What Is The Best Home Remedy For Leg Cramps?

Leg cramps are common problems and in most of the cases, they do not cause any harm in individuals. Accordingly, leg cramps refer to the condition, where your leg muscles become painful and tight suddenly. This often takes place in calf muscles, but it may affect almost every part of the leg, including thighs and feet. Whenever cramping takes place, you experience tenderness and pain in legs for many hours.

Regardless the reason behind your leg cramps, you should try the following home remedies to overcome it easily.

You should place a hot washcloth or an electric heating pad on the affected muscle to get relaxation from your cramp and increase the flow of blood towards the affected tissue. You have to set the pad on low intensity and apply it for about 20 minutes. Later on, you have to remove the pad and repeat same procedure after a gap of 20 minutes.⁽¹⁾

You should take warm and long shower or simply soak in bath. To get further relief, you should pour about half-cup of Epsom salt in it. Magnesium present in Epsom salt plays a major role to promote muscular relaxation.

You should search the epicenter of your muscle cramp and press by using your thumb in a gentle manner. You have to hold the required pressure about 10 seconds and press on the same spot again. You should continue with this process until and unless you feel any discomfort but fail to excruciating the pain. Repeat the same procedure for numbers of times, so that the pain associated with your muscle cramp starts diminishing.

You should use low levels of electrolytes or minerals, such as calcium, sodium, magnesium and potassium to deal with your muscle cramps effectively. You may not require sodium in additional amount from your daily diet. However, you may require other mineral sources. Hence, to get magnesium in required amounts, you should have cereals, whole-grain breads, beans and nuts. Along with this, you should never forget trying a few fruits and veggies rich in potassium, like oranges, bananas and cantaloupes. Besides this, milk and dairy products supply the required amount of calcium.

If you often experience leg cramps while doing calf muscle exercises, squats or lunges, you should drink about minimum 2 cups of water before doing each workout. After this, you should drink 1 sip of water after every 10 to 15 minutes during your complete exercise session. Other than this, if you sweat a lot, you should have a sports drink, which helps in replacing the lost sodium and other essential electrolytes from your body.

If you want to avoid calf cramps during nighttime, you should strictly avoid sleeping with pointed toes and never tuck in the sheets too tightly, as this leads to bending the toes downward to activate cramps.

Electrical muscle stimulation may used in some cases to reduce the frequency of cramp threshold in patients experiencing frequent leg cramps during exercise or nighttime sleep.

You should mix 1 part of wintergreen oil with four parts of any veggie oil and massage on your muscle cramp area gently. Wintergreen contains methyl salicylate to help you in relieving your pain and stimulation of the blood flow. You may use the mixture for many times in a day but never with the help of a heating pad, as it may burn the skin.⁽¹⁾

You should intake vitamin E to avoid or cure your nocturnal leg cramp. Most of the studies have revealed that vitamin E intake improves the flow of blood from your arteries.

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