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Old 10-27-22, 10:18 AM
  #13  
MoAlpha
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
I've had laying in the ditch rolling around leg cramps in the early season from going much too hard when I wasn't in shape for it yet. As MoAlpha says, studies show no evidence of dehydration or electrolyte balance being a factor. My wife used to have really bad leg cramps in the middle of the night, and quite frequently. As she got in better shape those diminished a lot. My memory is that they stopped completely when we started taking 100mg of potassium citrate with dinner. Again I don't think there's any clinical evidence of that being efficacious, OTOH I don't think there's evidence to the contrary, there not being a tech in anyone's bedroom to take blood samples. BTW, the technical term for those night cramps is "idiopathic cramps" .

Remission: I've found that pickle juice and mustard both make cramps go away, both exercise induced and idiopathic. Our proven dosage is 3 swallows of pickle juice. There's also a commercial preparation called Hot Shots. Peppermint Tums, 500mg, are also effective, though for unknown reasons, only that brand, dosage, and strength, and which also for unknown reasons are a little hard to find. These things work because of taste, nothing to do with electrolytes or anything else. That's why they work in ~2 minutes, far too fast to get into the bloodstream. We buy our pickle juice by the case from Amazon.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35416793/
https://runnersconnect.net/pickle-juice-muscle-cramps/

https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2016...-muscle-cramps


We've also tried several different physical things to relieve leg cramps. Walking around works but it's slow. Simply lying completely still and relaxed and trying to meditate maybe works faster, but it's hard to do. Pickle juice can also be taken ahead of possible cramping issues and lasts for maybe 3 hours, though I don't have as much experience with this.
Having studied motor control for several years at the beginning of my scientific career, I just love the pickle juice/mustard thing. I've never had a leg cramp I couldn't break by putting steady stretch on the muscle and there's no way I can go get pickle juice when it happens. I also get abdominal muscle cramps with sudden movements (like jackknifing convulsively to stretch a hamstring cramp) and they are very hard to stretch.
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