I have strange lower-leg cramping -- calves, feet, toes -- only at night and only after either drinking alcohol or eating lots of sugar. The only thing that seems common between the two would be my liver (since fructose and alcohol are metabolized similarly in the liver), but how my liver would have some sort of neuromuscular impact on my lower legs while sleeping is beyond me.
I see no plausibility for the usual (mostly half-assed) explanations for cramps such as "dehydration" or deficiency of magnesium or potassium or "electrolytes". Very odd. The obvious solution, which I practice most days, is to simply neither eat sugar nor drink. Still, it's an odd one.
I used to have this same lower extremity cramping last Winter. On the advice of my biologically informed wife, I applied the "half assed" addition of magnesium supplements,and have not experienced such cramping since. Human Biology is messy, and with multiple, complex web linked, cross functionally, in ways that my puny human brain cannot fully comprehend. Yes, it IS a series of A + B causes C, but the secondary and tertiary effects are largely not well understood / not well researched.
ReplyDeleteI already supplement with Magnesium.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say the same issue, do you really mean the same? As in, not random nighttime lower-leg cramping, but very specific nighttime lower-leg cramping -- ONLY after EITHER too much sugar OR drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol.
ReplyDelete"Similar" - though I have a glass of cognac almost every night. It's a "best practice" I learned from an 80 year old (who is now 88) Frenchman who spent several decades as Mitterand's head of counter surveillance last century. So I cannot differentiate between the nights with, and nights without alcohol.
ReplyDeleteWhen I used to gorge on sugar regularly (pre Aug 09) I never noticed such cramping. Since going low carb last Summer, I have on 1/2 a dozen separate memorable occasions gotten lower leg (calf, toe, foot, & combination therein) cramps. The first 2 or 3, I tried to "walk it off" and ignored them. Somewhere around 3 or 4, Trac recommended magnesium to me (250 mg) which I took, and it abated said cramps within about 1/2 an hour - which had been persisting the entire evening, prior to taking the supplement. Since January (reading your comprehensive health status posting here actually) I decided that regular Mg supplements could have a positive benefit, or at least, not hurt. Since that time, I've not had a re-occurrence of night-time leg cramps. Alcohol intake has been a fairly constant 1-glass-of-cognac or Markers Mark, after dinner, each night, so that obscures the exact differentiation.