26/03/2021
🧠Muscle cramps occur most often at night when you are sleeping, but they also can occur when you exercise vigorously, tear a muscle, or keep one leg in an awkward position, such as sitting in a chair in the same position for a long time. Muscle cramps are classified into those that occur during exercise and those that can occur at any time not related to exercise, usually at night.
❓WHAT CAUSES CRAMPS?
🧠Lack of electrolytes is a more common cause of muscle cramps during exercise than lack of water
‼️Electrolytes are minerals that are essential for body functions, including sodium, potassium, calcium, bicarbonate, magnesium, chloride, and phosphate. Having low blood levels of sodium (salt) is a well-known cause of muscle cramps
❓WHAT CAUSES CRAMPS DURING EXERCISE
💢 low blood levels of sodium (salt) is a well-known cause of muscle cramps
👉🏼Electrolytes are minerals that are essential for body functions, including sodium, potassium, calcium, bicarbonate, magnesium, chloride, and phosphate.
💢♨️ hot weather🥵
👉🏼 muscles fatigue earlier with higher temperatures.
💢during intense exercise 🥵💦
👉🏼requires you to use your fast twitch strength fibers that fatigue earlier than your slow twitch endurance fibers.
💢 lack of a normal nerve reflex that causes a muscle fiber to relax when it is held in contraction .
👉🏼they are not caused by dehydration or lack of minerals.
🧠When you turn during sleep, you contract your calf muscles which stretches their tendons. This stimulates nerve stretch receptors in the tendon and sends a message back to the spinal cord, telling the calf muscles to contract. After you contract a muscle, reflex messages are sent along nerves to the spinal cord to relax that muscle. If the message to relax that muscle is blocked, the muscle stays contracted and you develop a cramp.
💢Cramping during sleep is usually due to an exaggeration of the normal muscle reflex that causes the muscle to stay contracted and hurt.
⚠️ Older people and those who do not exercise are at increased risk for leg cramps because they have smaller and weaker muscles.
🧠Preventing Night-Time Leg Cramps
👉🏼exhausting the stretch reflex before you go to bed by stretching your calf muscles (using wall pushups or a similar exercise)
👉🏼applying a heating pad for 10 minutes before you go to sleep
👉🏼starting a regular supervised exercise program to strengthen your calf muscles. If you are a non-exerciser, I recommend a stationary bicycle.
💊Treating a Leg Cramp
✅ stop whatever you are doing and try to gently walk it out
✅while you massage the contracted muscle with your hands. Never put force on the contracted muscle because you may tear it.
✅If the cramp continues, apply cool compresses, which can relax the contracted muscle and numb pain.
✅Keep on gently massaging the muscle.
PT Recommendations
🧠Most leg cramps are harmless, but frequent muscle cramps can be a sign of serious medical conditions. If you suffer leg cramps only during exercise, eat salty foods or drink electrolyte solutions, not plain water, before and after you exercise. If that doesn’t stop the cramps, you need a complete medical work up. People who suffer frequent night-time leg cramps that do not respond to the simple steps listed above also need a detailed medical work up. Check with your doctor
-PT LIC. 0023201 REGIDOR M.
