I used to wake up at night sometimes with a horrible calf muscle cramp also known as a “charley horse”. It would be so painful. I would try all sorts of things to try to stop the cramp including pulling on my foot, stretching, massage the muscle with magnesium oil, or try to think calming thoughts. Typically these efforts had marginal success and I had to wait for the muscle to exhaust itself, seemingly, for the cramp to go away. This would happen more often after heavy exercise. My toes would also sometimes cramp with the tightness of the sheet seeming to be an instigator. Other times I would wake up in the morning feeling good and stretch my legs only to have some muscle cramp and have a hard time getting it to relax.
I am no longer plagued by these problems. Cramps do occur, but I can relieve them in 20 seconds to a minute and they won’t come back. And my method is not mentioned anywhere and my doctor cannot explain it. I think I can though.
Some time in my fifties I happened to be talking to my wife about menstrual pain and how taking calcium is recommended to help alleviate it. Don’t ask me how this came up except that maybe my wife was smart, sympathetic to my cramp issues, and knew menstrual pain comes from cramps and since calcium helps with the pain of menstrual cramps, maybe the calcium would help my cramps.
I thought that I should try calcium for my leg and toe cramps. It worked! It seemed like a miracle! I had two methods. One was to take a scoop of cal-mag powder (calcium and magnesium supposedly in proper proportions for the body) and the other was to chew up a few Tums antacid tablets. The Tums tablets are mostly calcium, I believe. The cal-mag powder would take a minute or so to have an effect, but the Tums would act in about 20 seconds. If I had a severe cramp, I would use Tums for quick relief and take cal-mag for less serious cramps thinking there may be some reason to take calcium and magnesium together. If the cramp had been caused by my stretching my legs in the morning, I could then, after taking the calcium, stretch with impunity and not cramp.
I seemed to be more prone to cramps after heavy exercise and it almost seemed like a disincentive to exercise. I am sure that my discovery helps me stay in shape.
I was curious if other people used this method. On-line I could find no evidence of this.
Now that I had a possible solution, I wanted to find out more. At doctor appointments I would mention my problem and ask what they recommended. No one mentioned calcium, but they would recommend massage or magnesium. Epsom salt baths are loaded with magnesium which is a classic muscle relaxation technique that does relax muscles. When I would ask doctors why it was that taking calcium had such a dramatic effect, they had no answer beyond getting a glassy look in their eyes and would seemingly recite a medical school textbook saying that calcium is used in the muscle for contraction and magnesium is used for relaxation. This is no doubt true, I imagine, but does not answer my question. Doctors seemed to think that taking calcium would be the opposite of what I would want. That seemed right, except that it works.
I researched the problem of cramps myself. I did find that calcium is used by the muscle to cause contraction and magnesium is used to relax the muscles. However, with the idea that muscles usually contract on command from the nervous system, I looked into whether the muscle was being told to contract by nerves. Maybe that’s where the problem lies. Maybe it wasn’t the muscle that was at fault, but the nerves instead.
I ran across a condition called “tetany”. I found the following in descriptions of it on Wikipedia:
“If the plasma Ca2+ decreases to less than 50% of the normal value of 9.4 mg/dl, action potentials may be spontaneously generated, causing contraction of peripheral skeletal muscles. Hypocalcemia is not a term for tetany but is rather a cause of tetany.”
This sounds like the likely culprit. Ca2+ is calcium. The text saying “action potentials may be spontaneously generated” simply means that the nerve starts firing off impulses all on its own and the muscle has no choice but to respond by contracting and staying contracted. Tetany would not be thought of by a doctor since tetany is likely a very serious condition and the body is normally very good at regulating calcium levels in the blood and I have never shown a problem on a blood test. Perhaps sometimes, especially with low blood flow to extremities at night, calcium levels can dip locally in the tissues near the nerve but not necessarily in the blood. Then when a nerve gets activated, like when you stretch, the nerve stays activated emitting a steady stream of pulses keeping the associated muscles tensed. In other words, it causes a cramp. I don’t think I ever get cramps during the day or while exercising when my blood is pumping at normal rates.
All I know for sure is that if I wake with a charley horse in my big calf muscle, I can hop to the bathroom and chew down several tums tablets and get relief in about 20 seconds or less. If I use cal-mag powder, it takes a minute or two. The cramp will not come back. If the cramp is a small muscle somewhere, I usually take the cal-mag powder and wait a little longer.
After my doctor did not say anything about calcium helping the cramps, I asked if taking a lot of calcium would be bad or lead to kidney stones or some other problem. He said no, unless I had some underlying disease process.
When I am out and about, if a friend develops a cramp and is in pain, I will offer some tums tablets (which I typically keep in my car or my hiking pack) and everyone says it helps. I cannot be inside their body to know if they are simply placating me or whether it is real. However their actions make it look real.
Whenever the issue comes up, I always bring up my remedy, but I am doubtful if everyone takes me seriously, especially if they ask their doctor and get the spiel about magnesium rather than calcium will relax muscles.
When I was younger, my back used to go “out”. This was the result of a cramp in my lower back that would cause some sort of damage. It would take days to get better. I started using calcium as a preventative when I felt stressed and felt my back tightening. This seemed to ward off the cramp.
I have looked on-line and see no one espousing calcium as a fix for cramps( except for menstrual cramp pain). I am aghast at this and hope that my experience will lead to some research. So much pain could be avoided.
I hope to engender an evolution in muscle cramp thinking.