Leg and foot cramps, which often occur in the calf and toe muscles. It is a spontaneous and compulsive contraction of the muscle with abnormal pain during the attack, medically known as muscle cramps. There are many factors that lead to leg and foot cramps, and calcium deficiency is just one of them. Blindly supplementing calcium can damage the heart, aggravate bone calcium loss, and even increase the risk of kidney stones and prostate cancer.
1. Calcium deficiency.
Calcium is a good calming agent for the nervous system. When calcium is deficient, abnormal nerve impulses occur in the nervous system, resulting in abnormal skeletal muscle contractions and cramps. Calcium deficiency causes cramps that often occur in adolescents with high calcium demand and in middle-aged and elderly people with accelerated calcium loss;
2. Cold.
When a person is cold or chilled, the brain sends signals to the whole body to make the skeletal muscles contract paradoxically to resist the cold, which may trigger muscle cramps. So getting cold at night may lead to muscle cramps.
3. Fatigue.
Long hours of muscle work, such as climbing, climbing, strenuous exercise, etc. may lead to excessive fatigue of the leg muscles, triggering muscle contraction and producing cramps;
4, disease factors.
Cramps may also be caused by neurological problems, such as encephalitis, cerebrovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease, tic disorders and motor nerve problems, such as sciatica, herniated discs, etc., may appear muscle cramps, and not only limited to leg muscle cramps;
In addition, diarrhea, pneumonia, sweating, fever, sauna, tumor and other diseases and phenomena that tend to cause water-electrolyte imbalance in the body can trigger cramps.
How to prevent muscle cramps in legs and feet?
1, pay attention to warmth.
Avoid local muscle cold, such as strenuous exercise immediately after blowing air conditioning, cold bath, etc.;
2, the combination of work and rest.
Avoid prolonged running, hiking, swimming, pay attention to the combination of work and rest;
3, pay attention to preheating.
Physical exercise, especially when some strenuous exercise, should do enough preparatory activities to prevent poor blood flow, resulting in muscle cramps;
4, stretching muscles.
Usually move more muscles and bones, do more stretching muscle exercises, such as leg press, jump rope, etc.;
5, food for calcium.
Especially adolescents, middle-aged and elderly people and pregnant women, you can eat more food with high calcium content, such as yogurt, soybeans, shrimp, kelp, sesame paste, etc.;
6, replenish electrolytes.
After exercise, due to the large amount of sweating easily caused by the loss of water electrolytes, appropriate sports drinks or light salt water, etc., can help restore the water-electrolyte balance, reduce the chances of muscle cramps;
7, other.
Such as improper sleeping posture, shoes with too high a heel or shoes squeezing the feet, etc. may cause muscle cramps in the legs.