So my co-worker has started dieting and working out. In India, they eat a lot of rice and she’s all carb’d out and decided to give up the rice and dairy and has started with the treadmill (an evil mistress I know a little something about).
So she’s been complaining of leg pain (um, yeah…I can relate) and went to the doctor. His advice for the pain is to take a calcium tablet before doing the treadmill.
Is that legit??
This isn’t the first time she’s reported some bogus-sounding treatment for what ails her. She takes powders and applies plasters and reports strange treatments for her medical conditions. She’s in a big city (Hyderabad) so it’s not like she’s actually living the Third World experience. Does anyone have any experience with the medical world in India?
My doctor in New York suggested the same thing to me for Charlie Horses. Eat more calcium. She also taught me a trick to get rid of them, and that helped more, but I don’t think it’s bogus. Maybe Qadgop could help.
I thought it was potassium that helped charlie horses and leg cramps.
I’m pretty sure it could be any mineral imbalance like calcium, potassium and magnesium etc. Perhaps in India they recommend holistic methods first, if so that wouldn’t be the first time I have heard that.
Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium have all been recommended to me for cramps at different times in my life.
Sounds like classic placebo prescription to me (and I’ve seen it done in the US). Strictly speaking yes, those minerals could help leg pain after/during exercise, so you can’t sue the Doc. But in reality the act of taking a shiny doctor-prescribed pill will do far more to releive the symptoms than whatever mineral is in them.
Frankly, for exercise-related cramps, the best advice I can give is to be adequately hydrated.
Most folks don’t need extra potassium or magnesium, and don’t need calcium for muscle cramps, but rather for long term bone health, as low calcium is not what’s causing the cramps.
Maybe it is just placebo pills for phantom ills. Does she ever experience any hard symptoms with these ailments that she is treating, or is it always aches, pains, fatigue, etc.?
Taking powders isn’t necessarily the sign of “voodoo;” in some parts of the world, powdered forms of conventional drugs are more common (I’m thinking NSAIDs, in particular). In Japan, I was given aspirin in the form of a powder, but it was still ASA used for the same purposes as tablets elsewhere.