I used to be quite a good swimmer and kept hearing about the danger of cramps for swimmers. I thought "how bad could it be?", all I ever got was minor cramps in my calf muscles, nothing serious. Until one day, I had been swimming for at least 2 kilometers at quite a fast pace when suddenly my whole body cramped and completely locked up. I couldnt hold on to the edge or the pool (wich was right there) and sank to the bottom. My heart rate and oxygen consumption was quite high and tunnel vison started to set in quickly. Thank god we were supervised and they pulled me out. I would have been dead right there if it wasnt for some quick action. I tell this to all the swimmers, don't ever go to your limits when you're alone at the pool!
That's terrifying. I thought it maybe made your legs or arms locked - that's all. I thought about swimming in a lake and I thought I would be safe as long as I took something floating with me in case I needed to stop swimming
Oh f... This is really scary. I admit, I'm good swimmer too and I'm kinda thinking: wtf? Cramps? You could just hold in water how difficult could it be... Thanks for sharing, I'll be more careful when swimming now (i.e. don't swim alone far from people).
I will never get you amateurs. us divers are taught from day freaking one: calm down, don't panick and let your LIGHTER THEN WATER body float. how do i know you're an amateur? cuz i've had full body lockups and cramps about a dozen times over the years during practice. i've only needed help to recover the first time. git gud.
I got a cramp at a sports awards ceremony in my quad, shot up to stretch it, and proceeded to cramp EVERYWHERE in my legs. It was a blur to me, but according to the people at my table my face visibly drained of colour, I said "help", and proceeded to lose consciousness. Woke up on the ground surrounded by our physios. That was definitely dehydration, we had been playing in Malaysian heat all day. To this day it's the most painful thing I have ever experienced. Absolutely hilarious. Have the photo of me passed out on the ground around somewhere 😂
This is part of grade 12 biology here, the entire muscular structure as well as fast and slow, and the nervous system to explain things like tetanus. Everybody who passes grade 12 bio will know this. But American education is garbage
@@MedlifeCrisis I fix my cramp which happens after prolonged exercise but in bed at night! 1) Keep warm 2) Immediately straighten the leg kicking straight many times. 3) Stand up and stamp quickly with affected leg until the cramp subsides! 4) Repeat above if cramp returns. Try walking around for 15 mins before going back to bed. 5) Try adding electrolyte salts to drinks before exercise! 6) Within 30 mins of strenuous prolonged exercise eat high GI to spike blood sugar and insulin then eat protein like an egg! This will help muscle repair. Do not eat fat with the protein as this will cause low GI! You need High GI and protein directly after exercise. Like a Mars Bar and Chicken Breast! Try that and let me know how it goes please!
I solved my morning calve cramp horrors permanently by doing this. For me they were always cause by a morning stretch in bed by pointing my toes. I trained myself to contract my shin muscles by pointing my toes toward my head instead. It’s very satisfying stretch and I haven’t had a calve cramp in about 2 years now.
I have committed to getting proper subtitles done for all my videos for the last year or so, but I hit publish before they were ready this time, sorry! They're up now. I haven't had time to check through properly so excuse any errors. You see, I care about accessibility, but clearly not actually that much. What a virtue subtitler! (I'll get round to it soon) Edit: singular “cramp” Is how we say it in the UK!
See, but you never mentioned in the video how standing up almost immediately when getting a cramp in the morning makes a cramp go away. There's gotta be a survey or trial out there on this, right?
@@biaroca Thank you both, unfortunately community submitted subs were stopped some years back and now the only way to add a sub file is with access to the account, so it would be very laborious for someone. If I can scale up production in years to come, I'd love to have other languages (ie pay for them).
Ah, nice to see you're following Tom's advice: "BUY SOME GODDAMN SUBTITLES!!". As a non-native speaker I gotta say I really appreciate subtitles sometimes, there's so many English accents out there, it can be a bit hard to understand something from time to time.
As a woman, hearing someone asking about my cramp experience is not uncommon. Aside from womanly cramp pain, I experience harrowing leg cramps, to the point I avoid sleeping in a certain position. I have left my bed to crawl around like a victim bitten by a zombie, becoming increasingly rabid, frustrated soul hoping I could "walk it off". This is due to the fact, my leg has decided to "nah " it not and oh, here enjoy this distasteful cramps. I have consulted doctors, they have no clue as to why, however, they have advice me to go to physio therapy. Physio therapist, bless their heart, made the situation worse. I am back to avoiding sleeping in a certain position and my puppy looks forward to following me crawling around in the middle of the night. ::sigh::
There was one time in 2017 that I had cramps all night to the point my family took me to the ER. Now, i have 24/7 tingling in my feet. I had leg cramps (inner thigh ones) and severe ones too. After that episode, I now have trouble walking more than 15 minutes. I was diagnosed with deep and superficial Chronic Venous Insufficiency. Sclerotherapy has helped lessen my cramps but I still have trouble walking.
I have found that I can sometimes tell when a muscle will cramp if I stretch or contract it past a certain point. And preloaded to cramp or actually cramping, I find massaging the muscle in question to help alot. Don't directly use the muscle, just mangle it with your hands (or a loved ones hands) with a deep massage. Sometimes you might do it yourself since you can feel where the muscles in question are.
63 years old and an occasional nocturnal leg cramper myself. Recurrent since my teen years. The data point that I want to add is that I had a DVT as a post-surgical complication several years ago, and the pain in my leg felt *exactly* like the pain in the aftermath of a cramp. It was a familiar enough feeling that I initially ignored it. I had no memory of having had a cramp, but hey, this was after prostate surgery and I wasn't exactly sleeping normally so I thought maybe I slept through it. I normally only feel that aftermath pain for a few hours, so when this lasted a full day, I started to get suspicious. So, fellow crampers, if you are at risk of DVT due to surgery (or for any other reason), remember this and don't ignore post-cramp pain --- because it might not be post-cramp pain.
The next question after that: why do we see psychedelic colors swirling around on the insides of our eyeballs at night when our eyes have been closed for a few hours?
@alexschalk5439 Would make sense, if we had pain receptors in our brain. I don't know enough to say there are no pain system inside the brain, but pain receptors are like pain in the heart, used to be quite redundant. If you felt trauma there, you were dead. Now it could be handy. In some 10_000 years maybe we will start developing that.
Here is my story that I've never shared with anyone. In those half-awake half-asleep moments of the early morning, if I stretch my legs & FLEX MY TOES, a cramp is at high risk of happening. I always assumed that the days of lingering pain was from the muscle tissue literally tearing itself apart as it involuntarily pulled against itself with more force than I could ever voluntarily exert. I also thought that it was due to my alcohol consumption & subsequent dehydration. This video is making me rethink that point. Here is the real reason I'm posting this. They say that pain is the best teacher & I have found a way to mitigate the effects of the cramp. Once your brain receives that 'MetalGearSolidAlert' you must act as quickly as possible by repeatedly flexing your leg at the knee as far as it will go as fast as you can. KEEP THOSE MUSCLES BUSY ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Expand, Contract, Expand, Contract, Expand, Contract, etc... don't stop until the cramp does. To h311 with your bed partner, they're on their own. Cramps need a little time to build their full strength. As long as you start flexing BEFORE the cramp hits 100% power, it will stall at whenever you begin to flex. You only have 1.5 to 2 seconds to react. Stopping the cramp at 25%-50% is still going to hurt, but it's WAY preferable to letting it hit 100% and leaving you rolling around the floor moaning in agony for what feels like an eternity. NEVER AGAIN I SAY!
Cramps are muscle contractions so in order to fight them you must do the opposite i.e. stretch the muscle immediately and hard. Drinking a lot of water reduces the risk of cramps.
For me there's clearly a correlation with drinking less than normal. I normally drink a lot (compared to others) during the day, but on days with lots of meetings, for example, or other reasons I drink less, I often have these night cramps. Sometimes when I have a bad case, I keep feeling it for several days.
As a sufferer of regular calf cramps when waking up, the best method for me of stopping it in its tracks is to leap out of bed and stand upright. I'm now so conditioned to it, that it's now an automatic response. It works so well that the pain often only lasts a few seconds. I can also trigger a cramp at will, not that I do it for fun 😂
For me the response is immideatly relax my calf when I notice it is about to start cramping, maybe carefully using the oposite mussle to pull my foot towards me. I can't imagine jumping out of bed and tensioning the mussle actualy makes it better, why does it work? Also learned to not overtighten it as it does trigger cramps sooner or later.
This 100% works, like every time. You have to act fast though. As soon as you feel the cramp coming on jump out of bed and dance around using your calfs. I wish this was more common knowledge. I suffered from these for years before learning this method. My wife doesn't even flinch anymore when I do this. I am also conditioned to do this without thinking now.
@@kacperkuryllo5376 Yeah, you gotta jump quick and dance around a bit before something tears. After that, you can relax and find the right rest position.
About a year ago I had this scary episode where I've half fallen asleep in the evening, woke up to a cramp in my calf. It quickly spread to my thigh, then my other leg both calf and thigh, then my arms, then my torso and even the face. It was absolutely agonizing pain, I could only squirm on the bed and scream. Felt like I'm about to die. After several minutes that felt like hours it subsided, I could barely move with slurred speech. Was taken to A&E where they ran basic tests and literally the only thing they could find was a minor dehydration which to be honest was probably from the sweat during the episode. Never happened since and I still don't have a faintest clue what caused it.6
Oh god I have had the same exact experience as you, I was also just in bed woken up to agonising pain from a back cramp. I felt like I couldn’t move and only could scream in pain. I could only make a call to a family member to help me take to the hospital. Similar to you m, they only said I was dehydrated. I felt like I was going to die that night, but it was truly the most discomforting pain I’ve ever had. I occasionally get back cramps for minutes but not one was similar to that night’s pain.
Thanks for your work. I’m an Orthopedic Spine Surgeon with 40 years experience and I get this question everyday. I learned some things from your video and would love to learn more if you find out something relevant!
It's SOOO cool to hear from a doctor about their own journey into finding out why they are suffering from a mysterious ailment. I wonder if more stories like this from more doctors would increase trust from patients.
I think admitting that there is A LOT about human health that they don't understand would be a start. The pedestal our society puts doctors on is undeserved IMO.
That chubby emu video about being on a diet and accidentally messing up one of his vitamin calculations was wild. Apparently as I remember he felt vaguely like shit for awhile but it was specifically severe insomnia that was plaguing him. The wilder part of the story was at one point after maybe a year he drank an energy drink on a whim during a severe episode. After an hour he got sleepy and went to bed and slept like a baby. At this point using energy drinks to sleep you might see where this is going he figured out it was the vitamins(B12 probably?) in the energy drink and just fixed his micros and everything was fine again. Which ya know probably great overall advice for someone with a vague new ailment, the first and easiest thing you can rule out is make sure you’re getting all your nutrients. Side note though, I haven’t finished the video and I know there’s at least a chance this story may be similar wouldn’t that be a coincidence lol
This is going to sound cheesy, but I wish every academic communicate science like you: with some serious, rigorous examination and healthy skepticism about the state of the science while also dealing with it in a casual and easy-going way. As a uni student, I feel like the world of academia has been, most of the time, a letdown for me, and your videos are full of knowledge and joyous curiousity that I love. So, thank you. Also, your sense of humor is totally right up my alley, so there you go.
Exactly. I think in a lot of ways (until pretty recently with the rise of online and more easily approachable sources of education at least) academia tends to take itself a bit TOO seriously at times, and I can remember looking at a lot of STEM and thinking how serious and intimidating a lot of it was. In reality when you're really in it as long as you're doing a good job and getting your facts right when you need to, you're doing STEM right. Academia in general tends to suffer from severe elitism and gatekeeping of certain types of information at times, even if that information isn't actually that deep and complicated.
Disclaimer that I'm by no means an expert on anything, I'm just some guy on the internet who has had a lot of sucky experiences with muscle cramps waking me up. Honestly, the fact that a cramp can actually cause a severe hematoma and potentially end a well-trained athlete's career in the worst cases, seems to indicate to me that the mechanism of a cramp is exactly what it feels like- An involuntary, unrestrained muscle spasm that exerts so much force that it actually causes muscle and blood vessel damage. Which would explain why in endurance athletes it could potentially go on for hours and cause permanent damage, no muscle in the body is built to output that much force, and we typically only do so, to my knowledge at least, in extreme survival situations where we have adrenaline flooding our system as fight or flight kicks in, which is why we have instances of people performing seemingly superhuman acts of strength, like lifting a car off of someone important to them in a moment of panic, they wouldn't normally be able to tap into that level of strength, since the body regulates itself so that we're not essentially tearing our muscles by using our full strength to just pick up a pencil. Though it would seem these cramping episodes are an exception to that, like perhaps it's just a common "glitch" in the nervous system that may not so much have a function related to it, but just be a faulty impulse from some leftover instinct humans used to have. Or maybe it's just our bodies being a bag of d!(&s to us. I don't know, if I had a clue as to the why they happen, I'd probably make up some pseudoscience as a cover and teach people how to prevent them entirely, be despised by the scientific community for a couple decades, then after I die a peaceful cramp-free life as a millionaire, scientists would later do trials on my method and find out what the actual scientific basis of it is, like how they did with meditation, and vegans. But we don't have that information even in an unscientific format, sometimes being human just sucks. Although I WOULD like to at least know why the leg muscles like the calves and hamstrings are so disproportionately affected by this instead of other muscle groups, after all, the legs are some of the universally largest and strongest muscles in humans, even as untrained individuals, and the condition seems to almost be worse in those with more muscle mass than average, maybe there's a correlation between muscle size and odds of muscle cramps? Or maybe it has to do with muscle imbalances, such as untrained individuals having less developed upper bodies and that somehow causes cramps in their stronger lower bodies? I don't know, this is all just speculation, and I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been at least one billionaire who has had recurring cramps bad enough to just go- "F**k it, I'm hiring some researchers, this pain has to go-"
I've experienced some pretty painful cramps, where the pain took a week plus, to receede fully. One day, a physiotherapist told me, not to try stretching the muscle immediately to fight the contraction. He suggested to put load on the muscle, but not stretch it immediately. Then, slowly stretch the muscle while keeping it loaded (about 1 minutes). I tried it, and the pain receeded almost instantly when load was applied (standing on my toes, since it is pretty much isolated to my calves). Have applied this strategy ever since, and haven't had any of those "it lasted a bloody week" experiences.
I have a similar experience, I rarely get cramps but when I do (usually from brief overextenstion), they are very painful and I've learned not to fight them. I try to relax and find a position in which the pain recedes, let the cramp sort itself out, then gently go back to normal activity. I'm usually fine after about ten minutes.
Yes that works for me. I get foot cramps. Lying in bed and stretching never worked. I had to get out of bed. Stand up gradually putting weight on the feet and it gradually goes away.
Yes, this is what I did yesterday when I had my first night cramp. I always try to tell my wife to get up and weight her leg but she is afraid to do anything so I just hold her foot and leg and try to figure out which direction will help. It always turns out to be dorsiflexion even when she complains that it makes it worse at first. If she would only get up and weight it in dorsiflexion I think she would be able stop it. But sometimes it hits while she is still sleeping and by then it's too late for her to be able to resolve it on her own.
Every time I try to explain to patients that no one actually knows what's up with cramps, they give me the side eye! I feel so validated by this video! I'm overall healthy and yet I get hellacious cramps--not all the time, but in runs, like my migraines. Seems like something periodically increases my "cramp tone."
Cupping can fix cramps. I'm not getting any cramps anymore in my feet since cupping in various places on them. I don't know if I'll ever get them again but I plan to do some more cupping on my feet either way.
dang that sounds annoying. I love running and I smh never get cramps. I always attributed that to my flexibility, I did a lot of yoga growing up and I can still do a split pretty easily. I always thought since flexibility is the ability to relax and control those muscle groups that would tense up usually if you go into a stretching pose that cramps must have something to do with an inability to control those muscles.... but I have no clue. Could also be because I consume copious amounts of watered down tea every day to stay hydrated.
Whenever I watch your videos, you genuinely make me care a lot more about my fitness level. So I thank you for nagging on about it because it does help. A year ago I spent most my days at the computer working or playing, now I've been going actively to the gym for 6 months and loving it. In the start I did do cardio but dropped it when I started focusing more on resistance training. Now after this video I'll once again integrate cardio into my routine. I won't say you're the reason I started exercising but honestly, you were a big part of why I started to care and wanted to care for my own health and not be negligent. So thank you!
As someone who sometimes gets severe calf cramps in the morning like you, I find that if I stand up within 1 to 2 seconds of the onset I can prevent the severe cramp from progressing
2nd this. It also helps me if I put as much weight or force into the leg as I can, sometimes thinking about pressing my leg into the floor. If I can relieve the cramp quickly enough, I don't get the lingering pain afterwards.
I used to get calf cramps whenever I woke up as a kid sometimes and I also figured that if I fully straighten my leg using my muscles as much as I can I can prevent the cramp somehow during its onset
Agreed. I find it helps in two ways - 1. It helps to pull out the cramp. I learnt the quicker you pull it out, the less it hurts, and the less it will keep hurting afterwards. I was not suprised at all my the scan, as it always felt the muscle was damaging itself by being in the cramped up position. Keep it out of the position, keep away the pain & damage. 2. Lowering the leg below the rest of me, seems to help prevent it wanting to cramp - after all I don't want to be pulling out the cramp all night. I always assumed its something to do with localised fluid levels - if cold or laying down, this will reduce. I also think i more likely to get it if wearing socks while laying down - which would also reduce blood flow.
Love that this man feeds our curiosity, specially when watching a 30min video is way better than spending hours looking up research on cramps before a pharmacology final. This was posted just in time, Great job as always ❤️
Still, I am left with so many questions :-) Like: How about the frequency of the muscle cramps? Are they constant from person to person? Or muscle to muscle? I think my tics and my calf cramps are roughly the same frequency, but am I right? And: When electricity can induce cramps, is it possible to do something similar to noise canceling headphones? A smart (and benign) Taser thingy?
0:18: 🤔 The video explores the mystery of muscle cramps and why they occur. 4:01: 🤔 The RUclipsr discusses their experience with muscle cramps and the mystery of a tender lump in their calf. 7:41: 🤔 The video discusses the causes of muscle cramps and focuses on cramps affecting healthy skeletal muscle. 11:40: 🎥 The video discusses the process of muscle contraction and the proteins involved. 15:17: 🔍 The video discusses the contradictory studies and factors associated with muscle cramps. 19:04: 🥤 The video discusses the history and fascination with Pocari Sweat, a Japanese drink, and its attempt to advertise on the moon. 27:14: 🤔 The speaker discusses a unique case of muscle cramps and the lack of consistent remedies. 31:18: 💪 The video discusses the benefits of using a professional coach for personalized workout plans and accountability. Recap by Tammy AI
Adding my personal experience: my calf usually cramps in a way that pulls my foot downwards. Hurts like heck, but eventually I learned that if I stop my foot from being pulled pointing down, I can eliminate the pain. Basically as long as I can do the opposite and force the foot up, the pain mostly stops. Since my legs, as an overweight person, are the strongest muscles in my body, this can be a very difficult battle and hurts the whole time. But once I find and execute the counter manouver, the pain usually ends, other than those situations where I too assume that I have torn my muscle on some level. That kind of pain lasts from days to week. My most recent strategy to achieve this is to bend both of my knees and force my cramping leg heel down while forcing the foot up using the other foot. Very effective. After I have broken through the pain phase, the cramp usually still lasts for a while and does exactly what was shown on the video: painless but violent muscle movement under my skin. Cant explain why it doesnt hurt at that point but thats my experience.
@@o0o-jd-o0o95 Ah, but when you get opposing muscle groups cramping against each other, stretching one group allows the other to cramp worse. I had a few of those a month or two ago, oh joy.
@@r0cketplumberI personally found that if I stick a thumb in there and find the right spot, that can help in stopping one of the groups cramping, so I can then stretch the other one. It's not a "will help", but in that situation one would try even for a slim chance.
@@TranscenGopher Yes, that's what I eventually managed to do, but when you wake up in pain it's difficult to think out the process. If you can't stretch a muscle, at least compressing it from the side can help.
My immediate family have all been plagued by morning calf cramps, so that intro was down right stressful. But I’ve noticed a few things about the cramps. They started quite early on, around 9 - 13 for myself and my sister, unsure on parents but it’s always seems to have been prevalent because my parents immediately knew to massage the area HARD as you can go (which works but feels like stabbing the flesh in the moment) so they’ve encountered it plenty times before and even have a “cure” that’s sprung up at one point in our communities. We are south Asian and have the muscle and eye twitches so my feeling is that there’s some sort of genetic component or at least susceptibility. The one thing that I do feel pretty confidently about that helps is to ensure that your legs are out straight and not bent whilst being immobile for a long time like sleeping. I’ve even “prevented/caught” a cramp in my mother by straightening out her bent leg while she was taking a nap and she woke up asking how I knew she was having a cramp before her waking up. I’ve always thought it’s some sort of thing about cutting or reducing blood flow, sort of like with pins and needles, but I’ve already expressed far too many anecdotes, bias and opinions in this comment which are 3 things, as a medical student, I know better than to have.
I used to get a lot of muscle/eye twitches but I found Broccoli and Kale thickened my blood. This I think made it difficult for blood to circulate so my tissues were starved of not only oxygen but nutrients too. With a slow resting heart rate too this led to many health problems including paroxysmal AF and bowel and joint problems. It also gave me visual migraines and vision anomalies. I researched the area for years and was even put on anticoagulants but the fix was not to eat the foods high in vitamin K like the broccoli! I now eat lactose and gluten free and take omega 3 supplements and others which has eliminated 99 percent of the problem. Dietary changes were key! Particularly avoiding the broccoli!
I find I get them if I am too cold when sleeping. If I can manage to grab my toes and pull them upwards toward my knees, it helps rather quickly, and if I can do this quickly enough, I usually don’t get a muscle lump after.
In over 40 years of working with muscles what I have observed is that muscles that cramp have usually been over worked in some way without attention to balancing them out with gentle pulsing stretch following the activity. Muscles at rest should be soft and pliable. I have found that addressing the trigger points in 3 lines along the length of the muscle in the calf and then following it with a gentle stretch often throughout the day will either prevent the cramp from happening or at least lessen the severity. Likewise addressing the trigger points while in spasm will get rid of the spasm more quickly and often eliminate the stiffness that occurs afterward. I have used the Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy method to accomplish this as well as erasing many other muscle related areas of pain. I know there is great controversy re ballistic and static stretch but I’ve experienced much better success with gentle, pulsing, ballistic than with static.
Calfs, my girlfriend told me I am moving my toes very fast during sleep. It's like my calf trying to do 30 contractions per second moving my toes. Everyone probably have seen a cat or dog sleeping and twitching their face muscles very fast. Something similar...
yeah they suuuuck, been getting them regularly since 2019. I have found that regularly massaging my calfs with an exercise roller does reduce the chances of it happening.
An interesting personal anecdote is that I stopped cramping after moving out from my parents house- within a week of returning they returned as well which strongly suggests for me it is an environmental (probably dietary and/or exercise) effect Edit- also the cramps i had are the EXACT type of cramps you're experiencing. My best guess is my multivitamin and improved exercise but thats just a guess
It can be linked with allergies and/or anxiety, I get real twitchy at mu parents home cause I'm very dust allergic, and my parents are also quite annoying to deal with.
I completely forgot to mention environmental factors in my comment but that's a good point! I get the same type of cramps but for me they mostly happen when I'm traveling with my family
You are all more mentally and emotionally healthy than all of your family that’s why. Your brain goes into fight or flight when you are around their illness.
As a biologist that was deeply affected by cramps since I was a teenager and struggled to understand such phenomena as a student, I'd like to share some thoughts here. First of all, I realized that I would get cramps if I had drunk and walked a lot the day before. So yeah, support for the dehydration hypothesis. But then I started arriving home after some drinks and sinking in at least 1 L of water, eating bananas (the 'potassium trap'), among other trials. None of them worked. Secondly: around four years ago I started getting into sports (running and cycling). And (not) surprisingly, those early mornings/3 am cramps diminished in frequency (but they are still pretty painful). Lastly, and perhaps the most curious thing I have to share, a year ago it came to my knowledge that my uncle. He works as a mason/bricklayer would have such cramps all over his body once or twice a week, and guess the only thing that works for him? Vitamin C. I started foreseeing cramps at some point and, whenever I did, I would take a damn vitamin C pill, and it was also a success for me. I even went out to the literature but only found links between cramps and uterus cramps. Perhaps genetics might play a huge role on excruciating pain cramps. PS: I almost believed the BTC funded project was going to happen and I was about to volunteer. 😆
Some have mentioned pickle juice. Both vitamin C and it are acidic. Could there be a local pH disturbance in the muscles or nerves? I have no idea how that might lead to cramps, though. Should be easy to test if vinegar works as well as vitamin C does.
Ok. My experience, I got early morning cramps somewhat frequently through my whole life, to the point were when I jump out of bed screaming in pain my wife won’t even ask what’s going on. Two things for sure drive my leg cramps: 1. Exercising without a cooldown period and stretching, yep learn it from Tour de France cyclist they fully degrade their lactate after the race in a cooldown spin to better recover for the next day. Let’s call this exertion driven. 2. When I shift to a low carb diet I would always get 10X more cramps than usual about a week or two into the change in diet, probably just when my body begins to run high Ketosis, because that’s when the weight loss gets kicking. Years ago I heard from my Dr that cramps where very frequent on overweight people (high BMI) changing to low carb diet, certainly it was in my case. So this is metabolically driven, however we do know that fat metabolism requires 6X more water than glycogen. And when I’m on ketosis I wake up very thirsty. So this one seems to be dehydration as a consequence of running on ketosis. My general hypothesis is that both are related to lactate concentration in muscles, but high exertion and ketosis seem to increase local concentration of lactate in the calfs, and that is what drives muscles to contract involuntarily. As a preview of upcoming years, let me tell you that at 50, and close to my overweight peak, my left lats started to get frequent cramps when flexing my hips. Now this is scary, real scary, because the hip and torso get fully stiff, in sharp pain under your ribs until the contractions stop. At first I thought I was having some sort of CV event but I was fine afterward, just a little sore. Later I thought it might be some kind of aneurysm as I could feel and see the twitching under my left side last couple of ribs. Luckily after loosing about 30 lbs, and being much more active it went away. I highly recommend not to get one of these while driving.
I used to have terrible night cramps in my calves, but what finally worked for me was iron supplements for my anemia. If I get the ghost of a cramp coming on these days, Vitamin C will usually work, presumably because it helps in absorbing iron from the diet. This may or may not have something to do with your case. I just thought I'd throw it out there. It never occurred to me that I could have anemia; I eat so many iron-containing foods.
I wonder if cramps also have some psychological cause. Ive noticed that I get cramps much more frequently when Im highly stressed, I also tried to be hydrated and increased my consumption of K in an attempt of reducing cramping but the effect was minimal, Ive had better success by doing exercise. Reading about your experience makes me think that taking the Vitamin C might have had some kind of placebo effect if in fact cramps have a psychological relationship at all. Im going to try taking the Vitamin C to see if it helps my cramps.
Woke up to an excruciating calf cramp just a few days ago and felt the lingering pain for the next few days. As a chronic pain sufferer it was particular disheartening to start the day that way. Thanks for reminding me I’m not alone in this suffering!
I get the same calf cramps, usually while sleeping in the middle of the night, occasionally in more embarrassing situations - like a movie theater. Can only guess what the rest of the audience thought I was doing as I writhed in pain and tried to restrain my heavy breathing through the misery. 😅
This video kept reminding me of my experience with frequent migraine headaches. They seem to share a similar space in physiology and my efforts to learn more about migraine has left me more confused. Triggers are often opposites, too much meds, not enough meds, too much sleep, not enough sleep, a change in sleep etc... I would love to see a video by you on the subject someday. Thanks!
Yes! I get a calf cramp (typically in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping) about once a year. It’s definitely one of the worst pains and it stays sore for about a week just as you’ve said. EDIT: I just remembered that I got pretty bad calf cramps from playing sand volleyball. It consistently happened because I hadn’t eaten much of anything the day I played. Otherwise, I don’t cramp much while playing.
My life got somewhat derailed by gut cramps. It took me years to connect them to stress because they began when I was quite young and they could kick in before I was even consciously stressed. They absolutely shredded my ability to study.
Yes and more yes Stress is the cause of a huge array of problems we experience. Whilst I dont think stress is the sole cause of cramps, it most definitely will be the cause for people who are stressed.
For me the cold is the trigger. If I walk barefoot on a cold floor and the temperature of the toes drops, instant cramps. Or on cold nights, if I put my feet outside the covers, instant cramp. It doesn't matter if I've exercised or not. And I drink a lot of water. So those aren't factors in my case. My father has the same symptoms, which leads me to think that it is some inherited genetic alteration of the muscle signaling system.
@@jpdoc5722 Unfortunately, no doctor has been able to establish a cause. We haven't been prescribed any medication, only palliative advice. Hydration, massages, exercises. 😔
It happens exactly the same with me and I notice it's the cold. I also sometimes have toe cramps I don't know what they're called and it's usually because I touched some cold surface with my toes. It's incredibly painful
For me it turned out to be cold-related too. On hot summer nights, I used to sleep with bare legs under a single bedsheet, and would wake up with painful calf cramps. But ever since I keep the cover over my legs, no more cramps!
It definitely is genetic, my mom has had horrible leg cramps my entire life (can’t comment on the earlier occurrences) and she has DVT. I am now entering cramp city at 30 and I’m developing broken capillaries like they are going out of business.
Great video. I disagree that Med Life Crisis videos are useless - my Australian has come on leaps and bounds with this one. Speaking from experience, it's so easy to let your exercise and training slip. Glad to say that after a four year layoff, I'm back with the plan and have not felt so good in years. Thanks for your content - one of the best channels on RUclips.
If you get a cramp in your right leg for example. Put the dorsum of your right foot to the plantar surface of your left foot and dorsiflex your right foot (and leg somewhat) against your foot. This stops the cramp almost immediately for me and saves me from the prolonged pain experienced afterwards as you mentioned. Cheers!
For the calf, I’ve found that jumping out of bed and standing up normally on the leg ends it instantly, usually before whatever damage that would hobble me for three days can really set in. The first time I heard about this it seemed inconceivable to me that I could even try to stand on the leg, but now I do it any time anything twinges and I’ve avoided a lot of suffering. (Edit: my calf muscle relaxes as I put weight on my foot, but if you try this make sure you grab something for support if yours doesn’t to take the weight off, or you’re unable to balance! )
You are absolutely right. Its the pulling it out by standing doing the lasting damage. Lay still and let it pass. It will be a bit longer in cramp pain but you won't have the lasting pain.
Yep, works just like that for me as well. Which leads me to suspect some kind of neurological phenomenon is at the root of my calf cramping - putting weight on my foot closes an open-loop feedback signal and keeps it from running away (i.e. fracturing my tibia)...
I'm in my late 20s and have had the same leg cramp issue as you since I was in high school. Being sore in the leg for a week is definitely the worst part.
I had that at school. Was so bad I couldn't do Physical Education (games) the next say at school. My mum (bless her) wrote a letter to excuse me, explaining I had 'midnight cramps'. The school teachers thought it was a big joke and read it out to the whole class and fellow teachers! It was not hilarious! B***ards!
Thanks for the video, the simple fact that other people have described what I go through is comforting. I watched the video to the end, and that’s where I found your information that I needed, specifically the hematoma reference, because I get severe cramps pretty regularly, and I had a severe one that gave me a huge hematoma on my thigh, went to the doctor, and, like you said, they had no clue that a cramp could cause a hematoma and said it probably was a hit, but I am dead sure it was a hematoma!
Oof. This hits me hard. Since I was a teenager(now over 40), I have been dealing with these horrible calf cramps. Totally debilitating. I would be laying there in bed crying from the pain. So much pain and force that at times it felt like the muscle was about to be pulled away. After such an incident, I would be sore for a couple of days sometimes, and in the immediate aftermath I would often be nearly unable to walk. It doesn't happen now as often as it did during puberty, it has gone from a peak of anywhere from once a month to 2-3 times a week, and now happens infrequently, perhaps 3-6 times a year - but strangely, now they tend to cluster. If it happens once, it seems more likely to happen again within a week or two. I have discovered that when you get that first twinge telling you it's about to hit, stretch the leg out straight and holding it like that until the cramp releases, results in less immediate pain, and less after-cramp soreness. But if you let the muscle contract, it's gonna feel like the muscle is being torn in half. My cramp episodes tend to last anywhere from 30 seconds to the worst being almost 5 minutes. 0 of 5 stars, do not recommend cramps.
Ah puberty might be a clue. Rapid growth! How does the body achieve that without issues? That would also fit with exercise triggers as exercise triggers growth and also healing of lots of microtears ...
Have you happened to notice your state of mental well being when the cramps strike? I've often noticed a correlation between anxious phases and a higher risk of cramps.
For those struggling with morning calf cramps triggered by the semi voluntary stretching, try this. The next time you feel the onset of a cramp, pull your calf muscle back by swivelling your foot so that the toes start pointing towards you. Essentially stretch your calf muscle in the direction opposite to the one that triggered the cramp. Hold steady until you feel the tightness subside, and then five seconds more. Then continue being cautious with your movements for some time. I've been able to stall many cramps at that relatively painless early stage.
Same here, when I can't cut them off at that stage (ie I'm asleep when it starts) I often need my wife to help me pull against the cramp - awful! So painful! Glad most can be cut off for some of us
@@Lady8D It's awful, but the calf one I really do deal with quite well. My biggest problem area is my rib, which suffers a really painful cramp sometimes, and unlike the calf one I can't really reign that one in. May I ask though, do you get enough sunlight in a day and how's your mental health overall and would you consider yourself as being in a healthy weight category? I ask because I was in bad shape four or five weeks ago, and it didn't change until I started going down for morning walks. Dunno whether it's the Vita D or just the mental uplift from being in the sun (my house is dim). Also, previously when I was at a healthier weight, my symptoms were much milder generally.
The kind of severe calf pain you describe was what I experienced after two weeks of no coffee cold turkey as my only withdrawal symptom after 20 years of drinking more than a liter of coffee daily with only the occasional break. The searing calf pain was really bizarre, it only occurred when I tried to leave my legs still. I needed to constantly walk and was absolutely miserable for a few days as I couldn't really sleep or do anything besides constantly walking, not knowing what caused it at that point trying painkillers, water and vigorous calf/leg exercises that momentarily helped so I could sleep for a little bit before waking up to the pain again. After reading about muscle pains and cramps I found something about low blood pressure and knew that caffeine raises it was when I drank half a cup of coffee and the problem was instantly gone and I finally slept good. The next few days I halved the amount of coffee again and again until the pain never occurred again.
i have never felt so seen in my life! I have gotten painful agonizing cramps in my calf for as long as I can remember since being a kid, sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night, sometimes it's first thing in the morning like you described. And often when I tell people about this (or my husband gets jolted awake from my painful yell) they don't understand what the heck I am talking about. I'm sorry you also experience this, but I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
You're not the only one experiencing this. Both me and my partner get these painful calf cramps in the morning from time to time. I usually get them if I've been a little cold around my feet or legs the day prior, and there's a period of sensitivity days after the cramping.
Hello medlife. I am a physical therapist who work ALOT with massage and exercise therapy for triggerpoints. I have been deepdiving alot to find out what the hell these lumps are. Typically they accour in the neck region due to poor posture and week muscles. Patients presents with local an reffered pain. The treatment is prevention though ergonomical advice but accute treatment is triggerpoint massage and localized mobilization of the affected muscle. That is repetitive non-straining movements (like the yoga-exercise cat cow) In my own research I have consistently found evidence of blood loss to the muscle and blood being sort of caught in the muscle. These triggerpoints are theorized to be cronic muscle spasms sort of like what happens with rigis mortis because it also requires ATP to release myoisin and actin just as it requires ATP for them to join. The cause is weak, overworked muscles tense up and therefore has a lower blood supply because when a muscle fiber cramps it shortens that section of the muscle. This basically creates local ischemia. What you end up with is a muscle without ample blood supply with pathology and no way of healing. This is a positive feedback loop. It is basically like a mini compartment syndrom Why does massage and localized repetetive movement help? Because it restores blood flow and thereby lowers intermuscular pressure to lower and it promotes cell defusion to occur normally thereby allowing healing. This is a mix between my research on triggerpoints (which is small cronic cramps/spasms) and my own experience. I agree with your statement on a lack of research on the topic. Crazy interesting that you found a hematome. But it does correspond with my theory. . Love you vids and your sense of humor. All the best /Alex
I wonder if this is what that neck pain is that I get if I don't sleep enough. I can partly fix it by stretching, looking all the way up and then down and keep doing that, which is a similar flexing of the neck that occurs in cat cow from what the pictures of it show.
Anecdotally, I agree that low blood flow is a big cause, especially of those early morning cramps that cause pain for days. I used to suffer from them quite a bit when staying away from home, especially in the winter. I tend not to find myself sleeping in a too-cold bed these days, but when I do I think I'm more prone to cramps. Recently I started on ADHD medication, which can impact on blood flow, and not long after I had the worst muscle pain in my legs. It was like the after effects of cramp, only without the initial spasm. I even got tested for blood clots. But it was just poor circulation. A mix of aerobic exercise and compression socks have really helped.
@@tristan7216 Well sleep is when are tissue in general heals itself the best. Which means a lack there of would decrease healing. Also lack of sleep often equals many hours sitting on the phone or laptop late in to night (i am guilty of this also 😌 ). So I think what you are suggesting makes alot of sense. Lack of sleep also increases stress levels which also increases our sensitivity to pain. It makes sense that the stretching helps. For these kinds of cramps it is better to do dynamic stretching and repetitive motions rather than static stretching.
@@jrevillug I have ADHD my self. Very interesting that the medication had these side effects on you. It does make sense as methylphenidat (the active component in most ADHD drugs) is a stimulant and increases sympathetic nervesystem activation and thereby increasing blood pressure which could reduce blood flow to distal regions (eg. Arms and legs). Hope it had gotten better for you though
I have been getting calf cramps on and off for years but since becoming pregnant they have become way more common! Dorsiflexing the foot seems to really help settle it down. I feel really bad for anyone who has had cramps for hours. The pain is terrible.
I think your leg cramps are related to you digestion, specifically exchanges between your small intestine to your large intestine. Walking off the cramp helps the muscle, but it also helps your bowls to move along and eliminate gas. So that’s my experience.
I had a calf cramp last week just as you described. The worst I've had in years. Stretching and massaging the muscle during the cramp seems to have helped and I was able to resume normal activity after about 3 days.
Yes I learned calf massages at the onset of a leg cramp eliminates the cramp same with back spasms. I have a massager I can put on a chair that will knead out back spasms. .
As a boy to 14 years of age we lived in a mild climate in Dorrigo NSW. My brother and I were very active, mowing lawns, splitting fire wood, helping our father loading and unloading his truck, and bike riding up and down steep hills. At 14 we moved to Inverell. A much hotter climate, up to around 40 C plus in the summer. 2 years latter I moved to Moree an even hotter place. I can't remember exactly when, but soon after moving to Inverell, I began getting leg cramps just below the knee. The tendon on the inside of knee would be tight, and the pain was off the scale. I am talking 15 out of 10. Our chemist recommended salt tablets. This did help. Several years later, I was mowing lawns full time and the cramps would come on in the night, waking me up. On a few occasions I got them in both knees at once. Trying to just get out of bed was brutal. I had to get upright, and found slow walking on cold tiled floor would help. I had the air conditioner on when sleeping. Don't know if that played a part. Now retired and have not had a cramp in maybe 10 years. I am very much inactive now. At times I had a dull pain for several days after a cramp. I also perspired extremely heavy. At times 30 minuits or so after starting first lawn, I could ring the water out of my shirt. I drank 10 to 15 litres of water and in middle of summer I could loose 6 kg in weight in a day.
Calf cramps were much more frequent for me in the second and third trimesters of my 3 pregnancies. I found that making sure I was getting a decent amount of calcium and vitamin D daily helped, be it from drinking milk or taking supplements.
I have the exact same cramp issue in my calfs in the morning, if I instantly stretch the muscle in the opposite direction I can usually stop it. Still hurts like a * though. I have certain bouts with the eyelid twitches, comes and goes. It's always at random, never seem to be related to prior exercise. I do however sweat alot, but I'm also well hydrated at all times. PS- Pocari Sweat is awesome.
It is so heartening to see this on RUclips. I have the exact same type of cramps which happens in my sleep on my calf muscles. Sometimes I can predict it coming on when I am waking up, but the effect is excruciating. And yes, the after-effect stays on for a few days. I have had this since childhood. I notice a higher incidence when my calf muscles are exposed to the cold compared to when they are warm under the blanket. If I am half awake and feel it coming, rubbing the calf muscles (warming it up?) and stretching it out can sometimes prevent the onset of the actual cramp. If the cramp has already started, I need to rub down the calf muscle and stretch it out to help shorten the duration of the cramp. If I do not rub/stretch it out, that painful lump would last for a few days longer. I never found any definitive source for the cause of this.
I've noticed cramping has a "in your head" quality. If I fight it, it goes full cramp, but I can usually consciously force my attention into something else and the cramp stops. Only happens while trying to go to sleep.
I also think there might be something in the brain signal to the muscles triggering a cramp. But it is just an idea, not a fully formed hypothesis that could be tested.
That have to do with relaxation. When you panic you tense up, which makes it worth. I used to panic when I get a cramp. But after getting so many I learned that it will just go away shortly, so I stopped panicking and stretch the cramped muscle and around it. Then I make sure to move around and get hydrated. That really helps, it reduces the recovery by a lot. It might not work for everyone, but it does for me.
I used to get these a lot as a kid, and still occasionally get them. I ALWAYS immediately press the bottom of my foot against something (the foot of the bed, or I stand up and press it on the floor), I think this is why they never leave long-lasting pain for me. Seriously, the pain is intense and immediate but I always stretch the muscle "straight" before it fully sets in. I'm always so surprised when cramp victims never talk about stretching against the cramps and then talk about unbearable pain. Also if you're getting these in the morning it is absolutely related to electrolytes and hydration, make sure you get enough water before you fall asleep
This is an accurate truth! I am a person that does not exercise and I take more than a handful of medications for bad cardiovascular health. Am not overweight, do not watch what I eat, basically live on carbs,oh ya,and am a 70 year male that smokes . So I better get to the point very quickly! A few months ago I had a cramp in my glute,and the muscle that runs up the inside of my right leg, from the knee up to the crotch,for 24 DAYS,24-7!!!!!!!! THEN BRUISED FOR 6 WEEKS AFTER !!!!!!!!
I developed bad calf muscle cramps when I went onto the Keto eating style (very low carb - didn't eat an apple for 18 months). I think it was to do with electrolytes but actually an old wives tale to drink Tonic Water prevented the cramps for me. I think it is the quinine in it that works. Hope it helps you because it is excruciating and when you are in the land of nod you are at your most vulnerable !
It was seriously uncanny watching someone, a doctor even, describe the exact issue I've been dealing with for years. With the exception of a pain that last for *days* this is _exactly_ what happens to me. I also haven't had this problem in months until recently, when I've had a few red flags. I can tell you the two things that seemed to have helped me the most. 1. Eat more. The problem specifically seemed to get worse a few times I tried IF. Took me a while to notice, but if I quit fasting fewer cramps, more fasting, more immediate cramps. 2. I cut out gluten. I did it for a different reason, mostly unbearable pain from eating anything with wheat in it - all of a sudden - but once I avoided it, the cramps seemed to go away entirely. I can't tell if sleep problems make it worse, or problems executing 1 and 2 make sleep worse, but my recent red flags popped up when I developed insomnia again. But I've recently been having trouble convincing myself to eat for most of the day. Which may be having a similar affect to the deliberate fasting. And truly avoiding gluten in it's entirety is really hard to pull off.
STRETCH! I used to get exactly the same pain in my calf - had it for years. Stretch the calf, that's the key. Point the feet slowly upwards and stretch the calf before you go to sleep, and if you feel the cramp coming on or if you're having a cramping episode, try to stretch. Keeping the food straight seems to prolong the cramp and it does feel counterintuitive to stretch away from you, but it helps, not totally, but to a great extent. It used to be so painful and once i got it in both calves simultaneously, ouch!
Stretching the leg as far as you can really helps, together with "winking" with your foot. Also found this to be the best working method for my calf cramps I get when waking up sometimes.
For the last 1.5yrs I've been rehabbing an L5-S1 Spinal Fusion that prior to I was walking with a cane for 6 months. This journey has pushed me to explore as much as I can about muscle function and motion and has shaped my recovery in ways even my PT told me probably wasn't possible. My experience with muscle cramps/spasms has affected damn near every muscle in my body at one point or another but I've found that specifically I experienced cramps in my foot flexors (bottom of the foot) when I would try to point my toe while laying in bed. My whole life I've had the feeling that if I lean into activating whatever muscles lead to that sensation it seemed to have a positive feedback loop of tension that gradually locked down the muscles in the bottom of my foot. As a result of my study of muscle function in the last 18 months I decided to lean into the sensation and see what happened. I found that it led to a lot of pain but also a direction of support from other muscles in my calf that I had never felt before. Due to this my best guess at the cause was essentially recruiting too few muscles to produce the same amount of force required to flex my foot, and now that I have worked hard to recruit more muscles in my calf to even out my foot support (e.g. I've had a bad habit all my life of rolling my feet outward when standing, so trying to roll my foot inward slightly to engage that muscle and maintain that directional support) the cramp has never returned. While there is MUCH more behind the why and how of my approach and this is entirely anecdotal, my experience suggests that all of my cramps/spasms were in fact from muscle memory I've developed as a result of bad posture due to injuries and poor life choices leading to essentially putting too much force into too small a section of my muscular system. I've been systematically exploring the range of motion of every joint and muscle fiber that I can and I continue to find that muscle cramps/spasms for me are the result of not yet being fully capable of managing my body weight at the basic level. P.S. This whole process also continues to unlock my singing/speaking voice from muscle tension which has been an unreal experience.
Sorry you had to have surgery for your back. I'm sure your back problems are different from mine, but please read my post and let me know if it makes sense to you.
Came back to say something I've never ever written... but thanks for the sponso! I had been struggling to get back to workout since pregnancy, so when I saw your add I though... well why not? It helped a lot, I met a great coach and have been (mainly) working out consistently since!
I feel your pain! My way of combating the calf cramp is that when one hits, I force my leg to straighten out and force my foot to 90 deg. It immediately stops the cramp. Hurts like a bitch while doing that, but puts an end to the cramp. Sure wakes you up though! Good luck to all!
I’ve experienced calf cramps during sleep for many years, much like you describe in your video, complete with the multi-day lingering pain. I’ve found several methods of mitigation. The most effective is to recognize the imminent onset occasioned by the full-body stretch, and immediately relax the affected lower leg. If I’m quick enough, the cramp fails to develop. If I’m not quick enough, I immediately get my leg out from under the covers, and perform a bicycle pedaling sort of motion including exaggerated flexing of my foot to maximize activation of the calf muscles. This often seems to drastically shorten the duration of acute pain and, perhaps more importantly, reduces or eliminates the lingering pain. I’ve also tried various forms of massage of the knot during the acute phase with some success, but activation of the surrounding muscle seems to be more consistently effective. I do believe that stretching after running helps to reduce the frequency and severity of night-cramping, but I also believe that muscle fatigue from exercise can be a contributor to the phenomenon. Your hematoma insight rings true for me as a plausible explanation of the lingering pain, so thanks for that.
Let's be honest here, Rohin accepted sponsorship from CoPilot only to "complain" that his resting heart rate is no longer in the mid 40s but 52 BPM. And with that, he's given me extra motivation to go for a run tomorrow morning, so that I can complain just like him; he's such a role model!
I found if weird he complained about that. A heart rate in the 40s is usually an athletes thing. If my heart rate goes that low, i'll be calling the emergency number.
@@tonymouannes Same haha, just did a medical checkup yesterday and my RHR is 62. Hearing him complaining about it made me quickly went to search "What would be considered as a healthy resting heart rate". FYI 60-100 is normal, and atheletes can go lower and be healthy.
Same thing happens to me - it usually comes on just after waking up. Also had some wake me up in the middle of the night in the worst pain. I've noticed if I can resist moving whichever foot / resist flexing that leg's calf then I might avoid the cramp. But this worked only a couple of times. This obliviously doesn't work with those occurring in the middle of the night. I also have regular muscle spasms all over my body (usually stomach, chest, neck, eye, back). Glad to know I am not alone, the cramps are really sore and I too have the tender lump for days after.
Dear Sir, I have no clue if you're a Dr. or not, my attention span sucks due to the fear of having a severe cramp in my calves. Your's is probably the most comprehensive & intelligent talk I have heard to date although you do ramble on. I am a suffer of very severe calf and foot cramps. I have none of the "possible or probable" causes. I am a nurse, way retired but I know a multiple things I do NOT do correctly. My eating sucks, I eat once a day in the evening and what I eat is not junk food but not "healthy", I have back pain issues and have due to turning whale patients in the ICU, I was in an accident about three years ago that crushed my heel and fractured my already sick low back, and on and on and on. In the past 3 months I have began to have consist calf cramps starting in the morning. Not failing to send me into orbit for about three weeks before I sought help from my doc. He offered restless leg syndrome meds. Well I'm on the max dose, it may have helped the left calf and foot but my right is calf and foot, which was severely problematic has not been changed. I had a nice day from hell - I give up.
My contributions to the case reports in this comment section: I get calf and foot cramps at night when I'm stressed, causing me to twist and turn a lot with high tension in all extremity muscles. Sometimes I wake up shortly before or just when the cramp starts and are often able to release the tension with breathing exercises just in time to avoid a fully developed cramp that needs stretching. Hydration doesn't seem to be a contributing factor. I get the twitching at different parts of the body as well, haven't found any patterns yet, though, neither regarding location nor triggers.
As someone who suffers quite often from cramps I have several questions. 1)What cause cramps to occur simultaneously in both legs at the same time, in the same muscle group? 2)Why do I often get cramps on the sides of my shins or front of my shins where there aren’t large muscles and these cramps are often mild but take longer to release. 3) why do some muscle cramps seem to respond to being stretched while other are to crippling to stretch out? There is no rhyme nor reason for the cramps to occur sometimes several times in a night and sometimes it can be months between attacks.
WOW! I was SO hoping that you had learned the secret to cramps as when you talked about your morning calf adventures, you were LITERALLY describing, word by word, my experiences. Mine happen EXACTLY as yours, but I would add that while they can happen in either leg, they tend to favor the left side, for whatever reason. The hematoma issue WAS interesting, so I do hope that you are able to find some kind of answer, as they (the cramps, obviously) really freak me out. It is SUCH a weird thing for a body to do.
If the nature of your cramps is that you can feel a leg cramp coming on (even if it is just a few seconds before it actually hits), then try to pull lift your toes up on that foot. By that I mean try to lift the toes towards your knees in a way that will stretch the muscles on the back of the calf of that leg. See if that helps.
Unless it's something some pharmaceutical company can get people on recurring expensive drugs covered by insurance, no one will ever really look into this - profit over all else
I gotta say for me, the hematoma thing was pretty freaking obvious… I mean a certain area of your muscle squeezes really really hard and then for a few days, It feels like you were punched with a knuckle …
Perfect timing! I had a very painful inner thigh cramp while heating up my body for exercise just a few days ago. A cramp that painful is something that I've only had a few times in my life. I'd also opt for dehydration since I'd been working for 12h in the summer heat on the day before (I sweat a lot) and I train in the hottest room of my flat to condition myself to endure the summer heat. First thing that came to my mind was to go to the kitchen to get a few licks of salt and drink some water once I was able to walk again. Was too lazy to mix up some Pocari Sweat but I'll definitely start bringing some to work after this episode.
I’m 66 years old woman. I hardly ever got muscle cramps until this year. All three cramp episodes with repeated spontaneous spasms each lasted from secs to minutes went on for a few days. And all 3 episodes happened a day or two after my long distance international travel. After retirement, I have been continuously traveling for more than a year. I don’t drink much fluid during air travel to avoid going to restrooms since bathrooms in airplanes, airports and on the road are hard to find or inconvenient or far away. Long hours of sitting in cramped space are not helping either. So dehydration,long periods of seating (inactivity) could be the reasons for my severe painful cramps after long travel.
Yeah I know the exact cramp you're talking about. Twice that I can remember I woke up being on the verge of that cramp, trying not to move my toes at all and just holding that "pre-tension" Both times I inevitably moved and BAM, the calf feels like it's imploding. The other times it just happens and yeah it's painful as hell.
I also have benign fasciculation syndrome and yep, I relate 100% with your experience. I also get calf cramps in the morning and it always sucks for a week afterwards.
I have suffered from a variety of leg cramps, foot cramps, etc for many years and I have found a reliable source of relief which works in 2 minutes or less. What I use is an inexpensive TENS device ($30 - $40) whose electrodes I place along the path of the cramp. Turn on just about any of the selectable pulse patterns and the cramp subsides almost immediately. Apparently, this works by interrupting or disrupting the nerve impulses creating the muscle contraction, and neutralizing them. It has worked without fail over the last several years to the point I am never without it being handy. It’s on my nightstand, my travel kit, when I go camping, etc. I cannot overemphasize how effective this simple solution is.
Was surprised to hear you mention Pocari Sweat. I live in China and on occasion drink it after a long run or workout. I wouldn't be surprised if this video leads to more researchers taking a look at the mechanisms of cramp, finding out about such basic things that we still don't understand is just the kind of thing that excites scientists.
I used to get these cramps in my calf and hamstring in the morning like once a month but since I started stretching my calf and hamstring before lying down every evening I haven't had them in years. Whenever I get lazy and don't stretch before bed I can feel them coming back. Also if I can stand up right away when the cramp starts they sometimes stop early. Hope this helps someone!
Really enjoyed this video - a remarkable mix of wackiness and medical integrity (the latter in short supply on YT). My cramps are sporadic but are related I'm sure to my advanced age, my meds, exercise (I do a lot) and dehydration, but not reliably. I can be dehydrated and not get cramp, do more exercise than my usual and not get cramp. There is clearly some mysterious undiscovered trigger (same goes for my acephalgic migraines). Taking salt stops the cramp almost immediately for me - if it's a placebo effect, I don't care!
Fellow Unhappy Cramper here. I had virtually the same problem. Massively painful cramping, often upon awakening and getting out of bed. Some cramps were so bad that I could not walk for 1-2 days. Once I spent the day on my bottom and scooted around the house because I could not walk. I saw my doctor. I saw an orthopaedic surgeon, who shrugged his shoulders. Nothing helped: NSAIDS, water, isotonic drinks, papayas, bananas, quinine water, warmth, cold packs, massage. Nothing. I was and am a daily athlete, long distance walker/runner, long distance cyclist (100K+). Nothing provided relief. I don't know the physiological mechanism. But I did figure out what triggered the cramp for me. Since I've avoided the trigger, I have not had a cramp in more than two decades. My trigger was this: sitting at a desk for long periods of intense work with my lower legs crossed and tightly clamped against one another. I'm convinced my sitting posture caused the cramps. At least I can say: I've not had a cramp since I changed my behaviour.
I was quite surprised to see that you neglected to ask mike what the mechanism is for *releasing* a contracted muscle. he explains how to contract a muscle, but not how it is released. it seems to me this is pretty relevant and important in figuring out the mechanism of a cramp. the question may not be "why does this muscle flex?", but rather, "why doesn't it *stop* flexing when I want it to?". in my experience, when I feel a cramp coming up, it won't happen as long as I don't accidentally flex the muscle. if I do, I get stuck in that painfully contracted position, unable to release it. for this exact reason, I try to avoid flexing any cramp-prone muscles right when I wake up in the morning, because I know it could trigger a cramp. secondly, have you ever tried *not* stretching a cramp? I was taught in high school that when you stretch a muscle right after exerting it, you are essentially tearing it apart, and the way it heals back up again over the course of the next few days is what makes it bigger and stronger. I could be wrong but my theory is that you're actually causing more damage by stretching right away. I would suggest to instead focus on trying to relax the cramped muscle through sheer mental efforts. I know, "just try to relax" is probably the last thing on your mind when you're having a cramp, but if you're truly desperate it could be worth a shot if you haven't tried this already.
Related/unrelated: I've got serious spinal issues and my legs cramp up numerous times every night. It's pretty horrible, but I've taught myself to get each cramping episode to last as short a period of time as possible by deep breathing, relaxing, and deliberately relaxing the muscle that's cramping.
Quinine and quinidine are very effective for prevention. Unfortunately, no longer used in Australia because it may affect the electrical conductive system of heart. Used it for decades , never had a patient with side effects
Like many commenters I can relate to the calf cramps (although I don't have any residual pain after a few hours). When swimming, I also quite often get toe cramps, which feel like I'm crossing a pair of toes. Can't remember ever meeting anyone with the same experience
I just found your channel and I love your off-beat humour. I have experienced these calf muscle cramps all my life, and as a woman who has had a baby, they are very similar to labour pains. If you are a man and wonder what it feels like to have a baby these cramps may be the closest you can get. Although labour pains repeat every few minutes for hours, getting progressively worse until you either have the baby, or blessedly receive an epidural (I will be grateful to that doctor for the rest of my life). I am a runner, and my calf muscle cramps seem to be exercise related. If I slow down on running, then I start getting morning muscle cramps. If I increase my running, then I also start experiencing muscle cramps. They don’t seem to occur when I maintain a consistent level of exercise. Thanks for a great video!
I have exactly the same cramp as you describe and it is, for me, the WORST pain I have ever experienced (male, no pregnancy possible). I've had a kidney stone that was a trifling annoyance in comparison. And I also get that 3 day bruise afterwards. The only saving grace is that I can normally catch the cramp before it comes on - I literally have a couple of seconds and I am so good at it (probably because my body is attuned to the agony if it doesn't get to it quickly) that I can wake up from a deep sleep and assume the position (toes curled towards me) in a heartbeat. For your studies, I am a lardball (20 stone) who does no exercise BUT I used to get this cramp much more often in my 20s and 30s when I played rugby, so meh.
Great video! I appreciate the asides to improve scientific and medical literacy. It's also really cool how you make use of your access to medical equipment and your expert colleagues to dive deeper into your investigation! Your Aussie accent was certainly... Interesting. A lot of it felt good, but you also started reminding me of Aussies with South African background I know.
My God, this is actually the first time I've ever heard of someone else experiencing this! I get the exact same experience even down to the hematoma. Once it was so extreme that it was visible on the skin. Crippling pain. Hydration seemed to be the only thing that works.
Few years ago I had exactly the symptoms you mention: very painful cramps in my (most often than not left) calf, only when I was lying and only when I was stretching the leg / compressing the muscle. I was never dehydrated when it happened and it never happened when I was standing (i.e. compressing the calf muscle while supporting my weight). It was something that helped: every time I felt the need to stretch in the morning I did the opposite move: while stretching all the other limbs I flexed the foot so that the toes made a sharp angle w/ the leg and the calf muscle was forced to be stretched, not compressed. Never happened since (but i'm also exercising more so that could also help)
I'm a 55 year old woman have been suffering night cramps after 3 to 4 hours sleep then every hour hour and a half until morning nightly since I was a teenager. The only thing I've found that lessons them is having 3 teaspoons of salt with a lots of soda water before bed gets me through the night with minimal cramping on waking. Nothing else has ever helped.
Hello! I am 37 and a fellow physician, although a much less sexy gastroenterologist. I used to have pretty bad cramps in my calf muscles during puberty, also under similar conditions you describe, i.e. in the morning just after waking up. After the main cramp I was in some pain for a few days, but usually nothing serious. Although there was nothing to do to prevent these occurences, I noticed that when I immediately stretched the muscle involved, the pain would be less severe and would last for a shorter time. After puberty these calf cramps all but disappeared. However since puberty I have been having cramps on a regular basis in the muscles of my neck and upper torso, and always after some kind of sudden or sharp movement. They almost always go away after a few minutes of stretching, although it is not always easy to stretch your torso without looking like you are doing some sort of dodgy gymnastics.
I have the exact same condition & so does my sister. I barely move my feet either in the middle of the night or mornings & my calf muscles begin to spasm. It is often so painful that I end up flopping around like a fish lol Unfortunately, I also experience this in my lower & middle back muscles 😢 The back spasms are dibilitating.
I get these morning (and sometimes evening) leg cramps, where the leg hurts for weeks after. None of the standard advice for athletic cramps (electrolytes, hydration, stretching, nerve stimulation, etc.) ever help. When I feel the cramp coming on (leg twitches escalating into involuntary muscle spasms), the best way I've found to "intercept it" is to immediately move the leg as much as possible (with a variety of big rapid motions). This works maybe 80% of the time, but it doesn't fully eliminate the leg twitchiness, so I still need to be really careful about my leg positioning the rest of the morning, or another cramp might come on. The main contributing factor I've been able to notice is increased stress and/or lack of sleep, which unfortunately can cause a nasty feedback loop (underslept, so legs are cramping, which makes it harder to sleep, so I get more underslept, which causes more cramping, and so on). I'm gonna try some blood circulation techniques (massage tools, heat pads, compression socks, etc.) and see if that helps. Your hematoma discovery at 26:54 definitely makes sense. That explains why the pain lasts so long and nothing seems to cure it. Thank for investigating and sharing that!
After back surgery due to a herniated disc that had caused nerve damage I have experienced the same syndrome that made me think of Sigourney Weaver in 'Alien' (it looks like something alive under the skin).No neurologist I saw here in Germany could explain it so thanks Doc. for solving the mystery for me. I assume the muscle cramps on the left leg and foot also result from the same nerve damage.
I had an artificial disc replacement in my C-4, afterwhich, my second toe in, on the left foot only, has only about 30% feeling - almost numb. Met 4 other people with the same issue - odd.
22 year old male here. I have cramps exactly as you described yourself having in both calves. I began having them around 14, twice a month. When I was 17-18 I began having them almost every other day. I would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and know that a few moments later, my leg(s) would twitch and I’d be writhing in pain for the next few minutes. I would have remnant pain and tightness for a day or so. In the last few years I haven’t had many, maybe twice or thrice a year. I’m not sure of what causes it or what state my body is in, but I have suffered from full body joint pain most of my life. I consider myself to be of middling fitness; I focus on cardio and flexibility. I drink plenty of water (perhaps too much) and am of average weight.
Hey bro! Try this massaging handheld "pistols" that hit your muscles. Once i "beated" my legs with one of those i haven't had a cramp for over a weak (or untill the next activity/excercise puting high strain on the legs)
You get cramps a lot and you drink too much water? It sounds like a potassium-sodium unbalance. You literally dilute yourself, and it is dangerous. Please drink less water. Have the water you drink contain electrolytes. And drink other liquids than water, too.
WARNING: With your whole body joint pain added on, it sounds serious enough to go see a doctor. PLEASE do it. You don't become more of a man of dyeing from preventable causes. 🤭🤨 1. Autoimmune disease. Several of them cause symptoms like you describe. Do you get dizzy too? Tingling in hands and feet? Decreased appetite? 2. Your body's potassium, sodium and/or calcium metabolism not work properly. It can have many causes. From temporary unbalance to genetic diseases and cancer, or 3. diabetes.
Wow! Me and my dad struggle with bad cramps, and your calf-cramp experience is EXACTLY what we go through! It would be great to know if there's something behind it. We (=me and my dad) tend to think our tendency for cramps is somehow inherited since we two experience it.
I used to be quite a good swimmer and kept hearing about the danger of cramps for swimmers. I thought "how bad could it be?", all I ever got was minor cramps in my calf muscles, nothing serious.
Until one day, I had been swimming for at least 2 kilometers at quite a fast pace when suddenly my whole body cramped and completely locked up. I couldnt hold on to the edge or the pool (wich was right there) and sank to the bottom. My heart rate and oxygen consumption was quite high and tunnel vison started to set in quickly. Thank god we were supervised and they pulled me out.
I would have been dead right there if it wasnt for some quick action. I tell this to all the swimmers, don't ever go to your limits when you're alone at the pool!
They make us all have floats probably for that reason.
@@tamara3984 who wears floats to swim ?
That's terrifying. I thought it maybe made your legs or arms locked - that's all. I thought about swimming in a lake and I thought I would be safe as long as I took something floating with me in case I needed to stop swimming
Oh f... This is really scary. I admit, I'm good swimmer too and I'm kinda thinking: wtf? Cramps? You could just hold in water how difficult could it be...
Thanks for sharing, I'll be more careful when swimming now (i.e. don't swim alone far from people).
I will never get you amateurs.
us divers are taught from day freaking one:
calm down, don't panick and let your LIGHTER THEN WATER body float.
how do i know you're an amateur?
cuz i've had full body lockups and cramps about a dozen times over the years during practice.
i've only needed help to recover the first time.
git gud.
I got a cramp at a sports awards ceremony in my quad, shot up to stretch it, and proceeded to cramp EVERYWHERE in my legs. It was a blur to me, but according to the people at my table my face visibly drained of colour, I said "help", and proceeded to lose consciousness. Woke up on the ground surrounded by our physios. That was definitely dehydration, we had been playing in Malaysian heat all day.
To this day it's the most painful thing I have ever experienced. Absolutely hilarious. Have the photo of me passed out on the ground around somewhere 😂
This is part of grade 12 biology here, the entire muscular structure as well as fast and slow, and the nervous system to explain things like tetanus. Everybody who passes grade 12 bio will know this. But American education is garbage
Reading that sounded so painful that I almost cried for you. I have had leg cramps, but nothing like that.
😊😊Q q q
That’s the sign of a good mate, if you pass out from overwhelming pain, they’re there to catch it on camera 🥰
@@MedlifeCrisis I fix my cramp which happens after prolonged exercise but in bed at night!
1) Keep warm
2) Immediately straighten the leg kicking straight many times.
3) Stand up and stamp quickly with affected leg until the cramp subsides!
4) Repeat above if cramp returns. Try walking around for 15 mins before going back to bed.
5) Try adding electrolyte salts to drinks before exercise!
6) Within 30 mins of strenuous prolonged exercise eat high GI to spike blood sugar and insulin then eat protein like an egg!
This will help muscle repair. Do not eat fat with the protein as this will cause low GI! You need High GI and protein directly after exercise. Like a Mars Bar and Chicken Breast!
Try that and let me know how it goes please!
I solved my morning calve cramp horrors permanently by doing this. For me they were always cause by a morning stretch in bed by pointing my toes. I trained myself to contract my shin muscles by pointing my toes toward my head instead. It’s very satisfying stretch and I haven’t had a calve cramp in about 2 years now.
Interesting 🤔.
Ta mate. This I have to try. Only time I get calf cramp is from stretching my legs in the morning.
I personally got cramps even in the middle of the day, or in the evening.
A physical therapist was saying that some stretches can cause problems with joints due to muscles contracting and stiffening.That makes sense.
My muscles are in constant "Just about to cramp" state... trying cheap Shoes, 2 Pairs+running on concrete streets was Not the best ksea. 6 Months now
I have committed to getting proper subtitles done for all my videos for the last year or so, but I hit publish before they were ready this time, sorry! They're up now. I haven't had time to check through properly so excuse any errors. You see, I care about accessibility, but clearly not actually that much. What a virtue subtitler! (I'll get round to it soon)
Edit: singular “cramp” Is how we say it in the UK!
Any way for us to submit translations into other languages?
I would be glad to chip in, too! Some of these videos just NEED to reach my parents :')
See, but you never mentioned in the video how standing up almost immediately when getting a cramp in the morning makes a cramp go away. There's gotta be a survey or trial out there on this, right?
@@biaroca Thank you both, unfortunately community submitted subs were stopped some years back and now the only way to add a sub file is with access to the account, so it would be very laborious for someone. If I can scale up production in years to come, I'd love to have other languages (ie pay for them).
Ah, nice to see you're following Tom's advice: "BUY SOME GODDAMN SUBTITLES!!". As a non-native speaker I gotta say I really appreciate subtitles sometimes, there's so many English accents out there, it can be a bit hard to understand something from time to time.
As a woman, hearing someone asking about my cramp experience is not uncommon.
Aside from womanly cramp pain, I experience harrowing leg cramps, to the point I avoid sleeping in a certain position.
I have left my bed to crawl around like a victim bitten by a zombie, becoming increasingly rabid, frustrated soul hoping I could "walk it off". This is due to the fact, my leg has decided to "nah " it not and oh, here enjoy this distasteful cramps.
I have consulted doctors, they have no clue as to why, however, they have advice me to go to physio therapy.
Physio therapist, bless their heart, made the situation worse.
I am back to avoiding sleeping in a certain position and my puppy looks forward to following me crawling around in the middle of the night.
::sigh::
That sounds awful. ={:o(
[OFFERS REMOTE ELECTRONIC HUGS]
Could you get a brace or something for sleeping that prevents your leg from getting in the dangerous position?
There was one time in 2017 that I had cramps all night to the point my family took me to the ER. Now, i have 24/7 tingling in my feet. I had leg cramps (inner thigh ones) and severe ones too. After that episode, I now have trouble walking more than 15 minutes. I was diagnosed with deep and superficial Chronic Venous Insufficiency. Sclerotherapy has helped lessen my cramps but I still have trouble walking.
Have you looked into getting a Doppler ultrasound to rule out CVI?
I have found that I can sometimes tell when a muscle will cramp if I stretch or contract it past a certain point. And preloaded to cramp or actually cramping, I find massaging the muscle in question to help alot. Don't directly use the muscle, just mangle it with your hands (or a loved ones hands) with a deep massage. Sometimes you might do it yourself since you can feel where the muscles in question are.
63 years old and an occasional nocturnal leg cramper myself. Recurrent since my teen years. The data point that I want to add is that I had a DVT as a post-surgical complication several years ago, and the pain in my leg felt *exactly* like the pain in the aftermath of a cramp. It was a familiar enough feeling that I initially ignored it. I had no memory of having had a cramp, but hey, this was after prostate surgery and I wasn't exactly sleeping normally so I thought maybe I slept through it. I normally only feel that aftermath pain for a few hours, so when this lasted a full day, I started to get suspicious. So, fellow crampers, if you are at risk of DVT due to surgery (or for any other reason), remember this and don't ignore post-cramp pain --- because it might not be post-cramp pain.
The next question: what actually are headaches?
I mean just the pain nerves in your head going off, kinda the same as aches anywhere else. Informaton about this is pretty readily available!
The next question after that: why do we see psychedelic colors swirling around on the insides of our eyeballs at night when our eyes have been closed for a few hours?
something that's mostly caused by a woman
@@fredashayor the geometric/fractal gold and black patterns that you see when you press on your eye balls
@alexschalk5439 Would make sense, if we had pain receptors in our brain. I don't know enough to say there are no pain system inside the brain, but pain receptors are like pain in the heart, used to be quite redundant. If you felt trauma there, you were dead.
Now it could be handy. In some 10_000 years maybe we will start developing that.
Here is my story that I've never shared with anyone. In those half-awake half-asleep moments of the early morning, if I stretch my legs & FLEX MY TOES, a cramp is at high risk of happening. I always assumed that the days of lingering pain was from the muscle tissue literally tearing itself apart as it involuntarily pulled against itself with more force than I could ever voluntarily exert. I also thought that it was due to my alcohol consumption & subsequent dehydration. This video is making me rethink that point.
Here is the real reason I'm posting this. They say that pain is the best teacher & I have found a way to mitigate the effects of the cramp. Once your brain receives that 'MetalGearSolidAlert' you must act as quickly as possible by repeatedly flexing your leg at the knee as far as it will go as fast as you can. KEEP THOSE MUSCLES BUSY ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Expand, Contract, Expand, Contract, Expand, Contract, etc... don't stop until the cramp does. To h311 with your bed partner, they're on their own.
Cramps need a little time to build their full strength. As long as you start flexing BEFORE the cramp hits 100% power, it will stall at whenever you begin to flex. You only have 1.5 to 2 seconds to react. Stopping the cramp at 25%-50% is still going to hurt, but it's WAY preferable to letting it hit 100% and leaving you rolling around the floor moaning in agony for what feels like an eternity.
NEVER AGAIN I SAY!
I used to get exactly that until I had my varicose veins removed. The cramps started several years before the veins became obvious.
I should try that, I'll keep you updated if this was successful or not.
i get leg cramps when waking up and i figured out this exact thing. it's the only thing that helps
i've had luck immediately flexing my feet/toes towards my shin at maximum power
Cramps are muscle contractions so in order to fight them you must do the opposite i.e. stretch the muscle immediately and hard. Drinking a lot of water reduces the risk of cramps.
For me there's clearly a correlation with drinking less than normal. I normally drink a lot (compared to others) during the day, but on days with lots of meetings, for example, or other reasons I drink less, I often have these night cramps. Sometimes when I have a bad case, I keep feeling it for several days.
As a sufferer of regular calf cramps when waking up, the best method for me of stopping it in its tracks is to leap out of bed and stand upright. I'm now so conditioned to it, that it's now an automatic response. It works so well that the pain often only lasts a few seconds. I can also trigger a cramp at will, not that I do it for fun 😂
For me the response is immideatly relax my calf when I notice it is about to start cramping, maybe carefully using the oposite mussle to pull my foot towards me. I can't imagine jumping out of bed and tensioning the mussle actualy makes it better, why does it work? Also learned to not overtighten it as it does trigger cramps sooner or later.
This 100% works, like every time. You have to act fast though. As soon as you feel the cramp coming on jump out of bed and dance around using your calfs. I wish this was more common knowledge. I suffered from these for years before learning this method. My wife doesn't even flinch anymore when I do this. I am also conditioned to do this without thinking now.
@@someonespotatohmm9513 The mental relaxing of the calf that you do also works for me. However, not as well as jumping out of bed.
@@kacperkuryllo5376 Yeah, you gotta jump quick and dance around a bit before something tears. After that, you can relax and find the right rest position.
I push my foot against the wall, so it's 90degrees to my lower leg. That stops it. Doesn't prevent it.
About a year ago I had this scary episode where I've half fallen asleep in the evening, woke up to a cramp in my calf. It quickly spread to my thigh, then my other leg both calf and thigh, then my arms, then my torso and even the face. It was absolutely agonizing pain, I could only squirm on the bed and scream. Felt like I'm about to die.
After several minutes that felt like hours it subsided, I could barely move with slurred speech. Was taken to A&E where they ran basic tests and literally the only thing they could find was a minor dehydration which to be honest was probably from the sweat during the episode.
Never happened since and I still don't have a faintest clue what caused it.6
That must've been absolutely terrifying! What were the effects afterward? Looking forward to hearing what t'internet has to say about this.
that's insane
Sounds like torture
@@Jablicek Yeah it gave me quite a scare, I was sore all over like I just had an intensive all body workout at the gym but was otherwise fine.
Oh god I have had the same exact experience as you, I was also just in bed woken up to agonising pain from a back cramp. I felt like I couldn’t move and only could scream in pain. I could only make a call to a family member to help me take to the hospital. Similar to you m, they only said I was dehydrated. I felt like I was going to die that night, but it was truly the most discomforting pain I’ve ever had. I occasionally get back cramps for minutes but not one was similar to that night’s pain.
Thanks for your work. I’m an Orthopedic Spine Surgeon with 40 years experience and I get this question everyday. I learned some things from your video and would love to learn more if you find out something relevant!
It's SOOO cool to hear from a doctor about their own journey into finding out why they are suffering from a mysterious ailment. I wonder if more stories like this from more doctors would increase trust from patients.
I think admitting that there is A LOT about human health that they don't understand would be a start. The pedestal our society puts doctors on is undeserved IMO.
That chubby emu video about being on a diet and accidentally messing up one of his vitamin calculations was wild. Apparently as I remember he felt vaguely like shit for awhile but it was specifically severe insomnia that was plaguing him. The wilder part of the story was at one point after maybe a year he drank an energy drink on a whim during a severe episode. After an hour he got sleepy and went to bed and slept like a baby. At this point using energy drinks to sleep you might see where this is going he figured out it was the vitamins(B12 probably?) in the energy drink and just fixed his micros and everything was fine again. Which ya know probably great overall advice for someone with a vague new ailment, the first and easiest thing you can rule out is make sure you’re getting all your nutrients. Side note though, I haven’t finished the video and I know there’s at least a chance this story may be similar wouldn’t that be a coincidence lol
This is going to sound cheesy, but I wish every academic communicate science like you: with some serious, rigorous examination and healthy skepticism about the state of the science while also dealing with it in a casual and easy-going way. As a uni student, I feel like the world of academia has been, most of the time, a letdown for me, and your videos are full of knowledge and joyous curiousity that I love. So, thank you.
Also, your sense of humor is totally right up my alley, so there you go.
Exactly. I think in a lot of ways (until pretty recently with the rise of online and more easily approachable sources of education at least) academia tends to take itself a bit TOO seriously at times, and I can remember looking at a lot of STEM and thinking how serious and intimidating a lot of it was. In reality when you're really in it as long as you're doing a good job and getting your facts right when you need to, you're doing STEM right. Academia in general tends to suffer from severe elitism and gatekeeping of certain types of information at times, even if that information isn't actually that deep and complicated.
"this is going to sound cheesey but"
'sounds cheesey anyways'
Disclaimer that I'm by no means an expert on anything, I'm just some guy on the internet who has had a lot of sucky experiences with muscle cramps waking me up.
Honestly, the fact that a cramp can actually cause a severe hematoma and potentially end a well-trained athlete's career in the worst cases, seems to indicate to me that the mechanism of a cramp is exactly what it feels like-
An involuntary, unrestrained muscle spasm that exerts so much force that it actually causes muscle and blood vessel damage. Which would explain why in endurance athletes it could potentially go on for hours and cause permanent damage, no muscle in the body is built to output that much force, and we typically only do so, to my knowledge at least, in extreme survival situations where we have adrenaline flooding our system as fight or flight kicks in, which is why we have instances of people performing seemingly superhuman acts of strength, like lifting a car off of someone important to them in a moment of panic, they wouldn't normally be able to tap into that level of strength, since the body regulates itself so that we're not essentially tearing our muscles by using our full strength to just pick up a pencil.
Though it would seem these cramping episodes are an exception to that, like perhaps it's just a common "glitch" in the nervous system that may not so much have a function related to it, but just be a faulty impulse from some leftover instinct humans used to have.
Or maybe it's just our bodies being a bag of d!(&s to us.
I don't know, if I had a clue as to the why they happen, I'd probably make up some pseudoscience as a cover and teach people how to prevent them entirely, be despised by the scientific community for a couple decades, then after I die a peaceful cramp-free life as a millionaire, scientists would later do trials on my method and find out what the actual scientific basis of it is, like how they did with meditation, and vegans.
But we don't have that information even in an unscientific format, sometimes being human just sucks.
Although I WOULD like to at least know why the leg muscles like the calves and hamstrings are so disproportionately affected by this instead of other muscle groups, after all, the legs are some of the universally largest and strongest muscles in humans, even as untrained individuals, and the condition seems to almost be worse in those with more muscle mass than average, maybe there's a correlation between muscle size and odds of muscle cramps? Or maybe it has to do with muscle imbalances, such as untrained individuals having less developed upper bodies and that somehow causes cramps in their stronger lower bodies? I don't know, this is all just speculation, and I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been at least one billionaire who has had recurring cramps bad enough to just go-
"F**k it, I'm hiring some researchers, this pain has to go-"
I've experienced some pretty painful cramps, where the pain took a week plus, to receede fully. One day, a physiotherapist told me, not to try stretching the muscle immediately to fight the contraction. He suggested to put load on the muscle, but not stretch it immediately. Then, slowly stretch the muscle while keeping it loaded (about 1 minutes).
I tried it, and the pain receeded almost instantly when load was applied (standing on my toes, since it is pretty much isolated to my calves). Have applied this strategy ever since, and haven't had any of those "it lasted a bloody week" experiences.
😊😊😊
Will have to try that, thanks!
I have a similar experience, I rarely get cramps but when I do (usually from brief overextenstion), they are very painful and I've learned not to fight them. I try to relax and find a position in which the pain recedes, let the cramp sort itself out, then gently go back to normal activity. I'm usually fine after about ten minutes.
Yes that works for me. I get foot cramps. Lying in bed and stretching never worked. I had to get out of bed. Stand up gradually putting weight on the feet and it gradually goes away.
Yes, this is what I did yesterday when I had my first night cramp. I always try to tell my wife to get up and weight her leg but she is afraid to do anything so I just hold her foot and leg and try to figure out which direction will help. It always turns out to be dorsiflexion even when she complains that it makes it worse at first. If she would only get up and weight it in dorsiflexion I think she would be able stop it. But sometimes it hits while she is still sleeping and by then it's too late for her to be able to resolve it on her own.
Every time I try to explain to patients that no one actually knows what's up with cramps, they give me the side eye! I feel so validated by this video! I'm overall healthy and yet I get hellacious cramps--not all the time, but in runs, like my migraines. Seems like something periodically increases my "cramp tone."
Cupping can fix cramps. I'm not getting any cramps anymore in my feet since cupping in various places on them. I don't know if I'll ever get them again but I plan to do some more cupping on my feet either way.
dang that sounds annoying.
I love running and I smh never get cramps. I always attributed that to my flexibility, I did a lot of yoga growing up and I can still do a split pretty easily. I always thought since flexibility is the ability to relax and control those muscle groups that would tense up usually if you go into a stretching pose that cramps must have something to do with an inability to control those muscles.... but I have no clue. Could also be because I consume copious amounts of watered down tea every day to stay hydrated.
Sounds like you need a tens machine to work those lumps out.
Whenever I watch your videos, you genuinely make me care a lot more about my fitness level. So I thank you for nagging on about it because it does help.
A year ago I spent most my days at the computer working or playing, now I've been going actively to the gym for 6 months and loving it. In the start I did do cardio but dropped it when I started focusing more on resistance training. Now after this video I'll once again integrate cardio into my routine. I won't say you're the reason I started exercising but honestly, you were a big part of why I started to care and wanted to care for my own health and not be negligent. So thank you!
As someone who sometimes gets severe calf cramps in the morning like you, I find that if I stand up within 1 to 2 seconds of the onset I can prevent the severe cramp from progressing
Have been dealing with them for the last 30+ years. That is the only thing that helps me.
2nd this. It also helps me if I put as much weight or force into the leg as I can, sometimes thinking about pressing my leg into the floor. If I can relieve the cramp quickly enough, I don't get the lingering pain afterwards.
I used to get calf cramps whenever I woke up as a kid sometimes and I also figured that if I fully straighten my leg using my muscles as much as I can I can prevent the cramp somehow during its onset
I can confirm this is true.
Agreed. I find it helps in two ways -
1. It helps to pull out the cramp. I learnt the quicker you pull it out, the less it hurts, and the less it will keep hurting afterwards. I was not suprised at all my the scan, as it always felt the muscle was damaging itself by being in the cramped up position. Keep it out of the position, keep away the pain & damage.
2. Lowering the leg below the rest of me, seems to help prevent it wanting to cramp - after all I don't want to be pulling out the cramp all night. I always assumed its something to do with localised fluid levels - if cold or laying down, this will reduce. I also think i more likely to get it if wearing socks while laying down - which would also reduce blood flow.
Love that this man feeds our curiosity, specially when watching a 30min video is way better than spending hours looking up research on cramps before a pharmacology final.
This was posted just in time, Great job as always ❤️
A positive comment in a medlife crisis video
Still, I am left with so many questions :-)
Like: How about the frequency of the muscle cramps? Are they constant from person to person? Or muscle to muscle?
I think my tics and my calf cramps are roughly the same frequency, but am I right?
And: When electricity can induce cramps, is it possible to do something similar to noise canceling headphones? A smart (and benign) Taser thingy?
0:18: 🤔 The video explores the mystery of muscle cramps and why they occur.
4:01: 🤔 The RUclipsr discusses their experience with muscle cramps and the mystery of a tender lump in their calf.
7:41: 🤔 The video discusses the causes of muscle cramps and focuses on cramps affecting healthy skeletal muscle.
11:40: 🎥 The video discusses the process of muscle contraction and the proteins involved.
15:17: 🔍 The video discusses the contradictory studies and factors associated with muscle cramps.
19:04: 🥤 The video discusses the history and fascination with Pocari Sweat, a Japanese drink, and its attempt to advertise on the moon.
27:14: 🤔 The speaker discusses a unique case of muscle cramps and the lack of consistent remedies.
31:18: 💪 The video discusses the benefits of using a professional coach for personalized workout plans and accountability.
Recap by Tammy AI
What about 4:28 ?
Adding my personal experience: my calf usually cramps in a way that pulls my foot downwards. Hurts like heck, but eventually I learned that if I stop my foot from being pulled pointing down, I can eliminate the pain. Basically as long as I can do the opposite and force the foot up, the pain mostly stops. Since my legs, as an overweight person, are the strongest muscles in my body, this can be a very difficult battle and hurts the whole time. But once I find and execute the counter manouver, the pain usually ends, other than those situations where I too assume that I have torn my muscle on some level. That kind of pain lasts from days to week.
My most recent strategy to achieve this is to bend both of my knees and force my cramping leg heel down while forcing the foot up using the other foot. Very effective. After I have broken through the pain phase, the cramp usually still lasts for a while and does exactly what was shown on the video: painless but violent muscle movement under my skin. Cant explain why it doesnt hurt at that point but thats my experience.
I get the same cramp and do the same calf stretch to stop it
One of if not the only way to stop a cramp is that you have to work that muscle you have to use that muscle that is cramping. it always works for me
@@o0o-jd-o0o95 Ah, but when you get opposing muscle groups cramping against each other, stretching one group allows the other to cramp worse. I had a few of those a month or two ago, oh joy.
@@r0cketplumberI personally found that if I stick a thumb in there and find the right spot, that can help in stopping one of the groups cramping, so I can then stretch the other one. It's not a "will help", but in that situation one would try even for a slim chance.
@@TranscenGopher Yes, that's what I eventually managed to do, but when you wake up in pain it's difficult to think out the process. If you can't stretch a muscle, at least compressing it from the side can help.
My immediate family have all been plagued by morning calf cramps, so that intro was down right stressful. But I’ve noticed a few things about the cramps. They started quite early on, around 9 - 13 for myself and my sister, unsure on parents but it’s always seems to have been prevalent because my parents immediately knew to massage the area HARD as you can go (which works but feels like stabbing the flesh in the moment) so they’ve encountered it plenty times before and even have a “cure” that’s sprung up at one point in our communities. We are south Asian and have the muscle and eye twitches so my feeling is that there’s some sort of genetic component or at least susceptibility.
The one thing that I do feel pretty confidently about that helps is to ensure that your legs are out straight and not bent whilst being immobile for a long time like sleeping.
I’ve even “prevented/caught” a cramp in my mother by straightening out her bent leg while she was taking a nap and she woke up asking how I knew she was having a cramp before her waking up. I’ve always thought it’s some sort of thing about cutting or reducing blood flow, sort of like with pins and needles, but I’ve already expressed far too many anecdotes, bias and opinions in this comment which are 3 things, as a medical student, I know better than to have.
My family white as fuck and we all got it too, so I'm not sure there is a ethnic genetic thing there, maybe just a hereditary thing
I used to get a lot of muscle/eye twitches but I found Broccoli and Kale thickened my blood. This I think made it difficult for blood to circulate so my tissues were starved of not only oxygen but nutrients too. With a slow resting heart rate too this led to many health problems including paroxysmal AF and bowel and joint problems. It also gave me visual migraines and vision anomalies. I researched the area for years and was even put on anticoagulants but the fix was not to eat the foods high in vitamin K like the broccoli! I now eat lactose and gluten free and take omega 3 supplements and others which has eliminated 99 percent of the problem.
Dietary changes were key! Particularly avoiding the broccoli!
I exclusively get cramps with my legs straight. When I sleep on my stomach all bent I mever get them
People are always too rash and eager to blame stuff on genetics when it's probably a nurture/lifestyle thing
I find I get them if I am too cold when sleeping. If I can manage to grab my toes and pull them upwards toward my knees, it helps rather quickly, and if I can do this quickly enough, I usually don’t get a muscle lump after.
In over 40 years of working with muscles what I have observed is that muscles that cramp have usually been over worked in some way without attention to balancing them out with gentle pulsing stretch following the activity. Muscles at rest should be soft and pliable. I have found that addressing the trigger points in 3 lines along the length of the muscle in the calf and then following it with a gentle stretch often throughout the day will either prevent the cramp from happening or at least lessen the severity.
Likewise addressing the trigger points while in spasm will get rid of the spasm more quickly and often eliminate the stiffness that occurs afterward. I have used the Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy method to accomplish this as well as erasing many other muscle related areas of pain.
I know there is great controversy re ballistic and static stretch but I’ve experienced much better success with gentle, pulsing, ballistic than with static.
This calf cramp got me two days ago not long after waking up. Still hobbling around today.
Its crazy, I also got the worst wake up cramp of my life yesterday, and it still hurts so much. Then I see this video...
Happened to me last week. It lasted over 24 hours. I must be getting older
Calfs, my girlfriend told me I am moving my toes very fast during sleep. It's like my calf trying to do 30 contractions per second moving my toes. Everyone probably have seen a cat or dog sleeping and twitching their face muscles very fast. Something similar...
yeah they suuuuck, been getting them regularly since 2019. I have found that regularly massaging my calfs with an exercise roller does reduce the chances of it happening.
@@atahan-youtube I recommend that you massage the calf next time this happens as soon as it happens and you won’t experience days of pain.
An interesting personal anecdote is that I stopped cramping after moving out from my parents house- within a week of returning they returned as well which strongly suggests for me it is an environmental (probably dietary and/or exercise) effect
Edit- also the cramps i had are the EXACT type of cramps you're experiencing. My best guess is my multivitamin and improved exercise but thats just a guess
It can be linked with allergies and/or anxiety, I get real twitchy at mu parents home cause I'm very dust allergic, and my parents are also quite annoying to deal with.
I completely forgot to mention environmental factors in my comment but that's a good point! I get the same type of cramps but for me they mostly happen when I'm traveling with my family
You are all more mentally and emotionally healthy than all of your family that’s why. Your brain goes into fight or flight when you are around their illness.
water? that sounds a lot more like directly environment related.
Wow. At one point, I thought that for me, it might be triggered by mold exposure. 'Difficult to say though.
I’ve got those cramps… it seems like they get worse when I think about it while it is happening.
As a biologist that was deeply affected by cramps since I was a teenager and struggled to understand such phenomena as a student, I'd like to share some thoughts here.
First of all, I realized that I would get cramps if I had drunk and walked a lot the day before. So yeah, support for the dehydration hypothesis. But then I started arriving home after some drinks and sinking in at least 1 L of water, eating bananas (the 'potassium trap'), among other trials. None of them worked.
Secondly: around four years ago I started getting into sports (running and cycling). And (not) surprisingly, those early mornings/3 am cramps diminished in frequency (but they are still pretty painful).
Lastly, and perhaps the most curious thing I have to share, a year ago it came to my knowledge that my uncle. He works as a mason/bricklayer would have such cramps all over his body once or twice a week, and guess the only thing that works for him? Vitamin C. I started foreseeing cramps at some point and, whenever I did, I would take a damn vitamin C pill, and it was also a success for me. I even went out to the literature but only found links between cramps and uterus cramps. Perhaps genetics might play a huge role on excruciating pain cramps.
PS: I almost believed the BTC funded project was going to happen and I was about to volunteer. 😆
Some have mentioned pickle juice. Both vitamin C and it are acidic. Could there be a local pH disturbance in the muscles or nerves? I have no idea how that might lead to cramps, though. Should be easy to test if vinegar works as well as vitamin C does.
Ok. My experience, I got early morning cramps somewhat frequently through my whole life, to the point were when I jump out of bed screaming in pain my wife won’t even ask what’s going on. Two things for sure drive my leg cramps:
1. Exercising without a cooldown period and stretching, yep learn it from Tour de France cyclist they fully degrade their lactate after the race in a cooldown spin to better recover for the next day. Let’s call this exertion driven.
2. When I shift to a low carb diet I would always get 10X more cramps than usual about a week or two into the change in diet, probably just when my body begins to run high Ketosis, because that’s when the weight loss gets kicking. Years ago I heard from my Dr that cramps where very frequent on overweight people (high BMI) changing to low carb diet, certainly it was in my case. So this is metabolically driven, however we do know that fat metabolism requires 6X more water than glycogen. And when I’m on ketosis I wake up very thirsty. So this one seems to be dehydration as a consequence of running on ketosis.
My general hypothesis is that both are related to lactate concentration in muscles, but high exertion and ketosis seem to increase local concentration of lactate in the calfs, and that is what drives muscles to contract involuntarily.
As a preview of upcoming years, let me tell you that at 50, and close to my overweight peak, my left lats started to get frequent cramps when flexing my hips. Now this is scary, real scary, because the hip and torso get fully stiff, in sharp pain under your ribs until the contractions stop. At first I thought I was having some sort of CV event but I was fine afterward, just a little sore. Later I thought it might be some kind of aneurysm as I could feel and see the twitching under my left side last couple of ribs. Luckily after loosing about 30 lbs, and being much more active it went away. I highly recommend not to get one of these while driving.
I used to have terrible night cramps in my calves, but what finally worked for me was iron supplements for my anemia. If I get the ghost of a cramp coming on these days, Vitamin C will usually work, presumably because it helps in absorbing iron from the diet.
This may or may not have something to do with your case. I just thought I'd throw it out there.
It never occurred to me that I could have anemia; I eat so many iron-containing foods.
Is your vitamin C source a Na (sodium) salt of ascorbic acid? Perhaps sodium might be a factor.
I wonder if cramps also have some psychological cause. Ive noticed that I get cramps much more frequently when Im highly stressed, I also tried to be hydrated and increased my consumption of K in an attempt of reducing cramping but the effect was minimal, Ive had better success by doing exercise. Reading about your experience makes me think that taking the Vitamin C might have had some kind of placebo effect if in fact cramps have a psychological relationship at all. Im going to try taking the Vitamin C to see if it helps my cramps.
Woke up to an excruciating calf cramp just a few days ago and felt the lingering pain for the next few days. As a chronic pain sufferer it was particular disheartening to start the day that way. Thanks for reminding me I’m not alone in this suffering!
I get the same calf cramps, usually while sleeping in the middle of the night, occasionally in more embarrassing situations - like a movie theater. Can only guess what the rest of the audience thought I was doing as I writhed in pain and tried to restrain my heavy breathing through the misery. 😅
This video kept reminding me of my experience with frequent migraine headaches. They seem to share a similar space in physiology and my efforts to learn more about migraine has left me more confused. Triggers are often opposites, too much meds, not enough meds, too much sleep, not enough sleep, a change in sleep etc... I would love to see a video by you on the subject someday. Thanks!
Bonus if he can get Prof Peter Goadsby involved too. He's very entertaining in lectures.
Yes! I get a calf cramp (typically in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping) about once a year. It’s definitely one of the worst pains and it stays sore for about a week just as you’ve said.
EDIT: I just remembered that I got pretty bad calf cramps from playing sand volleyball. It consistently happened because I hadn’t eaten much of anything the day I played. Otherwise, I don’t cramp much while playing.
My life got somewhat derailed by gut cramps. It took me years to connect them to stress because they began when I was quite young and they could kick in before I was even consciously stressed. They absolutely shredded my ability to study.
Yes and more yes
Stress is the cause of a huge array of problems we experience. Whilst I dont think stress is the sole cause of cramps, it most definitely will be the cause for people who are stressed.
For me the cold is the trigger. If I walk barefoot on a cold floor and the temperature of the toes drops, instant cramps.
Or on cold nights, if I put my feet outside the covers, instant cramp.
It doesn't matter if I've exercised or not. And I drink a lot of water. So those aren't factors in my case.
My father has the same symptoms, which leads me to think that it is some inherited genetic alteration of the muscle signaling system.
does your Dad have some underlying diagnosis later on? ( I’m still trying to figure out why I’m cramping as well, & am only one in my family 😞)
@@jpdoc5722 Unfortunately, no doctor has been able to establish a cause. We haven't been prescribed any medication, only palliative advice. Hydration, massages, exercises. 😔
It happens exactly the same with me and I notice it's the cold. I also sometimes have toe cramps I don't know what they're called and it's usually because I touched some cold surface with my toes. It's incredibly painful
For me it turned out to be cold-related too. On hot summer nights, I used to sleep with bare legs under a single bedsheet, and would wake up with painful calf cramps. But ever since I keep the cover over my legs, no more cramps!
It definitely is genetic, my mom has had horrible leg cramps my entire life (can’t comment on the earlier occurrences) and she has DVT. I am now entering cramp city at 30 and I’m developing broken capillaries like they are going out of business.
Great video. I disagree that Med Life Crisis videos are useless - my Australian has come on leaps and bounds with this one. Speaking from experience, it's so easy to let your exercise and training slip. Glad to say that after a four year layoff, I'm back with the plan and have not felt so good in years. Thanks for your content - one of the best channels on RUclips.
If you get a cramp in your right leg for example. Put the dorsum of your right foot to the plantar surface of your left foot and dorsiflex your right foot (and leg somewhat) against your foot. This stops the cramp almost immediately for me and saves me from the prolonged pain experienced afterwards as you mentioned. Cheers!
For the calf, I’ve found that jumping out of bed and standing up normally on the leg ends it instantly, usually before whatever damage that would hobble me for three days can really set in.
The first time I heard about this it seemed inconceivable to me that I could even try to stand on the leg, but now I do it any time anything twinges and I’ve avoided a lot of suffering.
(Edit: my calf muscle relaxes as I put weight on my foot, but if you try this make sure you grab something for support if yours doesn’t to take the weight off, or you’re unable to balance! )
You are absolutely right. Its the pulling it out by standing doing the lasting damage. Lay still and let it pass. It will be a bit longer in cramp pain but you won't have the lasting pain.
Yes!!! I suffer from these and have learned this behaviour and it's now just a reflex 🦵
Yep, works just like that for me as well. Which leads me to suspect some kind of neurological phenomenon is at the root of my calf cramping - putting weight on my foot closes an open-loop feedback signal and keeps it from running away (i.e. fracturing my tibia)...
I do this _and_ take a lot of deep breaths, like try to hyperventilate. That tends to nip them in the bud.
I'm in my late 20s and have had the same leg cramp issue as you since I was in high school. Being sore in the leg for a week is definitely the worst part.
I had that at school. Was so bad I couldn't do Physical Education (games) the next say at school. My mum (bless her) wrote a letter to excuse me, explaining I had 'midnight cramps'. The school teachers thought it was a big joke and read it out to the whole class and fellow teachers! It was not hilarious! B***ards!
Thanks for the video, the simple fact that other people have described what I go through is comforting. I watched the video to the end, and that’s where I found your information that I needed, specifically the hematoma reference, because I get severe cramps pretty regularly, and I had a severe one that gave me a huge hematoma on my thigh, went to the doctor, and, like you said, they had no clue that a cramp could cause a hematoma and said it probably was a hit, but I am dead sure it was a hematoma!
Oof. This hits me hard. Since I was a teenager(now over 40), I have been dealing with these horrible calf cramps. Totally debilitating. I would be laying there in bed crying from the pain. So much pain and force that at times it felt like the muscle was about to be pulled away. After such an incident, I would be sore for a couple of days sometimes, and in the immediate aftermath I would often be nearly unable to walk. It doesn't happen now as often as it did during puberty, it has gone from a peak of anywhere from once a month to 2-3 times a week, and now happens infrequently, perhaps 3-6 times a year - but strangely, now they tend to cluster. If it happens once, it seems more likely to happen again within a week or two. I have discovered that when you get that first twinge telling you it's about to hit, stretch the leg out straight and holding it like that until the cramp releases, results in less immediate pain, and less after-cramp soreness. But if you let the muscle contract, it's gonna feel like the muscle is being torn in half. My cramp episodes tend to last anywhere from 30 seconds to the worst being almost 5 minutes. 0 of 5 stars, do not recommend cramps.
Ah puberty might be a clue. Rapid growth! How does the body achieve that without issues? That would also fit with exercise triggers as exercise triggers growth and also healing of lots of microtears ...
Have you happened to notice your state of mental well being when the cramps strike? I've often noticed a correlation between anxious phases and a higher risk of cramps.
For those struggling with morning calf cramps triggered by the semi voluntary stretching, try this. The next time you feel the onset of a cramp, pull your calf muscle back by swivelling your foot so that the toes start pointing towards you. Essentially stretch your calf muscle in the direction opposite to the one that triggered the cramp. Hold steady until you feel the tightness subside, and then five seconds more. Then continue being cautious with your movements for some time. I've been able to stall many cramps at that relatively painless early stage.
That certainly works for me.
Same here, when I can't cut them off at that stage (ie I'm asleep when it starts) I often need my wife to help me pull against the cramp - awful! So painful! Glad most can be cut off for some of us
@@Lady8D It's awful, but the calf one I really do deal with quite well. My biggest problem area is my rib, which suffers a really painful cramp sometimes, and unlike the calf one I can't really reign that one in.
May I ask though, do you get enough sunlight in a day and how's your mental health overall and would you consider yourself as being in a healthy weight category?
I ask because I was in bad shape four or five weeks ago, and it didn't change until I started going down for morning walks. Dunno whether it's the Vita D or just the mental uplift from being in the sun (my house is dim). Also, previously when I was at a healthier weight, my symptoms were much milder generally.
The kind of severe calf pain you describe was what I experienced after two weeks of no coffee cold turkey as my only withdrawal symptom after 20 years of drinking more than a liter of coffee daily with only the occasional break. The searing calf pain was really bizarre, it only occurred when I tried to leave my legs still. I needed to constantly walk and was absolutely miserable for a few days as I couldn't really sleep or do anything besides constantly walking, not knowing what caused it at that point trying painkillers, water and vigorous calf/leg exercises that momentarily helped so I could sleep for a little bit before waking up to the pain again. After reading about muscle pains and cramps I found something about low blood pressure and knew that caffeine raises it was when I drank half a cup of coffee and the problem was instantly gone and I finally slept good. The next few days I halved the amount of coffee again and again until the pain never occurred again.
i have never felt so seen in my life! I have gotten painful agonizing cramps in my calf for as long as I can remember since being a kid, sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night, sometimes it's first thing in the morning like you described. And often when I tell people about this (or my husband gets jolted awake from my painful yell) they don't understand what the heck I am talking about. I'm sorry you also experience this, but I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
You're not the only one experiencing this. Both me and my partner get these painful calf cramps in the morning from time to time. I usually get them if I've been a little cold around my feet or legs the day prior, and there's a period of sensitivity days after the cramping.
At age 70, I am now afflicted with that type of cramp in my legs, and thank you!!!!
Hello medlife. I am a physical therapist who work ALOT with massage and exercise therapy for triggerpoints. I have been deepdiving alot to find out what the hell these lumps are. Typically they accour in the neck region due to poor posture and week muscles. Patients presents with local an reffered pain. The treatment is prevention though ergonomical advice but accute treatment is triggerpoint massage and localized mobilization of the affected muscle. That is repetitive non-straining movements (like the yoga-exercise cat cow)
In my own research I have consistently found evidence of blood loss to the muscle and blood being sort of caught in the muscle. These triggerpoints are theorized to be cronic muscle spasms sort of like what happens with rigis mortis because it also requires ATP to release myoisin and actin just as it requires ATP for them to join.
The cause is weak, overworked muscles tense up and therefore has a lower blood supply because when a muscle fiber cramps it shortens that section of the muscle. This basically creates local ischemia. What you end up with is a muscle without ample blood supply with pathology and no way of healing. This is a positive feedback loop. It is basically like a mini compartment syndrom
Why does massage and localized repetetive movement help? Because it restores blood flow and thereby lowers intermuscular pressure to lower and it promotes cell defusion to occur normally thereby allowing healing.
This is a mix between my research on triggerpoints (which is small cronic cramps/spasms) and my own experience. I agree with your statement on a lack of research on the topic. Crazy interesting that you found a hematome. But it does correspond with my theory. .
Love you vids and your sense of humor.
All the best
/Alex
I wonder if this is what that neck pain is that I get if I don't sleep enough. I can partly fix it by stretching, looking all the way up and then down and keep doing that, which is a similar flexing of the neck that occurs in cat cow from what the pictures of it show.
Anecdotally, I agree that low blood flow is a big cause, especially of those early morning cramps that cause pain for days.
I used to suffer from them quite a bit when staying away from home, especially in the winter. I tend not to find myself sleeping in a too-cold bed these days, but when I do I think I'm more prone to cramps.
Recently I started on ADHD medication, which can impact on blood flow, and not long after I had the worst muscle pain in my legs. It was like the after effects of cramp, only without the initial spasm. I even got tested for blood clots. But it was just poor circulation. A mix of aerobic exercise and compression socks have really helped.
@@tristan7216 Well sleep is when are tissue in general heals itself the best. Which means a lack there of would decrease healing. Also lack of sleep often equals many hours sitting on the phone or laptop late in to night (i am guilty of this also 😌 ). So I think what you are suggesting makes alot of sense. Lack of sleep also increases stress levels which also increases our sensitivity to pain.
It makes sense that the stretching helps. For these kinds of cramps it is better to do dynamic stretching and repetitive motions rather than static stretching.
@@jrevillug I have ADHD my self. Very interesting that the medication had these side effects on you. It does make sense as methylphenidat (the active component in most ADHD drugs) is a stimulant and increases sympathetic nervesystem activation and thereby increasing blood pressure which could reduce blood flow to distal regions (eg. Arms and legs). Hope it had gotten better for you though
@@alexanderfriis1 laptop lol, guilty as charged 🤣 or phone, on the terrible couch I'm laying on right now 😸
I have been getting calf cramps on and off for years but since becoming pregnant they have become way more common! Dorsiflexing the foot seems to really help settle it down.
I feel really bad for anyone who has had cramps for hours. The pain is terrible.
The only time my calves cramp now is if i play DDR in front of a crowd, mostly when i am nervous.
I think your leg cramps are related to you digestion, specifically exchanges between your small intestine to your large intestine.
Walking off the cramp helps the muscle, but it also helps your bowls to move along and eliminate gas.
So that’s my experience.
I had a calf cramp last week just as you described. The worst I've had in years. Stretching and massaging the muscle during the cramp seems to have helped and I was able to resume normal activity after about 3 days.
Yes I learned calf massages at the onset of a leg cramp eliminates the cramp same with back spasms. I have a massager I can put on a chair that will knead out back spasms. .
As a boy to 14 years of age we lived in a mild climate in Dorrigo NSW. My brother and I were very active, mowing lawns, splitting fire wood, helping our father loading and unloading his truck, and bike riding up and down steep hills. At 14 we moved to Inverell. A much hotter climate, up to around 40 C plus in the summer. 2 years latter I moved to Moree an even hotter place. I can't remember exactly when, but soon after moving to Inverell, I began getting leg cramps just below the knee. The tendon on the inside of knee would be tight, and the pain was off the scale. I am talking 15 out of 10. Our chemist recommended salt tablets. This did help. Several years later, I was mowing lawns full time and the cramps would come on in the night, waking me up. On a few occasions I got them in both knees at once. Trying to just get out of bed was brutal. I had to get upright, and found slow walking on cold tiled floor would help. I had the air conditioner on when sleeping. Don't know if that played a part. Now retired and have not had a cramp in maybe 10 years. I am very much inactive now. At times I had a dull pain for several days after a cramp. I also perspired extremely heavy. At times 30 minuits or so after starting first lawn, I could ring the water out of my shirt. I drank 10 to 15 litres of water and in middle of summer I could loose 6 kg in weight in a day.
Calf cramps were much more frequent for me in the second and third trimesters of my 3 pregnancies. I found that making sure I was getting a decent amount of calcium and vitamin D daily helped, be it from drinking milk or taking supplements.
Same. Started eating a banana a day on midwifes advice and it worked for me.
@@carolb3960I eat tons of bananas, daily (well, not really tons, but I used to eat more than 20, now I eat 7-8/day), still have cramps.
I have the exact same cramp issue in my calfs in the morning, if I instantly stretch the muscle in the opposite direction I can usually stop it. Still hurts like a * though. I have certain bouts with the eyelid twitches, comes and goes.
It's always at random, never seem to be related to prior exercise. I do however sweat alot, but I'm also well hydrated at all times.
PS- Pocari Sweat is awesome.
It is so heartening to see this on RUclips. I have the exact same type of cramps which happens in my sleep on my calf muscles. Sometimes I can predict it coming on when I am waking up, but the effect is excruciating. And yes, the after-effect stays on for a few days. I have had this since childhood. I notice a higher incidence when my calf muscles are exposed to the cold compared to when they are warm under the blanket.
If I am half awake and feel it coming, rubbing the calf muscles (warming it up?) and stretching it out can sometimes prevent the onset of the actual cramp. If the cramp has already started, I need to rub down the calf muscle and stretch it out to help shorten the duration of the cramp. If I do not rub/stretch it out, that painful lump would last for a few days longer.
I never found any definitive source for the cause of this.
I've noticed cramping has a "in your head" quality. If I fight it, it goes full cramp, but I can usually consciously force my attention into something else and the cramp stops. Only happens while trying to go to sleep.
I also think there might be something in the brain signal to the muscles triggering a cramp. But it is just an idea, not a fully formed hypothesis that could be tested.
That have to do with relaxation. When you panic you tense up, which makes it worth. I used to panic when I get a cramp. But after getting so many I learned that it will just go away shortly, so I stopped panicking and stretch the cramped muscle and around it. Then I make sure to move around and get hydrated. That really helps, it reduces the recovery by a lot. It might not work for everyone, but it does for me.
I used to get these a lot as a kid, and still occasionally get them. I ALWAYS immediately press the bottom of my foot against something (the foot of the bed, or I stand up and press it on the floor), I think this is why they never leave long-lasting pain for me. Seriously, the pain is intense and immediate but I always stretch the muscle "straight" before it fully sets in. I'm always so surprised when cramp victims never talk about stretching against the cramps and then talk about unbearable pain.
Also if you're getting these in the morning it is absolutely related to electrolytes and hydration, make sure you get enough water before you fall asleep
This is an accurate truth! I am a person that does not exercise and I take more than a handful of medications for bad cardiovascular health. Am not overweight, do not watch what I eat, basically live on carbs,oh ya,and am a 70 year male that smokes . So I better get to the point very quickly! A few months ago I had a cramp in my glute,and the muscle that runs up the inside of my right leg, from the knee up to the crotch,for 24 DAYS,24-7!!!!!!!! THEN BRUISED FOR 6 WEEKS AFTER !!!!!!!!
I developed bad calf muscle cramps when I went onto the Keto eating style (very low carb - didn't eat an apple for 18 months). I think it was to do with electrolytes but actually an old wives tale to drink Tonic Water prevented the cramps for me. I think it is the quinine in it that works. Hope it helps you because it is excruciating and when you are in the land of nod you are at your most vulnerable !
It was seriously uncanny watching someone, a doctor even, describe the exact issue I've been dealing with for years. With the exception of a pain that last for *days* this is _exactly_ what happens to me.
I also haven't had this problem in months until recently, when I've had a few red flags. I can tell you the two things that seemed to have helped me the most.
1. Eat more. The problem specifically seemed to get worse a few times I tried IF. Took me a while to notice, but if I quit fasting fewer cramps, more fasting, more immediate cramps.
2. I cut out gluten. I did it for a different reason, mostly unbearable pain from eating anything with wheat in it - all of a sudden - but once I avoided it, the cramps seemed to go away entirely.
I can't tell if sleep problems make it worse, or problems executing 1 and 2 make sleep worse, but my recent red flags popped up when I developed insomnia again. But I've recently been having trouble convincing myself to eat for most of the day. Which may be having a similar affect to the deliberate fasting. And truly avoiding gluten in it's entirety is really hard to pull off.
Besides your wisdom and wit, I love your studio backgroud.
STRETCH!
I used to get exactly the same pain in my calf - had it for years. Stretch the calf, that's the key. Point the feet slowly upwards and stretch the calf before you go to sleep, and if you feel the cramp coming on or if you're having a cramping episode, try to stretch. Keeping the food straight seems to prolong the cramp and it does feel counterintuitive to stretch away from you, but it helps, not totally, but to a great extent.
It used to be so painful and once i got it in both calves simultaneously, ouch!
Stretching the leg as far as you can really helps, together with "winking" with your foot. Also found this to be the best working method for my calf cramps I get when waking up sometimes.
@@erikziak1249 yes definitely, it doesn't completely stop it, but really helps a lot.
For the last 1.5yrs I've been rehabbing an L5-S1 Spinal Fusion that prior to I was walking with a cane for 6 months. This journey has pushed me to explore as much as I can about muscle function and motion and has shaped my recovery in ways even my PT told me probably wasn't possible. My experience with muscle cramps/spasms has affected damn near every muscle in my body at one point or another but I've found that specifically I experienced cramps in my foot flexors (bottom of the foot) when I would try to point my toe while laying in bed. My whole life I've had the feeling that if I lean into activating whatever muscles lead to that sensation it seemed to have a positive feedback loop of tension that gradually locked down the muscles in the bottom of my foot.
As a result of my study of muscle function in the last 18 months I decided to lean into the sensation and see what happened. I found that it led to a lot of pain but also a direction of support from other muscles in my calf that I had never felt before. Due to this my best guess at the cause was essentially recruiting too few muscles to produce the same amount of force required to flex my foot, and now that I have worked hard to recruit more muscles in my calf to even out my foot support (e.g. I've had a bad habit all my life of rolling my feet outward when standing, so trying to roll my foot inward slightly to engage that muscle and maintain that directional support) the cramp has never returned. While there is MUCH more behind the why and how of my approach and this is entirely anecdotal, my experience suggests that all of my cramps/spasms were in fact from muscle memory I've developed as a result of bad posture due to injuries and poor life choices leading to essentially putting too much force into too small a section of my muscular system. I've been systematically exploring the range of motion of every joint and muscle fiber that I can and I continue to find that muscle cramps/spasms for me are the result of not yet being fully capable of managing my body weight at the basic level.
P.S. This whole process also continues to unlock my singing/speaking voice from muscle tension which has been an unreal experience.
Sorry you had to have surgery for your back. I'm sure your back problems are different from mine, but please read my post and let me know if it makes sense to you.
Came back to say something I've never ever written... but thanks for the sponso! I had been struggling to get back to workout since pregnancy, so when I saw your add I though... well why not? It helped a lot, I met a great coach and have been (mainly) working out consistently since!
00:01 When one of your favourite RUclipsrs has your book on his bedside table...! ❤
🤩
I feel your pain! My way of combating the calf cramp is that when one hits, I force my leg to straighten out and force my foot to 90 deg. It immediately stops the cramp. Hurts like a bitch while doing that, but puts an end to the cramp. Sure wakes you up though! Good luck to all!
I did the same, but now my calf cramp gone away for at least 5 years since I take calcium and Vitamin B every day.
I’ve experienced calf cramps during sleep for many years, much like you describe in your video, complete with the multi-day lingering pain. I’ve found several methods of mitigation. The most effective is to recognize the imminent onset occasioned by the full-body stretch, and immediately relax the affected lower leg. If I’m quick enough, the cramp fails to develop. If I’m not quick enough, I immediately get my leg out from under the covers, and perform a bicycle pedaling sort of motion including exaggerated flexing of my foot to maximize activation of the calf muscles. This often seems to drastically shorten the duration of acute pain and, perhaps more importantly, reduces or eliminates the lingering pain. I’ve also tried various forms of massage of the knot during the acute phase with some success, but activation of the surrounding muscle seems to be more consistently effective. I do believe that stretching after running helps to reduce the frequency and severity of night-cramping, but I also believe that muscle fatigue from exercise can be a contributor to the phenomenon. Your hematoma insight rings true for me as a plausible explanation of the lingering pain, so thanks for that.
Let's be honest here, Rohin accepted sponsorship from CoPilot only to "complain" that his resting heart rate is no longer in the mid 40s but 52 BPM.
And with that, he's given me extra motivation to go for a run tomorrow morning, so that I can complain just like him; he's such a role model!
I found if weird he complained about that. A heart rate in the 40s is usually an athletes thing. If my heart rate goes that low, i'll be calling the emergency number.
@@tonymouannes Same haha, just did a medical checkup yesterday and my RHR is 62. Hearing him complaining about it made me quickly went to search "What would be considered as a healthy resting heart rate". FYI 60-100 is normal, and atheletes can go lower and be healthy.
Same thing happens to me - it usually comes on just after waking up. Also had some wake me up in the middle of the night in the worst pain. I've noticed if I can resist moving whichever foot / resist flexing that leg's calf then I might avoid the cramp. But this worked only a couple of times. This obliviously doesn't work with those occurring in the middle of the night. I also have regular muscle spasms all over my body (usually stomach, chest, neck, eye, back). Glad to know I am not alone, the cramps are really sore and I too have the tender lump for days after.
Dear Sir, I have no clue if you're a Dr. or not, my attention span sucks due to the fear of having a severe cramp in my calves. Your's is probably the most comprehensive & intelligent talk I have heard to date although you do ramble on. I am a suffer of very severe calf and foot cramps. I have none of the "possible or probable" causes. I am a nurse, way retired but I know a multiple things I do NOT do correctly. My eating sucks, I eat once a day in the evening and what I eat is not junk food but not "healthy", I have back pain issues and have due to turning whale patients in the ICU, I was in an accident about three years ago that crushed my heel and fractured my already sick low back, and on and on and on. In the past 3 months I have began to have consist calf cramps starting in the morning. Not failing to send me into orbit for about three weeks before I sought help from my doc. He offered restless leg syndrome meds. Well I'm on the max dose, it may have helped the left calf and foot but my right is calf and foot, which was severely problematic has not been changed. I had a nice day from hell - I give up.
My contributions to the case reports in this comment section:
I get calf and foot cramps at night when I'm stressed, causing me to twist and turn a lot with high tension in all extremity muscles. Sometimes I wake up shortly before or just when the cramp starts and are often able to release the tension with breathing exercises just in time to avoid a fully developed cramp that needs stretching. Hydration doesn't seem to be a contributing factor. I get the twitching at different parts of the body as well, haven't found any patterns yet, though, neither regarding location nor triggers.
Have you ruled out restless leg syndrome?
Yes me too. And another precipitating factor is a small "bed" as sleeping on a couch where my feet almost touch the armrest.
What a great production. Let's just stop for a second to appreciate how the level of these videos have been improving lately!
As someone who suffers quite often from cramps I have several questions. 1)What cause cramps to occur simultaneously in both legs at the same time, in the same muscle group? 2)Why do I often get cramps on the sides of my shins or front of my shins where there aren’t large muscles and these cramps are often mild but take longer to release. 3) why do some muscle cramps seem to respond to being stretched while other are to crippling to stretch out? There is no rhyme nor reason for the cramps to occur sometimes several times in a night and sometimes it can be months between attacks.
WOW! I was SO hoping that you had learned the secret to cramps as when you talked about your morning calf adventures, you were LITERALLY describing, word by word, my experiences. Mine happen EXACTLY as yours, but I would add that while they can happen in either leg, they tend to favor the left side, for whatever reason. The hematoma issue WAS interesting, so I do hope that you are able to find some kind of answer, as they (the cramps, obviously) really freak me out. It is SUCH a weird thing for a body to do.
Mine happen on my left side too! What the heck?!
If the nature of your cramps is that you can feel a leg cramp coming on (even if it is just a few seconds before it actually hits), then try to pull lift your toes up on that foot. By that I mean try to lift the toes towards your knees in a way that will stretch the muscles on the back of the calf of that leg. See if that helps.
Unless it's something some pharmaceutical company can get people on recurring expensive drugs covered by insurance, no one will ever really look into this - profit over all else
I get them pretty much every time I have a large dose of sugar e.g. a 2 scoop icecream before bed. It is almost without fail and exclusively.
I gotta say for me, the hematoma thing was pretty freaking obvious…
I mean a certain area of your muscle squeezes really really hard
and then for a few days,
It feels like you were punched with a knuckle …
Perfect timing! I had a very painful inner thigh cramp while heating up my body for exercise just a few days ago. A cramp that painful is something that I've only had a few times in my life. I'd also opt for dehydration since I'd been working for 12h in the summer heat on the day before (I sweat a lot) and I train in the hottest room of my flat to condition myself to endure the summer heat.
First thing that came to my mind was to go to the kitchen to get a few licks of salt and drink some water once I was able to walk again. Was too lazy to mix up some Pocari Sweat but I'll definitely start bringing some to work after this episode.
I’m 66 years old woman. I hardly ever got muscle cramps until this year. All three cramp episodes with repeated spontaneous spasms each lasted from secs to minutes went on for a few days. And all 3 episodes happened a day or two after my long distance international travel. After retirement, I have been continuously traveling for more than a year. I don’t drink much fluid during air travel to avoid going to restrooms since bathrooms in airplanes, airports and on the road are hard to find or inconvenient or far away. Long hours of sitting in cramped space are not helping either. So dehydration,long periods of seating (inactivity) could be the reasons for my severe painful cramps after long travel.
Yeah I know the exact cramp you're talking about. Twice that I can remember I woke up being on the verge of that cramp, trying not to move my toes at all and just holding that "pre-tension"
Both times I inevitably moved and BAM, the calf feels like it's imploding. The other times it just happens and yeah it's painful as hell.
and scary!
I also have benign fasciculation syndrome and yep, I relate 100% with your experience. I also get calf cramps in the morning and it always sucks for a week afterwards.
I have suffered from a variety of leg cramps, foot cramps, etc for many years and I have found a reliable source of relief which works in 2 minutes or less. What I use is an inexpensive TENS device ($30 - $40) whose electrodes I place along the path of the cramp. Turn on just about any of the selectable pulse patterns and the cramp subsides almost immediately. Apparently, this works by interrupting or disrupting the nerve impulses creating the muscle contraction, and neutralizing them. It has worked without fail over the last several years to the point I am never without it being handy. It’s on my nightstand, my travel kit, when I go camping, etc. I cannot overemphasize how effective this simple solution is.
Was surprised to hear you mention Pocari Sweat. I live in China and on occasion drink it after a long run or workout.
I wouldn't be surprised if this video leads to more researchers taking a look at the mechanisms of cramp, finding out about such basic things that we still don't understand is just the kind of thing that excites scientists.
I used to get these cramps in my calf and hamstring in the morning like once a month but since I started stretching my calf and hamstring before lying down every evening I haven't had them in years. Whenever I get lazy and don't stretch before bed I can feel them coming back.
Also if I can stand up right away when the cramp starts they sometimes stop early.
Hope this helps someone!
Really enjoyed this video - a remarkable mix of wackiness and medical integrity (the latter in short supply on YT). My cramps are sporadic but are related I'm sure to my advanced age, my meds, exercise (I do a lot) and dehydration, but not reliably. I can be dehydrated and not get cramp, do more exercise than my usual and not get cramp. There is clearly some mysterious undiscovered trigger (same goes for my acephalgic migraines). Taking salt stops the cramp almost immediately for me - if it's a placebo effect, I don't care!
Fellow Unhappy Cramper here. I had virtually the same problem. Massively painful cramping, often upon awakening and getting out of bed. Some cramps were so bad that I could not walk for 1-2 days. Once I spent the day on my bottom and scooted around the house because I could not walk. I saw my doctor. I saw an orthopaedic surgeon, who shrugged his shoulders. Nothing helped: NSAIDS, water, isotonic drinks, papayas, bananas, quinine water, warmth, cold packs, massage. Nothing. I was and am a daily athlete, long distance walker/runner, long distance cyclist (100K+). Nothing provided relief. I don't know the physiological mechanism. But I did figure out what triggered the cramp for me. Since I've avoided the trigger, I have not had a cramp in more than two decades. My trigger was this: sitting at a desk for long periods of intense work with my lower legs crossed and tightly clamped against one another. I'm convinced my sitting posture caused the cramps. At least I can say: I've not had a cramp since I changed my behaviour.
That's amazing! Thanks for sharing!
Wait I started getting thse cramps after going to school where i sit all day hmmm
I was quite surprised to see that you neglected to ask mike what the mechanism is for *releasing* a contracted muscle. he explains how to contract a muscle, but not how it is released. it seems to me this is pretty relevant and important in figuring out the mechanism of a cramp. the question may not be "why does this muscle flex?", but rather, "why doesn't it *stop* flexing when I want it to?".
in my experience, when I feel a cramp coming up, it won't happen as long as I don't accidentally flex the muscle. if I do, I get stuck in that painfully contracted position, unable to release it. for this exact reason, I try to avoid flexing any cramp-prone muscles right when I wake up in the morning, because I know it could trigger a cramp.
secondly, have you ever tried *not* stretching a cramp? I was taught in high school that when you stretch a muscle right after exerting it, you are essentially tearing it apart, and the way it heals back up again over the course of the next few days is what makes it bigger and stronger. I could be wrong but my theory is that you're actually causing more damage by stretching right away. I would suggest to instead focus on trying to relax the cramped muscle through sheer mental efforts. I know, "just try to relax" is probably the last thing on your mind when you're having a cramp, but if you're truly desperate it could be worth a shot if you haven't tried this already.
Great cooperation with Dr Mike 😄
Related/unrelated: I've got serious spinal issues and my legs cramp up numerous times every night. It's pretty horrible, but I've taught myself to get each cramping episode to last as short a period of time as possible by deep breathing, relaxing, and deliberately relaxing the muscle that's cramping.
I have similar issues, please read my post, and let me know if helps.
Quinine and quinidine are very effective for prevention. Unfortunately, no longer used in Australia because it may affect the electrical conductive system of heart. Used it for decades , never had a patient with side effects
Like many commenters I can relate to the calf cramps (although I don't have any residual pain after a few hours). When swimming, I also quite often get toe cramps, which feel like I'm crossing a pair of toes. Can't remember ever meeting anyone with the same experience
My girlfriend regularly gets toe cramps also. Never heard of it before this but there's at least two of you now!
Me too!
I get those whenever I cross my second toe over my biggest toe >.
I get a few bouts of toe cramps every year... I guess that makes a handful of us, at least.
I get toe cramps quite regularly, they are significantly worse during the winter when it's cold.
I just found your channel and I love your off-beat humour. I have experienced these calf muscle cramps all my life, and as a woman who has had a baby, they are very similar to labour pains. If you are a man and wonder what it feels like to have a baby these cramps may be the closest you can get. Although labour pains repeat every few minutes for hours, getting progressively worse until you either have the baby, or blessedly receive an epidural (I will be grateful to that doctor for the rest of my life).
I am a runner, and my calf muscle cramps seem to be exercise related. If I slow down on running, then I start getting morning muscle cramps. If I increase my running, then I also start experiencing muscle cramps. They don’t seem to occur when I maintain a consistent level of exercise.
Thanks for a great video!
I have exactly the same cramp as you describe and it is, for me, the WORST pain I have ever experienced (male, no pregnancy possible). I've had a kidney stone that was a trifling annoyance in comparison. And I also get that 3 day bruise afterwards.
The only saving grace is that I can normally catch the cramp before it comes on - I literally have a couple of seconds and I am so good at it (probably because my body is attuned to the agony if it doesn't get to it quickly) that I can wake up from a deep sleep and assume the position (toes curled towards me) in a heartbeat.
For your studies, I am a lardball (20 stone) who does no exercise BUT I used to get this cramp much more often in my 20s and 30s when I played rugby, so meh.
cause of cramps, vitamin b1 deficiency, potassium deficiency.
Great video! I appreciate the asides to improve scientific and medical literacy. It's also really cool how you make use of your access to medical equipment and your expert colleagues to dive deeper into your investigation!
Your Aussie accent was certainly... Interesting. A lot of it felt good, but you also started reminding me of Aussies with South African background I know.
When you said the rabbit hole was kind of cramped, that was the moment I subscribed.
My God, this is actually the first time I've ever heard of someone else experiencing this! I get the exact same experience even down to the hematoma. Once it was so extreme that it was visible on the skin. Crippling pain. Hydration seemed to be the only thing that works.
Few years ago I had exactly the symptoms you mention: very painful cramps in my (most often than not left) calf, only when I was lying and only when I was stretching the leg / compressing the muscle. I was never dehydrated when it happened and it never happened when I was standing (i.e. compressing the calf muscle while supporting my weight).
It was something that helped: every time I felt the need to stretch in the morning I did the opposite move: while stretching all the other limbs I flexed the foot so that the toes made a sharp angle w/ the leg and the calf muscle was forced to be stretched, not compressed. Never happened since (but i'm also exercising more so that could also help)
I'm a 55 year old woman have been suffering night cramps after 3 to 4 hours sleep then every hour hour and a half until morning nightly since I was a teenager. The only thing I've found that lessons them is having 3 teaspoons of salt with a lots of soda water before bed gets me through the night with minimal cramping on waking. Nothing else has ever helped.
Hello! I am 37 and a fellow physician, although a much less sexy gastroenterologist.
I used to have pretty bad cramps in my calf muscles during puberty, also under similar conditions you describe, i.e. in the morning just after waking up. After the main cramp I was in some pain for a few days, but usually nothing serious. Although there was nothing to do to prevent these occurences, I noticed that when I immediately stretched the muscle involved, the pain would be less severe and would last for a shorter time. After puberty these calf cramps all but disappeared.
However since puberty I have been having cramps on a regular basis in the muscles of my neck and upper torso, and always after some kind of sudden or sharp movement. They almost always go away after a few minutes of stretching, although it is not always easy to stretch your torso without looking like you are doing some sort of dodgy gymnastics.
I have the exact same condition & so does my sister. I barely move my feet either in the middle of the night or mornings & my calf muscles begin to spasm. It is often so painful that I end up flopping around like a fish lol Unfortunately, I also experience this in my lower & middle back muscles 😢 The back spasms are dibilitating.
I get these morning (and sometimes evening) leg cramps, where the leg hurts for weeks after. None of the standard advice for athletic cramps (electrolytes, hydration, stretching, nerve stimulation, etc.) ever help.
When I feel the cramp coming on (leg twitches escalating into involuntary muscle spasms), the best way I've found to "intercept it" is to immediately move the leg as much as possible (with a variety of big rapid motions). This works maybe 80% of the time, but it doesn't fully eliminate the leg twitchiness, so I still need to be really careful about my leg positioning the rest of the morning, or another cramp might come on.
The main contributing factor I've been able to notice is increased stress and/or lack of sleep, which unfortunately can cause a nasty feedback loop (underslept, so legs are cramping, which makes it harder to sleep, so I get more underslept, which causes more cramping, and so on).
I'm gonna try some blood circulation techniques (massage tools, heat pads, compression socks, etc.) and see if that helps.
Your hematoma discovery at 26:54 definitely makes sense. That explains why the pain lasts so long and nothing seems to cure it. Thank for investigating and sharing that!
After back surgery due to a herniated disc that had caused nerve damage I have experienced the same syndrome that made me think of Sigourney Weaver in 'Alien' (it looks like something alive under the skin).No neurologist I saw here in Germany could explain it so thanks Doc. for solving the mystery for me. I assume the muscle cramps on the left leg and foot also result from the same nerve damage.
I had an artificial disc replacement in my C-4, afterwhich, my second toe in, on the left foot only, has only about 30% feeling - almost numb. Met 4 other people with the same issue - odd.
22 year old male here. I have cramps exactly as you described yourself having in both calves. I began having them around 14, twice a month. When I was 17-18 I began having them almost every other day. I would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and know that a few moments later, my leg(s) would twitch and I’d be writhing in pain for the next few minutes. I would have remnant pain and tightness for a day or so. In the last few years I haven’t had many, maybe twice or thrice a year.
I’m not sure of what causes it or what state my body is in, but I have suffered from full body joint pain most of my life. I consider myself to be of middling fitness; I focus on cardio and flexibility. I drink plenty of water (perhaps too much) and am of average weight.
Hey bro! Try this massaging handheld "pistols" that hit your muscles. Once i "beated" my legs with one of those i haven't had a cramp for over a weak (or untill the next activity/excercise puting high strain on the legs)
You get cramps a lot and you drink too much water? It sounds like a potassium-sodium unbalance. You literally dilute yourself, and it is dangerous.
Please drink less water. Have the water you drink contain electrolytes. And drink other liquids than water, too.
WARNING: With your whole body joint pain added on, it sounds serious enough to go see a doctor. PLEASE do it. You don't become more of a man of dyeing from preventable causes. 🤭🤨
1. Autoimmune disease. Several of them cause symptoms like you describe. Do you get dizzy too? Tingling in hands and feet? Decreased appetite?
2. Your body's potassium, sodium and/or calcium metabolism not work properly. It can have many causes. From temporary unbalance to genetic diseases and cancer, or
3. diabetes.
my calf cramp looked like the scene from alien hurt life my calf was giving birth was one of the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced
Wow! Me and my dad struggle with bad cramps, and your calf-cramp experience is EXACTLY what we go through! It would be great to know if there's something behind it. We (=me and my dad) tend to think our tendency for cramps is somehow inherited since we two experience it.