Originally Posted by
Frustrated
I’ve spent hours online reading about leg cramps, causes, etc. While it appears many get them during their ride in the calf, I get them about six hours later in my shin. I guess one would identify the muscle group as the tibialis.
Ultimately what happens is I’ll wake up late at night/early morning with a cramp. Usually it’s in one leg (rarely both legs simultaneously). The cramp doesn’t jolt me out of bed like a calf cramp might, this cramp simply causes my foot to sort of contort and bend. While I don’t jump out of bed immediately, ultimately I do get up because it almost becomes unbearable: so I get up to apply my body weight on my foot to “stretch” or “pull” the muscle to make the cramp go away. And then I quickly try to fall back asleep! :-)
But then, the cramp will either come back again within an hour or so, or worse, happen in the other leg! Never at the same time…
While I do take supplements, especially magnesium to help better absorb the potassium, nothing seems to help. Sometimes when I “catch” the cramp early enough, I’ll rest my other leg on top of my cramping leg to “prevent” the muscles from contorting my foot. I’m thinking about getting some blood work done to measure my nutrients.
Anyone else here had, or heard of such an occurrence? Everyone I’ve talked to about this to date have all looked at me like I’m crazy… :-)
I've had tons of leg cramps, the type that do result in eye-tearing pain and stops my breathing. These cramps have been all up and down my legs, but never in the tibialis -- that's strange. Have you started doing some kind of activity you've never done before? Or maybe MoAlpha's post might apply?
I have actually started a new exercise regimen that involves exercising (and stretching) my tibialis, but even then I have yet to feel any cramping in my tibialis. I would recommend looking into exercising this area of the leg, as well as other parts such as the hip flexors and other parts. Sad thing is that cycling is not enough on its own to have strong legs. Check this guy out, he sounds a little like just another Youtube freak, but these exercises are great for building healthy joints, his main focus are the knees, but tibialis exercises are a major part of that.
This is just one of his videos, I recommend adopting all of his exercises, helps my screwed up knee tremendously and it addresses an often overlooked part of the leg -- the tibialis.
Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
Nocturnal and exercise-related cramps are clinically different entities, even though they may share a mechanism. Nocturnal cramping occurs often in sedentary individuals and is loosely associated with a bunch of bad health conditions, medications, and hormones. There are no data to implicate fluid or electrolyte status in either condition.
Thanks, that's good to know, I've never even heard of nocturnal cramping, I guess because I've never experienced it, but very good to know...