieve these feelings. RLS sensations are often described by people as burning, creeping, tugging, or like insects crawling inside the legs.

Nowadays, with most symptoms being given some or other lofty title ending in "disorder" or "syndrome", it becomes increasingly more difficult for people to figure out what is truly happening and RLS sure sounds like a nervous system malfunction.

What could possibly cause this? Well, how about just plain old deficiencies of some or other nutrients?

Your nervous system starts in the brain. When a fetus is formed, one of the first things you see when looking at scans or ultra-sound images is the brain. The tiny fetus looks a bit like a tadpole but you can clearly see the brain. As time goes on in the development of the fetus, a protective bony covering is formed.

This bony covering is formed over the brain and down the spinal column and is there to protect your nervous system. The nerves lead to every part of your body. Some go to the liver, the heart, the arms, legs, and so on.

The brain is the central communication system, like a switchboard. Just as a switchboard operator answers the phone and directs a call to a certain person, messages come from the brain and go to specific target organs or body parts so they can get the "message" to carry out a certain function. If there is any interference in the nervous system, it can result in no message arriving or a jumbled message, much like that game we have all played "broken telephone" or there could be static on the line so you can’t hear what’s being said, which is extremely irritating. Things go haywire.

In order to remain operational and send proper signals that arrive at their destination, the nervous system is very dependent on certain nutrients, two of which are calcium and magnesium.

Deficiencies of these two minerals result in the messages getting disrupted or even totally corrupted. If the message being sent is supposed to be to relax and go to sleep but all that gets through is some kind of intermittent message, the muscles don’t get it and so fail to relax, hence RLS.

Handling the deficiencies of calcium and magnesium is vital and many RLS sufferers get almost instant relief when taking a properly balanced supplement of these two minerals.