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Restless legs and the ferritin rule

Restless legs and the ferritin rule: one rich hub plus ~12 pages, and one genuinely actionable fact that is almost absent from Estonian, Finnish and Russian…

This guide is general education, not a diagnosis or an individual treatment plan. Urgent, severe or worsening symptoms belong with the local emergency service or a qualified clinician.

What this guide covers

One rich hub plus ~12 pages, and one genuinely actionable fact that is almost absent from Estonian, Finnish and Russian results: iron stores are the first thing to check, and the treatment threshold used in restless legs is far higher than the "normal" flagged on a lab report.

Item pages: the four criteria (urge, worse at rest, relieved by movement, worse in the evening), how it differs from night cramps and from neuropathy, the medicines that provoke it (sedating antihistamines, many antidepressants, some anti-nausea drugs), pregnancy restless legs, restless legs in dialysis, periodic limb movements and what a partner sees, augmentation from dopamine agonists and why first-line advice changed, caffeine and alcohol, and what to try tonight.

One focused section asks: "Ferritin and restless legs: the number that matters".

How to use it

Start with the description that most closely matches your question about Restless legs and the ferritin rule. Use the evidence section to understand what is known, then use the boundary section to decide when self-education should stop and clinical care should begin.

The page keeps the main question, its evidence base and its limits together in one canonical place. That makes it useful as a quick orientation and avoids splitting a broad subject into shallow pages before each narrower answer has enough verified material of its own.

Search vocabulary in four languages

Terminology changes across borders. These are example phrases people use for the same subject in Estonian, Finnish, Russian and English; they are included as a practical vocabulary aid, not as hidden keywords.

Evidence and provenance

The evidence map below records the primary, official or openly licensed material chosen for this guide. It is deliberately visible so a reader can tell the difference between a rule published by an authority, a measured dataset and an editorial explanation.

Source: IRLSSG diagnostic criteria (Sleep Med 2014, published), IRLSSG/ EURLSSG consensus on iron treatment for RLS (Sleep Med 2018, published), AASM clinical practice guideline for RLS (JCSM, open access). · checked 2026-09-09

Source names are preserved even where an authority changes its web address. No figure is added to this launch page unless it is already present in the cited source description or can be computed from a named dataset.

Scope and boundaries

/cramps is the painful night calf cramp, which is a different thing with different advice; this page states the difference explicitly.

Connected TempoLife guides

The following paths are the intentional hand-offs named in the brief. They keep adjacent subjects separate while making the next useful reference easy to find.

Why it belongs on TempoLife

/cramps, /insomnia, /blood-test, the apex iron hub, /prenatal.

Frequently asked questions