Thought this deserved a blog entry of it's own.....it's a long one and I've written in mainly as I don't want to forget the details but feel free to read on.

Since pregnant with Rebecca in 2003, I've had restless legs.  It's not painful, doesn't cause any harm but it's really really annoying.

I've tried just about every iron supplement my GP can throw at me and when I go in to complain about it now all he does is google the condition to see if there's any advance in it's treatment.  Of course, there never is!!

Anyway, a while back a colleague of Mike's recommend the work of Rosalie at the Rapha Centre as she analyses hair samples to identify mineral imbalances within the body's cell structure.  This colleague's daughter had had a couple of years of repeated ear infections which their GP couldn't explain and the poor mite was in agony.  They went to see Rosalie and she identified several deficiences in her body.  They prescribed whatever was required and told her that she'd have the worst cold ever for about 6 weeks, followed by no more ear infections.  And that's exactly what happened.  Since then, various folks form Mike's office have seen he and had all manor of ailments sorted.

I decided to try it for myself and went to meet with her today.  She snipped a tiny bit of hair from my head and put it into her machine.  With a probe, she then moved over 500 different minerals and other items such as common pollutants and foods (from what I could see).  If my hair (and therefore, my chemical make up) reacted to any of these she noted it and used it to build up a picture of what is wrong.  She said basically I'm really healthy but that I have a problem with the flow of energy in and out of my body.  I have too much apparently (could have fooled me).

At this point, she asked what it was I needed help with, and took a brief medical history.  The upshot of my visit is that she believes my coccyx pain is the root of the problem with my legs.  My coccyx became painful during pregnancy with Ellie and she believes it's sustained a trauma and that is affecting the flow of energy and circulation to my legs which is in turn causing the restlessness.  I explained it's worse during the days before a period so I had thought it was hormonal and she then explained it was more likely due to the increased blood flow in the abdomen at that time.  

Well, it all makes perfect sense.  Time will tell I guess.  I've to take the prescribed minerals and an anti inflamatory cream for 6 weeks then be retested (you can send her the hair samples by post and she posts the results back) and then see a chiropractor as she thinks that once's my body's cells have been repaired and rebalanced, the ligaments in the abdomen will benefit from maniulation.

She has even given me some great advice on which product to take to eliminate jet lag.

If this sounds like something you could benefit from her web site is http://www.rapha.com/ .  I'm not personally recommending it yet, but I'll let you know how I get on.