Many people think that cramps indicate a lack of calcium in the body, but in fact, to clarify this issue, you first need to understand what cramps are. The scientific name for cramps is “muscle spasms”. It means that when your neuromuscular excitement is abnormal, it will cause involuntary and excessive muscle contraction without warning.
The onset of the cramp is characterized by a significant crush-like contraction of the muscle, which can last for several seconds or tens of seconds and then gradually resolve, leaving a localized pain.
Types of cramps
Nocturnal cramps: cramps that can occur in any static situation, such as when sleeping or sitting still. The most common i.e. cramps in the calf position and toe area in the elderly and children.
Heat stroke cramps: most often seen in athletes and are associated with dehydration and imbalance of electrolytes in the body.
Disease-related cramps: they occur in patients with organic diseases or post-stroke, mostly due to congenital or neurological injury diseases (epilepsy, tetanus, postpartum spasms, pediatric febrile convulsions, etc.) resulting in muscle loss of innervation and overexcitation.
The most common cramps in life include sports cramps and night cramps. Common cramps are not very harmful or do not lead to secondary injuries, but they just affect the quality of life, but if you have cramps during working at height or swimming, you need to be very careful.
Why do you get cramps?
The principle of muscle cramps is very complex. Simply put, calcium, as a coupling factor between nerve excitation and muscle contraction, always plays an important role in controlling the process of muscle contraction and diastole.
When the body has low blood calcium, neuromuscular excitability increases, which then causes muscle spasms and even hand and foot twitches. Furthermore, when the muscles of the normal human leg contract and diastolic, it will lead to the situation of squeezing the blood vessels, which will eventually carry away the metabolites.
But when rest or sleep, the blood flow in the legs will slow down, metabolites such as lactic acid can not be broken down by the blood in time, accumulating in the lower limb muscles, calf muscles for a single nutritional artery type, like traffic only highway, there is no national highway and county roads, in the event of an accident, the inevitable blockage. When atherosclerosis, lesions or blockage of the calf blood vessels occur, metabolic waste becomes easy to gather, so stimulate the muscle to produce contraction, causing the physiological phenomenon of leg cramps.
1, weak fatigue: excessive exercise, especially anaerobic exercise leads to a short period of sustained muscle contraction, the body produces a large amount of metabolic waste, the state of muscle tension at night has not been improved, too much acidic metabolites accumulation failed to clear in time, can stimulate calf cramps, the elderly weak muscle strength is poor, the body’s metabolic function is also a cause.
2, cold stimulation: cold is the most common direct cause of cramps, can be directly stimulated to cause strong contraction of leg muscles and sudden vascular spasm.
3, hypocalcemia: in the process of muscle contraction, calcium ions play an important role. Due to the weakened calcium absorption capacity of the elderly as well as the obvious loss of calcium, children and pregnant women calcium in the body because the body consumes too much calcium, when the concentration of calcium ions in the blood is too low, muscle excitement and spasm easily.
4, vascular factors: often the intrinsic cause of cramps, when atherosclerosis occurs in the arteries or the presence of thrombosis, blood circulation is blocked, local tissue ischemia and hypoxia, physiological disorders, will cause cold, numbness and intermittent claudication of the lower extremities, that is, numbness, pain and even spasm of the calf muscle occurs when walking, disappears after rest, and again when walking; severe cases can have persistent pain, lower limb arteries, especially In severe cases, there may be persistent pain, and the arteries of the lower limbs, especially the dorsalis pedis artery, may be weakened or disappear. And metabolites can not be taken away in time, to a certain concentration, will also stimulate muscle contraction, causing painful cramps.
5, too much sweating: long exercise, anaerobic exercise, sweating, a large loss of body fluids and electrolytes such as low calcium, low potassium, low magnesium, a large amount of metabolic waste accumulation, internal environmental disorders, also prone to spasm.
6, local compression: such as prolonged supine lying, so that the quilt pressed on the surface of the foot, or prolonged prone, so that the surface of the foot against the bed, forcing certain muscles of the calf for a long time in a state of compression, causing passive muscle contracture and insufficient blood supply.
Middle-aged and elderly people tend to have cramps at night
Due to the weakened calcium absorption capacity and calcium loss in middle-aged and elderly people, osteoporosis can occur and calcium supplementation is necessary. However, cramps caused by poor blood circulation in middle-aged and elderly people cannot be cured by calcium supplementation alone. It is necessary to treat atherosclerosis and improve circulation to be effective, such as eliminating factors that cause the lumen diameter of blood vessels to become smaller, such as fatty deposits and cell proliferation, and improving microcirculation so as to improve blood supply and operation.
First, cramps are indeed a sign of insufficient blood calcium, and most people’s blood calcium test will be at a normal level, this is because on the one hand, usually the laboratory test is total blood calcium, not ionized calcium; on the other hand, blood calcium is an important electrolyte, in the case of calcium deficiency in the body, it will dissolve the calcium on the bone to maintain normal blood calcium, so it will aggravate osteoporosis.
Secondly, the source of blood calcium includes calcium from dietary or drug sources, which needs to be absorbed into the blood with the help of vitamin D. If the calcium absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract is not enough for the body’s needs, then the calcium on the bones should be dissolved. Therefore, cramps in the hands and feet are a sign of low calcium, but the supplemental calcium has to be absorbed into the blood with the help of vitamin D. The treatment of cramps in the hands and feet should be supplemented with calcium and vitamin D on the one hand, and anti-osteoporosis treatment on the other.
5 Tips to control cramps effectively
If you have a cramp, you can get immediate relief. If you have recurrent cramps, you need to seek medical advice to exclude organic lesions of blood vessels and nerves so as not to delay your condition. When a cramp occurs, as long as the “opposite”, that is, the opposite direction of the force wrench toes and adhere to
The effect can be achieved by wrenching the toe in the opposite direction and insisting on it for more than 1~2 minutes. Daily muscle cramps in the back of the calf, you can sit or lean against the wall, hands wrench toes to make toes up, then try to straighten the knee joint, hot compresses or light massage to relax the tense muscles.
1, drive the cold to keep warm: especially when sleeping, hot water before going to bed to scald the feet, daily massage of the calf muscles to promote local blood circulation.
2, appropriate exercise: usually strengthen physical exercise and sports, pay attention to warm-up before the activity, improve blood supply, enhance muscle contraction ability;
3, appropriate calcium supplementation: eat more vitamin D, calcium tablets, calcium-rich foods such as milk, shrimp, kelp, tofu;
4, improve blood supply: improve atherosclerosis, eliminate the factors that cause the diameter of the vascular lumen to become smaller, reduce weight, advocate a light diet, eat more vitamin-rich
C (such as fresh vegetables, fruits and vegetables) and vegetable protein (such as beans and their products) food. Take anti-platelet aggregation drugs, drugs to improve lipid substitution, drugs to improve arterial wall structure, vitamin E, etc. under the guidance of a doctor.
and other medications, and actively prevent and treat risk factors that may aggravate atherosclerosis in the legs, such as hypertension and diabetes.
Leg cramps self-help methods
1, toe movement: take off shoes and stand (to prevent falls, you can hand-hold tables, chairs or other fixed objects)
2, calf muscle cramps: toes on the ground and try to lift the heel, for 10 seconds and then put it down, then rest for a few seconds and then continue to do so repeatedly for 10 to 15 minutes, morning and evening 1 time. And then with the rotation of the ankle joint, the effect is better.
3, often do toe exercise: can stimulate the foot end points, promote blood circulation, so that the skin temperature, muscle strength, lift the calf spasm, and the lower limb muscles, knee joints have a good exercise effect.
4, foot soak before bed: every day before bed with about 40 degrees Celsius hot water soak feet (soak to the ankle is appropriate), wait until the water is cold, then pour in hot water to maintain the water temperature. Soaking time 15 to 20 minutes. Soak feet with hot water before bedtime, can play a role in promoting peripheral blood circulation, relaxing the tendons and lifting the spasm.
5, in addition, drink water before bedtime, can also play a relaxing nerve, relax the muscles and reduce the role of cramps.