Cramps in the legs occur suddenly and cause severe and uncontrollable pain. It often happens at night, so that we not only get pain in our legs, but also have our night's sleep ruined. But what causes the cramps, and how can you prevent and perhaps avoid them altogether? You will find the answer to that in this article.
Leg cramps affect everyone, regardless of age and how well-trained your muscles are. Typically, you experience more leg cramps the older and less active you become. Many pregnant women also experience leg cramps more often than their peers. But in this post, we are focusing on athletes/exercisers.
Muscle fatigue is possibly the cause
No one knows the exact physiological reasons why we get leg cramps. However, there is much evidence that they typically occur in connection with muscle fatigue - and especially in the muscles that cross two joints. For example the calf muscle.
However, there are many other things that seem to be able to trigger the painful muscle contractions that the cramps actually are. They can become so powerful that you can have pain in the affected muscle for up to a day after the seizure.
Among the things known to trigger leg cramps are if you have:
- Standing or sitting in the same position for a long time at a time
- Developed fluid deficiency or problems with fluid balance
- Trained hard or moved more than usual
- Took some medicine which has leg cramps as a side effect
How to reduce the risk of leg cramps
Because we do not know the reason why muscle cramps occur in the legs, it is not possible to prevent the painful phenomenon completely. However, there are some tips and advice which, based on experience, reduce the risk of you getting cramps in your legs.
Get control of the fluid balance
The fluid and salt balance plays an important role in how the body functions. Here, it is believed that greater fluid loss and dehydration promote the risk of leg cramps. This is due to a deficit of sodium, which helps form the nerve signals that control the muscles.
Since salt (which contains sodium) is most often bound to fluid in the body, a deficit in the salt and fluid balance can cause irritation in the muscles, which then start to cramp.
It is therefore important that you ensure that drink enough, as well use electrolytes in your drinking water when you exercise or work hard. In this way, you avoid the body excreting so much salt that there is not enough sodium to form the right nerve signals.
Avoid Magnesium Deficiency
In the same way as with sodium, a deficit or imbalance in magnesium in the body seems to be able to trigger leg cramps.
At least one seems to regular intake of magnesium to be able to reduce the risk of muscle cramps occurring in the legs. The intake can be either in the form of specific magnesium tablets or through a supplementation of magnesium, electrolytes and other minerals to your drinking water.
Watch our video about electrolytes:
Provide rest for the muscles after physical performance
Hard physical performance – whether it's hard physical training or maybe you've walked more than you usually do in your everyday life – requires that you give the muscles in your legs (and the rest of your body) the opportunity to recover properly.
For the same reason, you should be more careful about changing speed or tempo when you are about to finish e.g. your training, or have grown tired of walking. Tired muscles need more time to adjust to another load. Then you change too quickly, the muscles protest by cramping.
Light massage or Yoga can prevent leg cramps
If you have trained hard or performed other hard physical activity, the joints used become a little stiffer as a result. Stiff joints in particular seem to promote the risk of muscle contractions in the legs.
Therefore, it is a good idea to do a few Yoga or some Tai Chi exercises, which loosen up the stiffness. As well as massaging the muscle or muscles that cross the stiff joint.
How do you reduce or stop leg cramps
If you feel that you are about to get leg cramps, it is a good idea to stretch the affected muscle slowly in the same way as you do after your workout. It can also help prevent muscle soreness after a spasm attack.
Similarly, you can also relieve the spasm and associated pain by massaging the affected muscle. By doing so, you can make the muscle relax so that the cramp is reduced or completely disappears.
Prevent leg cramps
If you want to effectively prevent the risk of leg cramps, you must follow the instructions we provide in this article.
Make sure you also drink plenty of fluids, and possibly use some of the supplements of magnesium and electrolytes that you find in our webshop.
In this way, you reduce the risk of waking up with or suddenly getting leg cramps.