Leg Cramps in the Night. (You'll never guess what helped!!!), page 3

reply to post by new_here

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The old advice about eating a banana to stave off cramp is exactly the same as drinking some salt water. Muscle and nerve cells in the body work through small and frequent impulses (electrical charge movement) which causes a cell to do whatever it's supposed to do, in the case of muscle cells, this function is contraction.

Each individual impulse passing a cell is called an action potential. An action potential works like this:
- Cell is happily sitting with -60mV potential
- Sodium ions (salt - Na+) start to pass in to the cell through Na+ channels while potassium ions (banana - K+) stop moving out of the cell. This increases the potential of the cell.
- At -40mV, calcium ions (Ca2+) start to move in to the cell through the calcium channels in the cell membrane.
- At +10mV the cell has reached its peak potential and begins to repolarise. Basically the opposite happens, K+ leaves the cell, Ca2+ ions are actively transported out of the cell. The potential begins to decrease again.
- At around -30mV the Na+ and K+ pumps swap their activity levels, this means that K+ begins to re-enter the cell while Na+ leaves to restore the original balance of ions either side of the membrane and leave the cell at -60mV.

That's a whole cycle, and it can cause cramp when it happens in people with nutrient deficiencies of potassium, sodium or calcium because it's hard to make the cell revert to -60mV without enough ions. It can also cause twitches in people with excess nutrients for similar reasons.

Most people tend to be low in potassium when they experience cramp considering the excess salt in everything these days, you must have a pretty good diet to be low on sodium. I'd advise keeping a food diary for a week or two for salt intake and comparing it to your recommended daily dose.

As for why you instinctively knew to go for the salt, well we wouldn't last very long as a species if we didn't have cravings for things our body needed!

reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha

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interesting factiod (cant find the link where i read it) when a patient experiences a reaction to a placebo they have proven that the patients body has actualy manifested the chemical/nutrient neccessary for the effect they experienced,

so it was not only their belief that it would work that made it work, it is in fact their belief that they had this chemical in them that caused their body to physicaly create that chemical so they would feel it in them,


ive been trying to get my friends to give me (placebo) super enlightenment pills but for some reason having told them to do it gives me the knowledge its only a sugar pill and ruins the whole thing :/

Originally posted by Dispo
reply to post by new_here

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The old advice about eating a banana to stave off cramp is exactly the same as drinking some salt water. Muscle and nerve cells in the body work through small and frequent impulses (electrical charge movement) which causes a cell to do whatever it's supposed to do, in the case of muscle cells, this function is contraction.

Each individual impulse passing a cell is called an action potential. An action potential works like this:
- Cell is happily sitting with -60mV potential
- Sodium ions (salt - Na+) start to pass in to the cell through Na+ channels while potassium ions (banana - K+) stop moving out of the cell. This increases the potential of the cell.
- At -40mV, calcium ions (Ca2+) start to move in to the cell through the calcium channels in the cell membrane.
- At +10mV the cell has reached its peak potential and begins to repolarise. Basically the opposite happens, K+ leaves the cell, Ca2+ ions are actively transported out of the cell. The potential begins to decrease again.
- At around -30mV the Na+ and K+ pumps swap their activity levels, this means that K+ begins to re-enter the cell while Na+ leaves to restore the original balance of ions either side of the membrane and leave the cell at -60mV.

Well that is the Chemistry of it then.
Going back to the fact that I added a banana to my diet two days in a row (potassium) which was out of the routine, would you say I upset the 'balance' then?

Originally posted by pryingopen3rdeye
reply to post by NarcolepticBuddha

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interesting factiod (cant find the link where i read it) when a patient experiences a reaction to a placebo they have proven that the patients body has actualy manifested the chemical/nutrient neccessary for the effect they experienced,

Now that just adds a whole new spin on the concept that we 'create our own reality' !!!

reply to post by new_here

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Possibly, the body is very adaptable in the long term, but major changes in biochemistry have a harsh toll in the immediate time just after the change. I'd hypothesise that your cells were used to generating an ap with minimal ion concentrations, so when you increased the levels of K+ you managed to prevent proper repolarisation, probably causing the final exflux of K+ from the cell to be too small (since your body is used to transporting small amounts of K+ at this stage) to fully restore the charge balance on either side of the membrane, leaving the cell somewhere around -20mV. The Na+ intake increased the charge on the outside of the cell which decreased the potential to its proper level.

I suppose it doesn't really matter how much you take in as long as you aren't flooding your body with one or the other, but if eating a banana upsets your dietary mineral balance that much I'd suggest increasing your uptake of Na+, K+ and Ca2+ a little bit to prevent unforeseeable complications in future.

Na+ and K+ are used in the formation of ATP (energy) from glucose (sugar) too, so if your mineral levels are the limiting factor in energy production, you'll feel a lot better every day and find yourself becoming more active if you take in more of them. Also magnesium is important.

reply to post by new_here

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After three months of solid leg cramping - I have to warn all people who suffer from leg cramps. leg cramps and pain are NOT a normal process of aging. Get yourself to a doctor and get checked out for blood clots. My leg cramp (after I ignored it for awhile, thought it was a torn muscle from hiking too much) - turned out to be CHRONIC CLOTTING from a rare blood disorder that came from my parents - an inherited gene mutation called Factor V Leiden.

So...if you suffer from really bad leg pain, consider blood clots. Other symptoms include red, hot tender skin, bumps, dizzy, fatigue - these are all things I am experiencing - and bruising easily as well.

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