Diseases • Health Tips

What is Cramp and How to Treat It

11 months ago
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2 Min Read

What is Cramp?

Cramp is a sudden painful tightening of the muscles. it causes period pain and labor pains, angina, irritable bowel syndrome, tension headaches, and repetitive strain injury. But here we’ll discuss calf cramp. It mostly happens in the calf muscles but it can happen and affect any part of the leg, including your thigh and feet.

Reasons of Cramp:

  • Cramp in the lower leg is commoner in older people. Among its triggers are: being cold, dehydration, alcohol, sweating, a poor diet, insufficient UV-light exposure and not warming up and cooling down properly when exercising.
  • During a Cramp, muscles suddenly contract which causes the pain in your leg. this is known as a spasm, and you can’t control the influenced muscles.
  • Exposure to cold temperatures, especially to cold water.
  • Other medical conditions, such as blood flow problems, kidney illness and thyroid disease
  • Standing on a solid and hard surface for a long period of time or Putting your legs in unbalanced positions while you rest also cause Cramp
  • Not having enough calcium, potassium, and other minerals in your blood.

Treatment:

Some people swear by putting a cork or magnet beneath the mattress although the origin and usefulness of this remedy are unclear.

Food and Drink: Eat plenty of foods rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, vitamin C and E and essential fatty acids. Magnesium is highly suggested for treatment of muscle cramps, especially for pregnant women.

Eat oil fish (Omega 3) three times a week and benefit from the calcium in the bones by choosing canned fish with soft edible bones, or marinating fish in vinegar for 48 hours.

Food Supplements:

  • Calcium and Magnesium
  • Vitamin B3
  • Vitamin D
  • Fish Oil

Exercise: Stretch the cramped muscle to ease it. Help prevent cramps by doing similar stretches three times daily. You might even rub or massage the muscle while or after you stretch, and perhaps apply a heating pad to the area after stretching. Walk around for a while if you are facing leg cramps and that’s the best thing you can do.

Massage and Heat: Rub the muscle for two minutes, and then keep it warm. Hot Soak also helps in treating cramp. You can try dry heat like heating pad.

Herbal Remedies: Put a thermos flask of cramp bark (guilder rose) tea by your bed. to ease cramp lay a hot compress made with the tea.

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