Waay off topic: Lower leg cramps

[Bill in Oregon]

I have been dealing with these for a couple of years now. They will subside for a few weeks and I think they are gone then they come roaring back. I have had the usual back-of-calf and thigh cramps off and on since I was a kid. But these lower leg things are new and weird and get me up two and three times some nights. The one this morning, left leg, was a familiar one with the cramp low in the shin and wanting to pull up my big toe. In a lame attempt to try to match this to a likely muscle suspect, I come up with the Extensor hallucis longus, which comes down between the fibula and tibia and does connect to the joint of the big toe. The other fun time is cramping of I believe one or all of the three fibularis muscles that cause eversion or turning outward of the foot. I shoot out of bed and the outside of the foot doesn’t want to even touch the floor. Lots of hobbling around in the dark and swearing ensues as I try not to fall and make it worse.
Physical therapists have tried to work with this but I am not sure they understand it fully. Doctors I have seen nod gravely and change the subject. Muscle relaxants don’t do much of anything for me any more. SalonPas eventually helps ease the contractions, but the best solution has been the controversial “cure” of taking a slug of pickle juice. A buddy on my Oregon fishing forum said Bill, take a calcium/magnesium zinc supplement and a 99mg potassium at bedtime. Problem solved. Well, I started this three nights ago, thought I was getting somewhere and then up at 10:30, 1:30 and 3:15 again this morning with the extensor in contraction. I was smart enough to take a photo or two of the clenched muscle. I am trying hard to be well hydrated with water, gatorade, malted barley juice, etc.
Has anyone else suffered from these oddball lower leg cramps? Did anything help?
Not much of a levergun question is it?

[GunnyMack]

Bill,
Look for a pin point stim, I have a ' Body Clock STIMPLUS PRO' My chiropractor buddy started using it on me and I finally bought my own. It's great for stimulating the nerve that's causing the issues.
The operation is simple, turn it on, move it around the area and when the buzzer is going nuts you just press the button, holding it in place until it starts buzzing again.
The other day I was up and down ladders and got a charlie horse in my right thigh that almost made me fall it hurt so bad. When I got home I grabbed the stimulus and hit 6 spots and it was gone about 15 minutes later.
Another thing to try is the trigger point below the knee , outside of calf. Use your fingers to feel for the spot, trust me, you'll know it when you feel it! Just hold pressure until it starts to ease up, 30 seconds to a minute.
https://bodyclock.co.uk/content/manuals/StimplusPro.pdf

[Bill in Oregon]

Thanks Will. Never heard o’ such a thing.
I’ll admit that preventing from starting is my first priority — or at least getting a glimpse of the cause. It's not like I am sedentary. I get a lot of 10,000-step days on my watch.

[Tycer]

Try upping your magnesium. Magnesium glycinate 400 mg.
Theraworx calming spray on the feet at night.
Therablend calming cream.
Denas PCM6 set at 4.3hz just barely noticeable power level.
These are what worked for Nancy.

[Bill in Oregon]

Thanks Tycer. I got more advice about boosting the magnesium and will try it tonight.
I have a really good TENS machine but it is poorly adapted for this middle-of-the-night stuff.

[jeepnik]

How's your hydration? Keeping properly hydrated (this seems to be an issue with us older folks) and taking enough supplements to maintain electrolytes, and in good balance not to much of anyone thing.

[Ysabel Kid]

I was getting calf cramps every other day or so. They would literally throw me out of my chair. Only last a minute or so but it truly felt like someone was twisting my leg off. Someone recommended potassium supplements to me. I started taking them and the leg cramps have all but gone away. I get one maybe once every half a year now. This is what I use now:

https://www.amazon.com/Nutricost-Potass ... r=1-4&th=1

[EdinCT]

I have suffered my whole life with cramps and one thing that helped was Amish leg cramp tonic. If I did get a cramp it eased in a few min.after drinking this.
https://www.iherb.com/pr/caleb-treeze-o ... gKVufD_BwE

Now that said the main ingredient is cider vinegar with Mother. It tastes so bad that a lady I gave some to said it scares the cramps away!
I have found if I drink what my Grandfather called switchel. Which was about a Quart of water with a tsp of honey, and a 1/8 cup of cider vinegar while working I don't get cramps at night has often.

[rossim92]

i get em also. wake me up hard in the middle of the night. if i get em in upper calf i have to get up and force myself to walk till it goes away. if in lower calf or foot i usually sit on edge of bed and place foot flat on floor and it would straighten out. one trick you can try is to pinch your upper lip hard till it goes away. let me know if that works for yoou.

[AJMD429]

.
Definitely try Magnesium.

The Oxide is least expensive and the Nature's Bounty 400 mg liquid gels of that work ok for most people.
The Glycinate and other forms are absorbed better and bother the GI tract less though.

It also helps reduce consitpation, and improves sleep.

"Blood tests" don't measure it in an accurate or meaningful way, but it is generally harmless if you take it and don't need it - unless you have poorly functioning kidneys. Even the 'RBC magnesium levels' aren't always refletive of clinical deficiency.

You can also get magnesium into your system by SOAKING - epsom salts (if only going to soak, get the big garden-supply-store bag instead of the drug store packets). It does take 40 minutes or so to penetrate though. It will help parts that aren't necessarily the ones you're soaking, as it does get into your blood stream with 40 minutes or more of soaks.

Magnesium may also reduce some cancer risks which is interesting.

Good podcast on magnesium by Rhonda Patrick
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8FhKbsGhWU

The other thing that can be a player is methylation and it's contributon to neuropathy (if methylation is poor). If you're a poor methylator you may have an elevation of homocysteine, which is also a broadly important health issue. About a third of the population has a genetic error in an enzyme called MTHFR, that can be bypassed by something like Thorne's MethylGuard Plus.

Here's some info on other things involving methylation bu Benjamin Lynch
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VexwhkbnPo

And although not related, some podcasts on Vitamin D (and note 'getting sun exposure' does NOT help significantly boost vitamin D levels - unless you live near the equator - even Florida isn't close enough - you would have to be a nudist lansdscaper to even come close to a 'good level' of vitamin D just from sun exposure).

- by Rhonda Patrick
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVMsyMs2jKo

...and by John Campbell...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENuGXJB06o0

These are all pretty reliable podcasters in the health realm.

[rock-steady]

https://drinklmnt.com/

This helped me...LMNT More Salt, Not Less.

[1972RedNeck]

I used to get bad leg cramps for as long as I can remember. Little over three years ago I greatly increased my red meat consumption to deal with some other health problems.

I haven't had a cramp in 3+ years now.

[jeepnik]

https://drinklmnt.com/

This helped me...LMNT More Salt, Not Less.

Loaded with electrolytes. Probably had levels.

By the way, you could have your Doc do blood work and check your levels. One thing folks don't think about is CO2 level. If it's too low or high it can be a clue to some serious issues.

[Bill in Oregon]

Thanks again friends. Doc, I ordered a magnesium supplement from Primal Harvest that includes magnesium citrate, malate and glycinate. Hope this is a step forward, but one step at a time here.

[TraderVic]

I get severe leg cramps as well. Another guy at deer camp said he keeps packets of mustard on hand and swallows the mustard when his cramps occur. He says the cramp subsides immediately. I have not confirmed this.

[AJMD429]

I get severe leg cramps as well. Another guy at deer camp said he keeps packets of mustard on hand and swallows the mustard when his cramps occur. He says the cramp subsides immediately. I have not confirmed this.

I have a patient who kept restaurant mustard-packets at her bedside and swears that eating a couple almost immediately eased her leg cramps enough that she could at least get up and 'walk them off'.

I measured her serum magnesium and it was normal, and her RBC magnesium was also 'normal', but since she also had constipation and trouble sleeping, we decided to try magnesium anyway; taking 3 of the 400 mg liguid-gel Magnesium Oxides (Nature's Bounty) - considered a 'basic' versus the glycinate or other forms - stopped the leg cramps from happening. She cut to two capsules and no cramps, but at one capsule the cramps resumed. So much for precision lab studies. (Rhonda Patrick has a YouTube video explaining to doctors why relying on mineral or hormone measurements is not always a good idea.)

I thought about having her try a cinnamon disk or hot ginger tea due to the proposed mechanism of mustard, but the mustard seemed to work ok, and she didn't mind the taste - once she gimped and limped to the bathroom she washed it down with water.

The mechanism of 'pickle juice' or mustard likely involves the vinegar or other acidic/irritating content - (see this article - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24955622/) - rather than electrolyte fixes (which would take much longer and much more volume than a mustard packet or two). The thinking is that it may be an autonomic nerve response initiated by the acidic or irritating content, which may somehow cause some sort of rapid neurologic response reflexing out of the autonomic system into the skeletal muscles, although this hasn't been proven. So the fact that the more traditional magnesium treatment helped her kind of surprised me, as it is a preventative, not a rapid-response treatment.

My thinking is that she was clinically low in magnesium (leg cramps at night, trend towards constipation, sleep difficulty only partly resolved with progesterone replacement) despite the 'normal' levels - the response to it (leg cramps prevented, bowels normalized, sleep better) more or less verified that suspicion. Perhaps before the magnesium, the cramps were stopped after-the-fact by a different mechanism caused by the mustard. It has little magnesium, and mostly is a slightly acidic thing (but not enough in the packet to change the blood pH meaningfully, even after the 15-20 minutes or more it might take to even get absorbed), that may trigger some vagal-nerve response that vasodilates blood vessles or triggers some direct muscle reaction.

The mustard thing seems to work for many people though, even if science has yet to figure out why.

I can't see much harm in it, unless someone has a really sensitive stomach, but if so, they probably won't even go near mustard...!

I enjoy oddball 'home remedy' stuff though - 80% of it is bogus (although so is 80% of 'traditional medicine'), but some of it REALLY works, and often works very well.

There is a whole group of mostly women, who are into 'essential oils' (they will tell you they can cure ANYTHING with them) - again, probably 80% bogus or placebo (but they DO smell good), but one theory on why SOAP (a bar in between the sheets near the legs) may help reduce leg cramps is that many soaps do contain 'fragrance' (i.e. 'essential oils'), and that many of those oils cause vasodilation (true), and that enough may evaporate out of the soap to cause some vascular effect in the nearby legs, easing the leg cramps - https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/why-does-soap-soothe-nighttime-leg-cramps. If so, that would be an amazingly low dose of essential oils to have that effect; I'd love to see some 'controlled experiments' to see just what the deal is. I don't think it is all 'placebo', but it would be easy enough to slip something in between the sheets that is encased in a stocking so not visible, and have half the patients get a bar of wood or something instead. Or tell them they were in a 'control' group and weren't going to get a bar of soap at all, but secretly put one there, or a bunch of shavings. Perhaps a vaporizere with vapo-rub nearby to disguise any revealing soap-smell.