I would imagine dialysis creates all sorts of deficiency problems. Makes a bit of cramp sound very trivial in comparison.
j
Hahaha, try potassium if you want horse pills!
If you’re going to take magnesium for cramps then what type of magnesium is best?
I understand that magnesium oxide’s lower bioavailability makes it a poor choice and magnesium carbonate, which appears to be the form of choice for chronic kidney disease’s hyperphosphatemia, doesn’t seem to be OTC.
One thing I read is that it’s not easy to tell if someone is deficient in magnesium at the cellular level, as the body will pull magnesium to keep blood levels stable. It takes severe deficiency before it shows up in the blood serum tests that are usually run.
One Source: Magnesium: Are We Consuming Enough? - PMC
My own results were within the normal serum ranges, but doc said it wouldn’t hurt to try, and see if it helped. It seemed to result in reducing muscle tension for me.
I also know that calcium and Vitamin D deficiencies can cause this, and that those two are actually linked with magnesium in the body. Vitamin D helps absorb both of them, and having too much of one of the other two can offset the balance of the other.
My doctor advised me to seek out magnesium glycinate over the other (inevitably cheaper) forms because she felt glycinate offered better bioavailability for cramp prevention.
I found big bottles at Costco (Nature Made brand) but I have also seen glycinate in the vitamin depts at my grocery store and Target, among others. You just have to be a careful label reader. When you’re pricing them take note of how many are needed for the RDA. A bottle of 120 might be only a months worth if you need two capsules twice a day.
When I take them to prevent night time leg cramps I make a mental note to take them with a big glass of water because dehydration can cause cramps also.
CVS is really good for buy one get one free or some percentage off.
They’re my pharmacy so I pay the $5 a month (which gets me a $10 credit every month) for free delivery which also gets me an automatic 20% off CVS brand benefit!
It’s probably the lemon juice, believe it or not. Our crusty old Jesuit brother athletic trainer in high school swore by dill pickle juice as an anti-cramping remedy, and we all thought it was absurd, but it did work. I looked it up a while back when I saw commercially packaged pickle juice, and found out that it’s apparently the acid and some sort of reflexive action that relieves cramping.
Reflex inhibition of electrically induced muscle cramps in hypohydrated humans - PubMed
You asked, we answered: Can pickle juice help cramps? | Nebraska Medicine Omaha, NE
Can pickle juice reduce cirrhotic muscle cramping? | Michigan Medicine
Pickle Juice for Dialysis-related Muscle Cramps: Fact or Myth? - Renal Fellow Network
I was getting calf and thigh cramps after 30 minutes or so of snorkeling. Started using a foamy spray solution of magnesium rubbed on and left to dry, prior to the snorkeling. It seems to be quite effective.