Damn, I am tired of this. I get massive leg cramps at night. Doesn’t matter if I take potassium/calcium/magnesium supplements and wash them down with tonic water. At least once a week, I’m gonna wake up in the middle of the night in agony, and of course the cramps will be in muscles that are not easy to stretch.
I currently have four large bruises down the inside of my right thigh from the latest one. :eek:
I thought they might be caused by my BP meds, but the doc says no. She wants me to go see a cardiovascular guy to rule out any circulatory issues in the legs. That’s on my to-do list when we get back from World’s on the 13th.
I’m sorry that you are dealing with this. In my single days, they always had a knack for happening when I had a friend staying over. Nothing says “sexy” like waking up writhing in pain.
Maybe you’ve tried this, but the magic bullet for me is pulling my toes up and toward my shin with as much force as I can muster. With that move, I’ve pretty much been able to stop them.
My magic bullet is simply a glass of milk. It takes the cramp away literally in seconds, and it doesn’t come back. I’ve thought it might be a placebo effect since the cramp goes away before I’ve even finished the glass, but who cares? Placebo or vitamins or other ingredient, it works for me.
That sucks. I don’t have them like I used to. I used to fight them with Powerade, and that was pretty successful. (Dietary changes have mostly eradicated them for me.)
I used to get them several nights a week. I’ve found that I can totally eliminate them if I drink a few quarts of water in the evening. Of course, that means a 3 am bathroom run, but I’d rather get up to pee than have a cramp.
That really sucks. I get them occasionally in my calf, especially if I’ve been exercising a lot lately. Sometimes I can feel it coming, and if I immediately stretch my calf muscle by pulling my toes upward towards my knee I’ll be able to avoid it, but not always.
I completely agree with this pitting. I’ve gotten them in my calves since I can remember. Summers seem to be the worst. Just a couple nights ago, I got a bad cramp in each calf. Three days later and my calves are still sore (like a pulled muscle) and it hurts to walk. I drink lots of water, eat bananas every day and can go a month in between bouts but when they hit, it’s usually both legs. And when they cramp, all I can do is focus on relaxing them while physically pulling my foot up. I don’t dare rub the part where it is cramping or it tightens up even worse.
Mine is yellow mustard. I keep packets from drive-thrus in my bedside nightstand drawer. Otherwise, your post could be mine word-for-word. No idea why it would be effective, probably placebo (but who cares, if it works?) and yeah, they do suck. Waking up whimpering or yelling in pain is no fun for anybody.
These are the ones I get most often. Sometimes I get cramps in the calves. But the worst I ever had were in my big toes. They felt they were being forced under the rest of my toes. I was seriously worried about something breaking/ shredding in there.
This has worked well for me too. I don’t even need to grab my toes with my hands to pull them up towards my shin/knee. I just point my toes that way as strongly as I can.
This even works to preemptively abort a cramp. I can usually feel one just starting to come on, and pointing my toes up (stretching the calf muscle and Achilles tendon) will stop the cramp before it even gets a good start.
A coworker friend has been having chronic leg cramps for the past two months. She gets them throughout the day, without warning, and they are exacerbated by both long periods of sitting AND walking around.
She’s been prescribed anti-epileptic medication. She says it has helped some, but still considers herself quite impaired. The side-effects of the meds slow her down a little, too.
I occasionally get charlie horses. They are so bad that I’ll wake up screaming and crying before I even know what’s hit me. So I can’t imagine what it is like to have them all day long.
I get them all the time, too. For calf cramps, if I catch them right away, I do the toe stretch thing. You have to do it to the point where it hurts like hell, but it usually goes a way pretty quickly. I also get the toe cramps, and haven’t figured a way to fight those, but they don’t hurt anywhere near as much as the calf cramps do. And what the hell is with the cramps in my lower jaw muscles?
Meaning, with your toes pointed down, right? Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. That often causes a cramp to start happening. I can stop it in its tracks by pointing my toes up as far as possible, ASAP.