Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I see. Neither my wife, who is subject to nocturnal leg cramps (NLC) and I, nor any of our cycling buddies have noticed any association between alcohol and NLC. Those of us who drink alcohol frequently, and as I said, an alcoholic, do not report NLCs. They rather marvel that my wife gets them because we ride a lot. The study to which you linked is very complicated in design and choice of subjects and I confess that I simply don't know enough about the subject to be able to evaluate it properly.
So I'd say, if you drink regularly and cramp, try stopping the alcohol completely, noting that the NLC in the study were independent of weekly alcohol consumption as long as it was greater than zero.
A confusing element in the linked study is that the drinkers were said to consume an average of 96g of alcohol per week. Which is a totally bizarre statement in a supposedly scientific study, BTW. If one were drinking 86 proof, that'd be 1.7 gallons of booze/week. The study also states: I don't know what to make of that statement in relation to the supposed finding of the study.
How is one to understand these statements in the study as saying that alcohol causes NLC? See quote 3.
When I saw that your anecdotal experience was different than my anecdotal experience, I wondered what the medical/scientific opinion was. So, I did a search. The article I posted was one of many that concluded that there is a connection with alcohol consumption and leg cramps. If you do a search I'm sure you can find them and perhaps answer some of your questions. I am not invested in either outcome. However, the research does mirror my experience. My issue was not so much the amount of alcohol consumed in any one particular day but the consistency of drinking every day and the accumulation of alcohol in the body over time. FWIW, I also had a skin issue that dermatology could not resolve and the elimination of alcohol fixed that. Which, according to another search, is also supported by medical science.