Getting bad cramps in legs

[Neil46]

Hi all. having read so many posts about coming off DA's I am cutting down on prami. During the last 3 weeks I have cut my dose to half a 0.088 tablet and have started building up on Magnesium Citrate and Gentle Iron, now taking 20mg Gentle Iron with oj also 400mg MC. I still have the same rls symptoms I have always had but now with bad leg cramps on awakening. I am drinking plenty of water, juice etc. My only other med is 10mg Lercanidipene which is a calcium channel blocker for hypertension. Is the iron thickening my blood perhaps?

[ironbrain]

I see up to 50% of people taking lercanidipine suffer from cramps. You might want to have your potassium levels checked.

A lot of other things might be causing cramps. Until you find out the cause of yours, try gently tipping your toes upward rather than downwards and outwards as you would when you stretch when you wake up.

[Neil46 in reply to ironbrain]

Yes I will get that checked. Thank you

[DicCarlson]

Sea Salt in water 1/4 tsp in 20 oz. water - drink all day. Also try Magnesium Oil Spray directly on the cramp.

[Neil46 in reply to DicCarlson]

Thanks for the response. I will add the salt, I have heard that lack of salt can cause cramps

[Graham3196 in reply to DicCarlson]

I think your cardiologist might have a fit at the thought of so much salt! How quickly does the magnesium oil spray work?

My wife had very bad cramps when our daughters were born. Drs said bad luck it goes with the territory. She still gets very nasty cramps but we have a relief for it. I am not trying to explain how or why it works so effectively, just describing what we do.

1 she is asleep

2 she wakes up making an annoying fuss and lots of noise

3 I run downstairs and make the following potion

one tall glass of hot water from the tap.

Add two measuring spoons of powdered Staminade (green)

Stir vigorously to make the powder dissolve because the concentration is quite high

Add about 6 cubes of ice

Continue stirring while rushing back to wife so that the ice melts and cools the drink.

She drinks the green mixture and half way through the drink the pain goes away

She finishes the drink.

Rarely -= it returns the same night in which case repeat steps 3 to here and it works again

The ice blocks are probably only to make the stuff taste tolerable but I dont know.

Please dont tell me its just a mental thing because no chemical fix could act so quickly. My daughter is now 31 years old and this still works for my wife's cramps once or twice a week! If its a placebo effect we don't want to know.

We are now experimenting with Magnesium Diglycinate tablets three times per day but haven't been doing that for long enough to make a claim one way or the other. We have tried Magnesium before but I think it was magnesium oxide. It was something other than diglycinate.

Incidentally always pull against a cramp so you stretch the cramping muscle. Often the affected muscle is somewhere deep inside and you cant tell what stretches it. Sometimes it seems to be two muscles at the same time and its hard to know what to do to stretch both of them. Our answer is to hurry with the drink!!!

I will report in a few weeks on the magnesium diglycinate experiment. Stopping the cramp is our preferred solution so please send us luck.

Good Luck Graham

[DicCarlson in reply to Graham3196]

All salt is not created equal - Sea Salt has a wider mineral profile than plain old NaCl table salt. I'm still intrigued that my bout with RLS started with a 2 week bout of leg cramps at night - and not the casual cramps - the screaming OMG cramps! I took every kind of Mg and other mineral concoctions - Nothing. Finally solved RLS w/iron. Still getting casual cramps on occasion usually from dehydration. Mg. oil spray usually works in short order a minute or two.

Science is ahead of the docs! scientificamerican.com/arti...

[involuntarydancer in reply to Graham3196]

I greatly sympathise with your wife's pain and your disturbed sleep and hope you won't mind my observing that your post was very entertaining to read. I wish you much luck in finding a more permanent solution to what is obviously a chronic problem.