Leg Cramp Site

One of the best ways to fight and prevent nightly leg cramps is to be sure your body is getting enough potassium throughout the day. Potassium is an important mineral that helps lower your blood pressure, regulates heart and muscle functions and helps keep fluid, adrenal and kidney functions in check. Having too little potassium in your diet could lead to a general feeling of weakness and muscle cramping problems. People who regularly have low potassium problems are said to suffer from hypokalemia. Getting frequent leg cramps at night is one possible sign of hypokalemia.

Fortunately, there are lots of foods that have a fair amount of potassium in them. Some people who suffer from leg cramps prefer to keep their diet the same and just add potassium supplements to their diet, but with the large variety of fruits, vegetables and other food that contains potassium, it’s relatively easy to make sure you have enough throughout the day. Be careful, though: you can have too much potassium in your diet (hyperkalemia) if you aren’t careful. It’s generally recommended that an adult’s potassium intake not exceed 2000 milligrams (mg) per day.

Consult the table below for some of the more common high potassium foods. There are obviously also an infinite amount of prepared and prepacked foods that are high in potassium, but we focussed on most of the fresh and raw ingredients that contain potassium. For your convenience the list has been arranged from highest to lowest amouns of potassium.

Most foods that you cook will retain more potassium if you cook them with dry heat as opposed to boiling or submerging in hot water. So a baked potato will definitely have more potassium in it than a similarly sized potato that’s been boiled. Lots of different fruits also have some level of potassium in them, so fruits like oranges, peaches, strawberries and raspberries all have between 150mg to 250mg of potassium in them, so a summer fruit salad might give you plenty of potassium for the day.

Even a small increase in your dietary potassium levels can make a world of difference in preventing and stopping regular night time leg cramps and charley horses.

One of the easiest and most commonly followed methods for preventing and curing leg cramps is increasing the level of potassium in your body. Potassium is an essential mineral that helps keep your kidneys, your skeleton, heart and body muscles healthy and in good working order. Many people have learned that taking a daily potassium supplement can greatly reduce their leg cramps at night.

Taking a daily potassium and magnesium supplement has helped many people avoid night time leg cramping and charley horses.

If you get leg cramps or charley horses at night it could be a sign that you are not getting enough potassium throughout the day. Potassium helps your body contract its muscles efficiently, so without enough potassium the muscle has to work harder to contract and move. The harder the muscle moves, the more lactic acid (a waste product) builds up. It is generally believed that when your leg cramps or spasms that the nerve endings to the muscles are just “overwhelmed” or “short-circuited” with waste products and don’t have enough oxygen to turn off.

Potassium and salt, though chemically similar, play very different roles in your body and can affect muscle cramping and functions. Your body’s potassium needs will generally increase with an increase in dietary sodium. This means that a salty meal during the day could contribute to your leg cramps at night because the excess salt in your body requires more potassium than your body has available to process it.

Your body also loses potassium in other ways, such as through various medical conditions (such as Crohn’s disease) or when you exercise a lot and lose minerals and electrolytes through sweating. Some medications such as certain diuretics and laxatives can also contribute to an unusually rapid loss of potassium in the body.  Sudden leg cramps can be one sign that your potassium levels are low.

Hypokalemia – Low Potassium Levels

Potassium is such a vital element that people with low potassium levels are said to have Hypokalemia. Some of the symptoms of Hypokalemia are general weakness and tiredness, stomach problems, an irregular heatbeat and muscle cramps, including nocturnal leg cramps. Because potassium is found in so many common fruits and vegetables it is rare that severe hypokalemia is caused by a dietary potassium deficiency. This means that if you are eating plenty of potassium and still have some of the symptoms of Hypokalemia such as muscle cramping you should definitely see a doctor.

Increasing Potassium For Leg Cramps

There are lots of potassium-rich foods that can prevent leg cramps, but there are also a number of potassium supplements that, when taken properly, can greatly reduce or completely diminish nocturnal leg cramping.

Potassium supplements come in several different common dosages and forms. You can get your potassium from a multivitamin or you can take take potassium in their own supplements. Your body also needs the mineral magnesium to be able to work with potassium, so unless you have Hypomagnesemia (high magnesium levels) it might be a good idea for you to consider taking a supplement with magnesium and potassium combined into one tablet.

Most people who take potassium supplements for leg cramps do report a definite decrease in frequency. Obviously, you should be careful when first starting to take any supplement and you should consult with your doctor or health care provider first. Children should not be given potassium supplements unless instructed by a doctor.

There is a danger of having too much potassium in your body as well. A healthy adult should generally get about 2,000 mg of potassium per day, though as noted before, that number can range widely with sodium intake, activity level and other health factors. Potassium supplements, like most vitamin supplements, can have side effects and unintended interactions with other medicines you may be taking. If you’re getting leg cramps you might want to try increasing the potassium in your diet gradually over a week or two to see if it makes any difference in your comfort level and number of leg cramps you get. For some people a small potassium supplement or change in dietary habits makes all the difference. For others there may be other treatments needed.

Some people who suffer from night time leg cramps have found that some of the minor side effects of potassium supplements (some nausea or stomach upset from time to time) are still preferable to suffering from painful leg cramps at night.

While there are many potential causes of leg cramps there is on indisputable treatment for leg cramps that just about everyone has heard of: quinine.  Quinine is the bitter substance found in tonic water, bitter lemon and in many drinks containing gin, but it’s perhaps best known as a surefire way to prevent and treat muscle cramps, especially in the legs.

Natural quinine that can help ease leg cramps is still found in authentic tonic water.

Quinine is a bitter tasting chemical substance that was first used in Europe in the middle 1600′s.  Originally the substance of quinine was first obtained from the bark of the cinchona tree which is only found in Ecuador and Peru.  Today most quinine is actually made synthetically and not harvested from cinchona trees.  Quinine was originally used to cut the fevers suffered from malaria, because it relaxed the muscled which caused shivering.

Quinine is a muscle relaxant which not only reduces shivering which aids in breaking a fever, but it also helps with cramping muscles in the leg, foot and other parts of the body.  Scientists do not yet know exactly how quinine works to relax muscle cramping, but they are  still studying the issue even today.

The FDA has approved quinine for some medical uses, but muscle leg cramps is not one of them.  In 2006 all but one brand of quinine was banned by the FDA for leg cramp treatments due to a reporte 23 deaths in the previous 20 years.  Quinine is still prescribed for the treatment of malaria, but it is no longer easily available for treating leg cramps in the United States due to the risk of death.  Qualaquin is the only brand of quinine still used in the United States and while it is supposed to only be used for malaria treatments, there are still some doctors who do not follow the advice of the FDA and who do prescribe it for leg cramps.

Using quinine for leg cramps is no longer recommended because of the high chance of serious side effects or even death.  Leg cramps are considered to be a “nuisance” medical condition and not serious enough for the associated but low risk of death associated with quinine.  The FDA still suggests using quinine for malaria because malaria in itself is a life-threatening illness.  Quinine has a number of side effects as well including giving you a weak pulse, increasing your chances of an irregular heatbeat, fever, nausea, hearing and vision problems, headache, irritability, drowsiness and even fainting.

This means that most Americans who suffer from leg cramps will have a difficult time getting a presciption to quinine from their doctor in order to prevent their leg cramps.  Ordering quinine from online “pharmacies” is definitely not recommended due to the high chance of impurities or total fraud.  Even reputable online drug stores do not know where all their vendors and suppliers get their products.

There are, however, a few ways you can still get quinine in your diet if you need relief from muscle cramping.

How To Get Quinine

There are some consumer products, mostly liquid drinks, which contain small amounts of quinine in them.  The most obvious drink is authentic tonic water.  There are a number of companies that now produce tonic water “type” drinks, so you’ll want to check the bottle to make sure that the tonic water you choose has quinine listed as an ingredient.  Another way to make sure the tonic water you have contains quinine: hold the tonic water under a blacklight.  Quinine is flourescent chemical and will “glow” under a blacklight!

Studies have shown that drinking beverages with a small amount of quinine in them can, in some cases, decrease the frequency of night time leg cramps, though when muscle cramps did strike they were still just as painful.  It’s been written that it takes about 325 milligrams of quinine before sleep is recommended, but some people found lower doses to be just as effective.  The problem, of course, is that most consumer beverages don’t list the specific amount of quinine in them and the amount varies from one beverage type to the next.

Other drink makers around the world also put quinine into their beverages.  In Canada a carbonated chinotto soda called Brio also contains quinine.  For some individuals a single small glass of tonic water with quinine is they need to avoid leg cramps, but for other people more might be needed.

If you don’t like the bitterness of tonic water, here’s a neat trick:  Pour yourself a glass of tonic water and take a sip. It’s awfully bitter.  Now drop in a quick pinch of common table salt.  Stir and take another sip.  The bitterness should be greatly reduced!  It turns out that salt actually reduces the bitter taste of most things, including tonic water!

Another option is to try the higher end premium tonic waters like Q Tonic which can be ordered online.  It’s made with real agave and quinine so you’ll get the better taste as well as the quinine to help prevent leg cramps.