Restless legs at night: the foods and nutrients that help

If your legs come alive the moment you finally sit down in the evening, you are in good company. Restless legs syndrome is one of the most common sleep-related complaints, and it affects women roughly twice as often as men. That crawling, aching, cannot-keep-still feeling tends to arrive with rest and ease with movement — a cruel arrangement when all you want is to be still and fall asleep.

A late walk can take the edge off, but it is not a fix, and pacing the kitchen at midnight is no way to spend your evenings. The encouraging news is that nutrition has a genuine, evidence-backed role here, and for many people it is the most useful place to begin.

What restless legs actually is

Restless legs syndrome is a sensorimotor condition — it sits at the meeting point of sensation and movement. The defining feature is an urge to move the legs, usually with an uncomfortable sensation, that appears or worsens at rest, eases when you move, and is at its worst in the evening or at night. It is common, it runs in families, and it becomes more likely with age and during pregnancy.

The mechanism is still only partly understood, but the strongest thread in the research is iron. Not the iron in your muscles or your blood count as such, but the iron available to the brain, which influences the signalling chemicals that govern movement. This is where any sensible nutritional approach starts.

Why iron sits at the centre

Iron is the single most important nutritional factor in restless legs, but more is not automatically better, and topping up without testing can do harm.

What surprises many people is that you can be short of the iron your brain needs while a standard blood test still looks reassuring. For this reason, specialists treat restless legs when ferritin — the marker of your iron stores — sits at or below 100 μg/L, which is a far higher threshold than the one used to diagnose ordinary deficiency. A 2026 review by Winkelman and Wipper in JAMA sets this out clearly and places iron correction at the front of management. You can read the review here.

The order of events is: get your ferritin and iron levels checked first, then act on the result with your GP. Iron supplements are not something to start on a hunch, because too much iron carries its own risks. Food is a safe and sensible place to begin for everyone.

Iron-rich foods to lean on

Iron comes in two forms. The kind in animal foods (haem iron) is absorbed readily. The kind in plants (non-haem iron) is absorbed less readily but still counts, especially when paired well.

• Lean red meat and liver — the richest everyday sources
• Shellfish and oily fish such as sardines and mackerel
• Egg yolks
• Lentils, chickpeas, and beans
• Tofu and tempeh
• Pumpkin seeds and cashews
• Dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, and chard
• Dried apricots and figs
• Fortified wholegrain cereals

Two small habits make a real difference to how much plant iron you absorb. Eat something rich in vitamin C alongside it — summer berries, peppers, tomatoes, or a squeeze of citrus can markedly improve uptake. And keep tea and coffee for between meals rather than with them, because the tannins they contain blunt iron absorption.

Magnesium and vitamin B6

Two further nutrients have meaningful direct trial evidence for easing symptoms. In a randomised controlled trial, Jadidi et al. found that magnesium and vitamin B6 each reduced both symptom severity and poor sleep over the course of two months. A 2024 systematic review of ten trials by González-Parejo et al. reached a similar conclusion, identifying magnesium as the more effective of the two. Read the Nutrients review here.

The picture is not bulletproof — the studies are modest in size — but the signal is consistent and the foods involved are beneficial in any case.

Magnesium-rich foods

• Pumpkin seeds, almonds, and cashews
• Spinach and other dark leafy greens
• Black beans and edamame
• Wholegrains such as oats and brown rice
• Avocado
• Dark chocolate (a square or two is a more pleasant source than it has any right to be)

Vitamin B6-rich foods

• Salmon, tuna, and poultry
• Chickpeas — among the best plant sources
• Potatoes with their skins on
• Bananas
• Pistachios
• Fortified cereals

You will notice how much these three lists overlap. A plate built around oily fish or beans, dark leafy greens, seeds, and a vitamin C source quietly covers iron, magnesium, and B6 at once — which is exactly how good nutrition tends to work.

What else helps, and what to avoid

A few simple changes are worth making alongside the food. In the evenings, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine all tend to worsen symptoms, so it is worth pulling them back from the hours before bed. Gentle, regular movement during the day helps many people, as does a warm bath or some light stretching before sleep.

One thing often catches people out. Some over-the-counter sleep aids and older antihistamines contain sedating compounds that can actually aggravate restless legs rather than settle them. If you take something to help you sleep and your legs are unsettled, it is worth raising with your pharmacist or GP.

When to see your GP

Restless legs is sometimes a signpost to something else that is worth addressing. If you are persistently low in iron despite eating well, ask your GP to look for a reason. Undiagnosed coeliac disease, for instance, can quietly impair how much iron you absorb, and treating the cause matters far more than chasing the symptom — as Weinstock et al. demonstrated in their work on the coeliac-restless legs association. Read that study here.

Please do speak to your GP before starting iron supplements, if symptoms are disturbing your sleep or your mood, or if they appear during pregnancy. None of the above is a substitute for that conversation — it is the foundation that makes everything else work.

The simple version

If you take one thing from this, let it be the order of operations. Have your iron levels checked. Build your meals around iron, magnesium, and B6, with a little vitamin C to help it along. Keep caffeine and alcohol away from the evening. And bring your GP in early rather than soldiering on. Restless legs is common, it is taken seriously, and there is a great deal you can do.

Sources

• Winkelman JW, Wipper B. Restless Legs Syndrome: A Review. JAMA, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.23247
• Manconi M, et al. Restless legs syndrome. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-021-00311-z
• Jadidi A, et al. Therapeutic effects of magnesium and vitamin B6 in alleviating the symptoms of restless legs syndrome: a randomised controlled trial. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-022-03814-8
• González-Parejo P, et al. Effects of Dietary Supplementation in Patients with Restless Legs Syndrome: A Systematic Review. Nutrients, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16142315
• Weinstock LB, et al. Celiac disease is associated with restless legs syndrome. Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10620-009-0943-9

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Please consult your GP before changing your diet or starting any supplement, particularly iron.