When a Cramp Is Actually a Clot

Health

Deep-vein thrombosis is often mistaken by both patients and doctors for something else. I was suspicious of what I thought was a runner’s cramp, and got lucky.

February 26, 2014

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A glutton for good running weather, I could not resist the Thanksgiving-weekend weather. It was pitch-perfect: cloudless, warm, a cool breeze. The month before I had run my fastest marathon: just under four hours at the 2012 Marine Corps Marathon. So, I should have been recovering with light, slow, shallow runs.

But several hours on a cramped five-hour flight the night before had me buzzing with pent-up energy. So, I ran. Probably too far, probably too fast.

Sitting at a table in Starbucks on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, plugging away all day on a project, time slipped by. It felt good to focus, all that energy cleared from my metabolic cache. When I stood to go home Monday night, my calves immediately tightened. The pain in the right calf eased, but the pain in the left calf did not.

I rested, iced, elevated the leg, and doubled up on liquids and bananas, but the pain did not subside. On Wednesday, I limped to work and trolled sports-medicine web pages. One website after another said generally the same thing: A deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clot, can closely resemble a leg cramp or a muscle tear. My stomach clenched.

Recent long travel; a prolonged period of remaining in the same position; and red, painful, swelling were among the causes and symptoms listed. I had all but the redness and swelling. I called my doctor. She said to go to the nearest emergency room. I meant to sound matter-of-fact when I told my boss why I was leaving early, but it came out more as a warble.

The emergency room’s ultrasound technician’s questions turned to silence as she tapped buttons on a keyboard and stared at the images on her screen, rarely looking up as she moved her wand over the clear jelly-like coating she’d smeared on my leg. When she stepped out of the room, I peeked at the images on her computer screen. I saw blue and grey shapes and a small red mound, like an ant hill.

I was poking my leg when the ER doctor came in. He told me to take my hand off of my leg and not to do that again.

It’s probably a muscle tear, the student doctor said. He came to prepare my history for the ER doctor. It would take a longer flight and longer period of immobility than a weekend at Starbucks to develop a DVT, he said. I was ready to believe him and would have, if it weren’t for that little red mound.

I was poking my leg to pinpoint the pain for the cheery nurse who’d come to check my vitals, when the ER doctor came in. He told me to take my hand off of my leg and not to do that again.

An estimated one in 1,000 Americans are diagnosed each year with a DVT, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of Americans with DVTs, including those undiagnosed, is estimated to be up to 600,000. As many as 100,000 deaths each year are directly or indirectly linked to a DVT.

Though I have flown farther and sat still in coffeehouses for longer in the past, the doctor told me the blockage most likely was the result of my weekend sojourn in Starbucks, exacerbated by the flight. I might also have been a bit dehydrated from the travel and the run.

Whatever my particular cocktail of factors, the effect was the same: Blocked, the blood built up along the walls of the vein, clotting. Similar to a crash on a highway, the clot slowed the blood that tried to snake around it. The blood piled onto the clot, making it bigger and the passageway narrower.

A DVT is not usually life-threatening, by itself. But if part of the clot breaks loose and is thrown back into the bloodstream to travel freely, eventually it may lodge in a passageway too small for it, such as those found in the lungs. The result, a pulmonary embolism (PE), can kill you.

More than one-third of DVT patients have PE’s, according to the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism, issued in 2008. “Often, the first symptom of DVT is a fatal PE,” Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, wrote in the report.

DVT/PE is an underappreciated problem in our society, says Dr. Anthony Venbrux, a professor of radiology and surgery and the director of the vascular and interventional radiology division at the George Washington Medical Center, echoing the report’s findings.

“We tend to dismiss them, saying ‘I’ll take an ibuprofen or use a heating pad.’ We, meaning everyone, including physicians,” Venbrux says. “A classic example is a physician who was an athlete and didn’t want to acknowledge that it was DVT in the upper extremity that he was experiencing.”

“DVT diagnoses are easy to overlook because the signs and symptoms are often difficult to recognize. In many cases, there are no clinically apparent signs at all.”

Early diagnosis is the key to a positive outcome, and diagnosis is not difficult or painful. Now, completely noninvasively, we can rule in or rule out a DVT with 98 percent accuracy using a Doppler ultrasound, Venbrux says. “In the old days, we would have to inject contrast dye.” Nonetheless, many DVTs are believed to slip through the cracks, dismissed or unrecognized.

“The tragedy of these diseases is that their diagnosis is easy to overlook because the signs and symptoms are often diffuse and difficult to recognize. In many cases, there are no clinically apparent signs at all,” Nabel says.

As I quickly learned, the default treatment is to let nature takes it course, assisted by an intense, steady regimen of blood thinners, which rob the blood of its ability to stick to the little red mound, which my body would slowly absorb. The flip side was that my blood also could not stick together well enough to scab should I sustain a bleeding injury.

Around that time, I also discovered ClotConnect.org, which held a wealth of understandable information on blood clots for patients and doctors. Beth Waldron, the program director of Clot Connect at the University of North Carolina Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center, herself had a DVT and two PEs in 2003.

By her own account, Waldron thought she pulled a muscle in the gym. She went to the doctor and was prescribed muscle relaxers. When the pain continued, she tried to work through it until, walking up the stairs to the shower one day, she couldn’t catch her breath. “The world went floaty,” she says.

Eventually, she was prescribed antibiotics for a respiratory infection, she says. But, after taking her antibiotics for five days, under the impression that this wasn’t serious, Beth had a pulmonary embolism that “was off-the-chart painful,” she says. At the hospital, they found a pulmonary embolism in each lung and a DVT from mid-calf to her hip. She was in the hospital for nine days and because the doctors found that she has a genetic risk factor, she is now on blood thinners for life.

“Every DVT patient says ‘I thought I turned my ankle or slept funny or pulled a muscle. ’ Almost every one of them tends to dismiss what it is.”

“About half of those who develop [DVT/PE] have two things in common. First, they have one or more identifiable risk factors for the disease. Second, they experience some sort of triggering event, such as hospitalization, trauma, surgery, or a prolonged period of immobilization,” the surgeon general’s report said. The other half of cases are mostly unprovoked, or “silent,” producing “few, if any, symptoms,” it said.

In Venbrux’s experience, a “normal patient is someone who comes in with pain and may or may not have swelling. Every one of them says, ‘I thought I turned my ankle or slept funny or pulled a muscle.’ Almost every one of them tends to dismiss or blow off what it is. Almost everyone discounts it initially and then after the diagnosis comes to an awareness,” he says, and noted that physician awareness is equally important.

Nowadays, blood-clot surveillance in hospitals is a standard of practice that “is on the tip of most people’s tongue,” according to Dr. Gregory Piazza, a Harvard Medical School instructor and a physician in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Cardiovascular Medicine division. This development is owed, in part, to reports and studies such as the surgeon general’s report that found that hospitals often failed to identify and begin treating DVT/PE risk early.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital uses a computerized decision-support program to evaluate the risk of every patient in the hospital, Piazza says. The system uses electronic health records to look at risk factors and tabulates a score for each patient. For patients who are high risk, an electronic alert goes to the health-care provider that comes up when admission orders are being written, along with a template of commonly used prophylactic measures, according to Piazza, who also is on the board of directors of the North American Thrombosis Forum.

An electronic decision-support system “is not the norm quite yet,” Piazza says. “Others use simple paper and pencil and tabulate. The important thing is that immediately on admission you get the ball rolling,” he says.

By New Year’s, I had read my way through most of the online literature about DVTs. Beyond the basics, the internet was an information wasteland. My concern that I might develop a pulmonary embolism was shifting into anxiety about the road ahead if I made it through this.

Running was not an option, but neither was sitting still, just worrying and waiting. Hunkered into big jackets weighed down by pockets filled with pills, granola bars, and apple juice, with a medic-alert bracelet clamped on, I spent the winter weekend afternoons on long, slow walks.

After about three months, under the watchful eyes of the neighborhood YMCA’s staff, I ventured into more rigorous activities. If I could manage a cause to bleed on a stationary recumbent bike, I probably deserved an award, I figured. Having read that exercising while on blood thinners might reduce the pain and swelling that sometimes follow a blood clot, it was my mission to become a gym rat. Plus, the Y had cable.

So I pedaled, then I paddled, then climbed, then rowed, and then, with care, stepped into a yoga studio.

Finally, a month out from the end of my six-month blood thinner regimen, it was time to see a specialist to help me resolve this once and for all: Was the clot gone? Could I come off the blood thinners? Would I get another one? Could I run? I told myself I wouldn’t run as long as I had a real fear that I could not distinguish a cramp or a tear from a DVT.

There is great relief knowing that, after years of listening to my body’s signals as a runner, when I thought something was amiss, something was.

The specialist ordered three tests. The first, a Doppler ultrasound, confirmed that the blood clot in my calf was gone. The second test, a veinous insufficiency study, confirmed that the walls and valves of the vein were undamaged by the clot, which meant I was unlikely to have recurring aches and pains and less likely to develop another blood clot. For the final test, I was sent to a hematologist who took blood to identify any inherited blood factors that could increase the likeliness of another DVT. He found only one, minor genetic risk factor.

Overall, the news was good: no clot, no damage. Even finding I had a genetic risk factor was good news insomuch as we could note it in my medical records, and I could pass along information to my parents that one of them also carries the risk factor, which might be useful, considering that the incidence of DVT and PE increases with age, the surgeon general’s report said.

Knowing the clot is gone and that a small chance exists of developing another one left me uncertain about whether to return to running. On the one hand, getting figuratively kneecapped by a scary Scrabble word leaves an impression, and I often wonder what might have happened if not for that gut-instinct search for “calf tear.”

On the other hand, there is great relief knowing that, after years of listening to and interpreting my body’s signals as a runner, when I thought something was amiss, something was.

There was no easy answer. If you’ve had one DVT, your odds increase of getting another, more so if you have a genetic risk factor. But many factors are in play, some of which I can control.

I move around as much as possible. I wear seriously unsexy, but comfortable compression stockings to improve circulation in my legs when I am on my feet or sitting for long periods. And I keep up the activities that served me well as I recovered: yoga, swimming, bicycling.
  
In June last year, for the first time in six months, I ran. I ran slowly, carefully, self-consciously. I ran into some old and to-be-expected aches and pains, and I met some new ones. And anxiety was out on the trail too. But that day, I ran past it. Now, I don’t see it so often anymore. And last November, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon again, finishing with a new fastest time.

6 Early Signs of DVT & What You Can Do

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You may have been hearing about blood clots lately in the news related to some COVID vaccine shot side effects. While this is rare, if you are prone to clotting or already have a blood clot, this is a dangerous side effect. Blood clots can form for a multitude of other health reasons as well. Learn how to tell if you might have the early signs of DVT or blood clotting. The Vein Centre surgeons are here to help if you live near Belle Meade, Franklin, or Mt. Juliet, TN.

What is DVT Blood Clotting?

DVT stands for deep vein thrombosis. Your body has superficial and deep vein systems, both of which could experience clotting. Blood clots are a natural body function that stops bleeding after a cut or other injury. These clots are gel-like clumps of blood particles. Platelets and fibrin, protein strands, work together to adhere to a blood vessel or artery and block blood flow in that area. Clotting is a life-saving function after an injury, but if unnecessary clotting occurs if then becomes dangerous.

Types of Blood Clots

When a clot forms inside deep veins and arteries, that is the beginning of a potentially serious health concern. When a clot forms blood vessels and stays in place, it is called a thrombus. A thrombus can cut off blood flow to organs and tissue if it grows too large. Blocked blood flow can cause heart attacks, stroke, and death. If this occurs, emergency medical care is needed quickly.

Another type of dangerous blood clot is called an embolus. An embolus is a blood clot that comes loose from the vein wall. When this blood clot breaks free, it travels through the bloodstream. As it reaches smaller vessels, it can become lodged and block flow to that area. It can travel to the lungs, heart, or brain, causing pulmonary embolism and stroke. If you are experiencing these signs of DVT below, contact your doctor immediately.

Signs of Deep Vein Thrombosis

1) Swelling in Your Legs

Swelling is possible in the exact place a blood clot has formed. In some cases, the entire extremity affected will swell up, but more commonly, the leg will is below the knee. The swelling won’t be in both your legs, only the side where there is a blood clot.

Swelling can even occur after DVT treatment. Post-thrombotic syndrome develops weeks or months after DVT and causes chronic swelling in the leg. This happens because DVT damages veins and valves, causing them to become weak. Weak veins and valves allow blood to pool in your legs resulting in pain and swelling.

2) Redness

DVT causes redness in your arms and legs because blood vessels are blocked. The red color is a result of inflammation of the vein where there are one or more blood clots and can be one of the signs of DVT. You may notice a long, thin area of redness following the affected vein.

3) Leg Pain

Blood clots cause internal pain in the veins affected. As a clot worsens, you may experience discomfort and soreness in the area. The pain can range from a dull ache to intense throbbing pain. Pain in one leg or arm and not the other is a warning sign of DVT. Discomfort often increases with walking or standing for an extended period. Many people mistake this feeling for a pulled muscle, but leg pain from DVT will not go away with time as a muscle injury does.

4) Warmth

Feeling a warm sensation is one of the first symptoms of deep vein thrombosis. Your whole body won’t feel warm, only the affected limb. Only one leg will feel warm, or you will feel warmth radiating from one limb and not the other. Sometimes, only the area right above the blocked vein will be noticeably warmer.

5) Leg Cramps

Leg cramps are a common occurrence that most of us have felt before. Regular muscle cramps will go away pretty quickly by stretching or walking. Crampy feelings in the legs that won’t go away or worsen over time are symptoms of DVT. Cramping caused by DVT needs medical attention before it becomes dangerous. One test to see if you are experiencing a normal leg cramp or one from deep vein thrombosis is to bend the foot at the ankle so that your toes are pointing upward. With a normal cramp, this should alleviate pain. In the case of a blood clot, the pain will most likely intensify.

6) Skin Discoloration

Besides just turning limbs red, DVT can cause problematic skin discoloration and symptoms. Blood clots create high-pressure areas where veins are blocked. As blood cells try and pass through the high-pressure area, the cells are often damaged and proceed to break down. Hyperpigmentation occurs, and your skin can become dry, flaky, or itchy. Advanced cases of DVT without treatment are likely to develop eczema and skin ulcers in the affected area.

How to Treat and Prevent DVT

Many of the symptoms of DVT are the same symptoms as other conditions. It is best to seek medical attention and receive screening for blood clots if you are unsure. Deep vein thrombosis blood clots are dangerous and are a medical emergency waiting to happen.

DVT is treatable in several ways, depending on the severity. If you are high risk but haven’t developed clots yet, compression stockings will prevent swelling and reduce your chances of developing blood clots.

Medications help prevent blood from clotting in the first place, and some break up blood clots. The medications Coumadin, Lovenox, and Arixtra thin your blood making it harder for clots to form. Any existing clots won’t increase in size. In more severe cases, intravenous thrombolytic drugs break up existing blood clots.

Filters are another way to protect yourself from a dislodged blood clot. A filter is put inside the vena cava, a large abdominal vein, to stop a clot from making its way to your lungs.

DVT Treatment Options

Contact a Vein Doctor

If you are experiencing leg swelling, skin discoloration, redness, cramping, warmth, and pain, you may have DVT. Give the Vein Centre in Tennessee a call at 615.269.9007. Please schedule an appointment with our board-certified vascular surgeons in Belle Meade (Nashville), Franklin (Cool Springs/Brentwood), and Mt. Juliet, TN, as soon as possible. Blood clots are dangerous, and it is better to err on the side of caution if you are experiencing signs of DVT.

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Night cramps: causes and remedies

Neurology

A sharp burning pain in the calf muscles is familiar to almost everyone. Pain can be strong or weak, but it usually lasts only a few seconds. If the pain was severe, then after night cramps for another 1-3 days, pain in the legs during movement may disturb.

As a rule, nocturnal cramps affect only the calf muscles. In some cases, it can reduce fingers, foot, thigh. In fact, a cramp is a muscle contraction that occurs involuntarily and is accompanied by burning pain. At the same time, the muscles become hard. This problem is usually faced by people in middle and older age, but it is possible to experience convulsions in childhood.

Causes of leg cramps at night:

1. Lack of certain substances: calcium, potassium, magnesium. This problem usually occurs in people who drink a lot of fluids or sweat a lot during the day. Together with excess fluid, the necessary elements are also removed from the body. In addition, during pregnancy, a woman gives all the necessary substances to the developing fetus, which also provokes a lack of potassium, calcium and magnesium in the body.

2. Too much caffeine in the diet, smoking.

3. Lack of vitamin D, which contributes to better absorption of calcium by the body. A lack of calcium can cause this unpleasant phenomenon. Vitamin D is produced by the body through exposure to sunlight. In places where the sun is rare, for example, in the north, people often face a lack of this vitamin.

4. An excess of cortisol, which is produced during periods of depression and stress. Cortisol is a hormone that inhibits the absorption of calcium from food, and also increases its excretion with the help of the kidneys.

5. Curvature of the foot due to injury, flat feet.

6. Taking medicines for heartburn, gastritis, intestinal disorders also interferes with the normal absorption of trace elements from food intake, which results in night cramps.

7. The presence of a disease such as varicose veins.

8. Protein intake for muscle building. An excess of protein in the diet leads to ketosis, which becomes the main cause of calcium excretion from the body.

What to do in case of cramps in the calves:

1. As soon as the pain makes itself felt, you need to grab your toes with your hands and pull them towards you, hold your fingers in this position for about a minute. Then slightly relax your legs and pull your toes again.

2. Pinch the muscle with your fingers to relax it a little.

3. Massage the muscle with a warming ointment.

4. If the pain is not very severe, get out of bed and walk barefoot on the cool floor.

5. Raise your legs on a soft pillow to start the outflow of blood.

To avoid problems in the future, you need to take a full-fledged vitamin complex, enrich your diet with seafood, dairy products, fresh herbs, and fruits. If convulsions at night have become a frequent occurrence, then you should consult a doctor.

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Leg cramps at night: causes and prevention

Leg cramps are involuntary muscle contractions. These contractions are accompanied by pain. It can be both light, barely noticeable, and uncontrollable, unbearable. Cramps can affect both several muscles and one specific one. The timing of leg muscle spasms can vary greatly, but most often they disturb people at night, making it difficult to sleep. After all, if a cramp appears – and lasts even 1-2 seconds – the person wakes up anyway and the sleep cycle is disturbed. In this article, we’ll explain how cramps differ from restless leg syndrome and what you can do to avoid those annoying muscle spasms that disrupt your sleep.

Leg cramps most often occur at night, causing you to wake up

General information

A spasm is a muscle spasm, in this case, the lower extremities. Moreover, this spasm occurs mainly at night.

Where can leg cramps occur?

• thigh,
• in calves,
• in stops.

As a rule, leg cramps go away on their own. Preventive measures like stretching and massage can reduce the likelihood of muscle spasms.

Some people associate nighttime leg cramps with restless leg syndrome (RLS), but they are two different conditions. The cramps cause pain in a specific area, while the symptoms of RLS are more of a desire to move the legs rather than muscle spasms.

The causes of leg cramps can be different: the effect of drugs, sedentary or standing work, concomitant diseases, pregnancy

Why do nighttime leg cramps occur?

Some people believe that cramps are a sign of dehydration or vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies. Others believe that such symptoms occur only in pregnant women. This all has a place to be, but in fact there are much more factors provoking convulsions. Here are some of them.

1. Effect of drugs

Some drugs can make your legs hurt at night and make you more susceptible to cramps. For example, such a side effect may be in the treatment of:

• statins;
• diuretics – they are also diuretics, which wash out calcium, potassium and magnesium, and an insufficient amount of these trace elements leads to seizures;
• antihypertensive drugs;
• birth control pills.

2. Standing or sitting for long periods of time

A person is not adapted to either long sitting or standing for a long time, these are not physiological states for him. Being on your feet for a long period of time can cause leg muscle spasms due to the development of varicose veins. Varicose veins, on the other hand, are a special condition where blood pools in the legs and feet instead of maintaining good blood flow throughout the body. This leads to swelling, pain, cramps. A long sitting position – due to the same office work, for example – has the same effect. It is undesirable to sit cross-legged or throwing one leg over the other – this provokes muscle fatigue and insufficient blood supply to the limbs. Accordingly, convulsions appear – as a reaction to a lack of nutrients and oxygen in the blood.

What to do? Get up and stretch, move around or sit if you have been standing for too long. Any change in body position in space will help improve blood circulation.

Leg cramps during pregnancy are due to changes in the woman’s weight, her circulatory system, physiology, and increased blood pressure.

3. Pregnancy

Pregnant women are at increased risk of developing nighttime leg cramps – almost half of them experience this problem. Cramping usually occurs in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Experts believe that the main reason for the appearance of muscle spasms is the deficiency of certain nutrients that the muscles of the legs of the expectant mother do not receive, because the nutritional needs of the fetus are a priority. Physiologically, convulsions are also explained by an increase in the body weight of a pregnant woman, fetal pressure on the nerve endings of the limbs, changes in the circulatory system, and an increase in blood pressure.

Pregnant women can take self-care measures to relieve these cramps, such as wearing compression stockings and increasing their calcium and magnesium intake (after consultation with the doctor). If you are concerned about any side effects associated with pregnancy and sleep, be sure to discuss this with your doctor.

4. Dehydration

Dehydration is a common cause of leg cramps at night. You may not be drinking enough water during the day, or you may be dehydrated by a bout of diarrhea. Even physical exercises in hot weather can quickly deprive the body of fluid, thereby washing out valuable salts, trace elements, minerals: potassium, magnesium and calcium. When the body lacks fluids and electrolytes, muscles become more vulnerable to spasms and cramps.

It is therefore vital to get enough water per day to help your muscles relax. Water is the best remedy for dehydration because juices and sodas contain unhealthy sugar.

5. Excessive alcohol consumption

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found an association between alcohol consumption in people over 60 and the development of nighttime leg cramps. It is assumed that regular alcohol consumption causes a person to destroy type II muscle fibers, which increases the risk of muscle spasm at night.

Excessive alcohol consumption can also contribute to dehydration and a deficiency in important B vitamins. A lack of these vitamins, like a lack of other nutrients, significantly impairs the functioning of the nervous system, exacerbates muscle spasms.

6. Muscle fatigue

If you are an athlete or a gym fanatic, the most likely cause of leg cramps is muscle fatigue. Excessive physical activity without sufficient rest leads to muscle overwork, so athletes and people who lead an active lifestyle are at an increased risk of leg cramps.

Experts suggest two causes of exercise-induced muscle spasms: dehydration and muscle fatigue. Exercise and sleep are linked, as being physically active usually improves rest, but exercising too intensely can cause leg cramps that interfere with sleep.

7. Health problems

Frequent cramps in the muscles of the legs at night may be due to the fact that the body is busy dealing with some other problem. Narrowing of the arteries, compression (compression) of the spinal nerves, and a diet low in minerals are the main problems that can cause seizures. Medical and sleep problems are important to discuss with your doctor, especially if they affect your quality of life

How long do night leg cramps last?

Several seconds to 10 minutes. However, soreness in the legs may persist for several hours after the seizures stop. Cramps can occur in the hips, calves, and feet. Cramps in the hips usually last the longest, but cramps in the calf muscles are more common.

The Ultimate Guide to Beating the “Here and Now” Cramp

How to relieve nighttime leg cramps?

The following practices that you can do yourself can help reduce leg cramps at night. Many of them can be included in your daily routine today.

1. Stretch and relax your muscles

Stretching can help with leg cramps by increasing blood flow to the muscles and improving their performance. Additional benefits of stretching include reduced risk of injury, improved joint function, and improved overall physical performance. For best results, stretching should be done for at least 60 seconds.

What if you have a cramp at night? To remove it, gently but firmly stretch the foot by bending it and pressing on the big toe.

2. Massage

Foot massage can help relax muscles and reduce pain. It is also useful for improving blood flow, stretching muscle tissue and increasing mobility. Massage is very relaxing and helps you fall asleep faster.

Walking on your heels can help fight leg cramps

3. Walking on heels

Predominantly leg cramps occur at night in the calf area. Walk on your heels for about 20 steps, then turn around and do the same on your way back. Try to walk like this for as long as you can, or until you notice that the pain goes away. Walking on your heels stimulates the muscles on the opposite side of your lower leg, thereby helping it to relax. And this prevents or stops the cramp.

4. Epsom salt bath

A bath that you can easily incorporate into your daily bedtime routine can help relieve leg cramps. The idea is that heat increases blood flow to the muscles, reducing pain. A bath can not only contribute to better blood circulation in the muscles, but also help you psychologically relax after a working day, and therefore sleep well.

5. Warm and cold packs

Apply a hot towel or heating pad to the sore spot (cramped muscle). Heat helps to relax tense muscles. You can also apply an ice pack to help ease the pain.

6. Power supply

Your diet should be correct, filled with a balanced diet, including a large amount of calcium, potassium and magnesium.