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France Is Suffering An Ongoing Epidemic Of "Heavy Legs"
Have you ever had one of those days when your legs simply do not wish to carry your ass to work? Well, so has the entirety of France. They've even coined a special term for the condition: heavy legs syndrome.
skeeze/Pixabay Heavy-feeling legs, in a nation where 80 percent of the diet is wine, cheese, and bread? You don't say ...
Unique to France (aka the place with more pharmacies than any other European country), heavy legs syndrome has no concrete medical definition, probably because it's not recognized as a condition at all anywhere else. Rather, it's vaguely described as an "unpleasant sensation of pain and heaviness" in the lower extremities. It's generally treated with a variety of topical creams, a veritable cornucopia of pain medications, and presumably millions upon millions of dollars in lost productivity.
The thing is, all those French people calling in sick to work because their calves have gone up a weight class likely don't realize that they're contributing to an epidemic of an entirely different variety. You see, assigning a set of symptoms their own "syndrome" could be more damaging than anyone realizes. The symptoms of so-called heavy legs syndrome, for instance, align nicely with real, treatable conditions, such as varicose veins -- which more than half of French women and one third of French men suffer. By apathetically tossing drugs at the symptoms, however, you're never getting to the root cause of said symptoms.
Kajdi Szabolcs/iStock "They pair perfectly with brie and a nice Chardonnay."
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