Anyone, even an absolutely healthy person, at least once in his life has encountered such a thing as cramps in his legs - he woke up from quite sharp pain at night, or felt during the day that the muscle on his leg was about to burst.
A cramp is an involuntary and uncontrolled contraction of muscles that most often occurs in the calves of the legs as a normal reaction to physical strain or exertion. But if convulsive attacks become frequent enough - this may be evidence of the development of any disease in the human body. Such cramps can be observed in various parts of the body, and people of any age are prone to convulsions. But still, more often muscle cramps "bother" the elderly. So how to remove a cramp in the leg?
What are cramps talking about?
Physiologically, a cramp is an involuntary contraction of one or a group of muscles, accompanied by bouts of sharp pain. Muscle cramps come in many forms:
- Some appear as stereotypical fast movements - these are clonic convulsions caused by short-term contraction and subsequent relaxation of a small group of muscles, for example, a nervous tic of the upper or lower eyelid.
- There are still tonic cramps that most often occur in the calf - muscles seem to harden for some time, causing unbearable pain. Such spasms are local in nature.
- The most severe and dangerous convulsions are those that occur in almost all the muscles of the human body and are accompanied by loss of consciousness - these are generalized cramps that are the result of severe systemic diseases (for example, epilepsy or parathyroid gland lesions) and require immediate treatment in a hospital (this kind of muscle cramping often occurs in young children during a sharp increase in body temperature - in pediatrics there is even such a diagnosis: “convulsive febrile core ").
Reasons for the appearance
The causes of leg cramps are often associated with a person’s lifestyle - both athletes (due to constant physical overload) and people who have a sedentary lifestyle (impaired blood circulation caused by a long period of immobility, cause a lack of oxygen in the muscles and tissues and, accordingly, their excessive tension). In addition, intense exercise, especially after a significant break, or physical labor, requiring tension of all muscle groups (working in a summer cottage, or general cleaning of an apartment ...) can provoke the appearance of short-term, but rather painful leg cramps.
Provocative factors
Doctors believe that the various causes that cause convulsions can be both harmless enough and require serious intervention, that is, therapy:
- Deficiency of trace elements, minerals or vitamins in the human body, especially calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, causes the excitability of muscle and nerve fibers, provoking convulsive conditions.
- Pregnancy in women often provokes varicose veins of the extremities, and this disease manifests itself in the form of pain, heaviness in the legs and night cramps.
- Taking certain medications with a pronounced diuretic effect leads to an imbalance of potassium and calcium in the body - and this is one of the causes of muscle cramps. In addition, taking oral contraceptives containing synthetic hormones can cause seizures, as this phenomenon is a side effect of the effects of such drugs on the human body.
- The course of some somatic diseases - obesity, transverse flat feet, cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, anemia, decreased immunity and epilepsy - is often accompanied by convulsive cramps. Regular and painful muscle cramps are also a symptom of varicose veins, which is also a hereditary disease.
- At risk are people whose type of activity is associated with prolonged static loads on their legs; cramps are susceptible to women who prefer to wear high-heeled shoes and rather tight, tight-fitting clothing; as well as patients suffering from disorders of the digestive tract (in particular, constipation).
Additional factors that can cause a sudden muscle spasm can be stressful conditions, sudden changes in temperature, wind and swimming in cold water. By the way, oriental medicine considers the lack of vital energy to be the cause of seizures.
Leg cramps often pass after a good rest, but this is the danger of pathology - often patients “attribute” pain to fatigue and do not rush to doctors - and thus you can skip the beginning of the development of a serious pathology.
Symptoms of pathology
The most painful type of muscle cramp is considered to be a gastrocnemius cramp - it always starts abruptly (sometimes a harbinger of a muscle tightening can become a harbinger of this condition) and is accompanied by sharp, unbearable pain and tension of the entire leg. Is it possible to remove a cramp in the calf of the leg, how to do it? If a person, before a convulsive spasm, feels heaviness in his leg, then this leg immediately needs to be relaxed as much as possible.
Night cramps
Especially often, this condition occurs at night and causes some discomfort. How to remove leg cramps at night? The main rule for eliminating cramps at night is to perform all actions, ignoring pain. The first thing to do is to straighten the limb as much as possible while lying on the bed. Sometimes, from this action, the cramp passes as suddenly as it began. If it is impossible to straighten the leg, it is necessary to press on it as hard as possible with the hand, or with the other leg, while massaging and patting the tense muscle. In this case, one should also definitely breathe: the deepest inhalation alternates with a sharp exhalation.
Seizures in the elderly
How to remove leg cramps in older people, for whom many ways to help cope with the problem are simply not available? As a rule, people of considerable age already know certain measures and immediately, as soon as the pain pierced the leg, they perform them: they move their toes; stroking and rubbing the damaged muscle; they rise on a cold surface and can even prick a muscle compressed with a spasm with a needle or a pin (which they almost always carry with them).
Of course, in older people, the appearance of a significant number of pathological conditions is associated with natural physiological processes that occur in the body, corresponding to age. If convulsions in the elderly are repeated often enough and last more than a week - this is an occasion to consult a doctor. There are medications that help not only reduce the incidence of seizures, but also cope with a disease that causes muscle cramps.
Of course, you can’t use any medications on your own, based on the fact that the same ones helped your neighbor or friend - the doctor should prescribe the medication individually for each patient and only after examining and identifying the reasons why the leg cramps began to bother the patient more and more often.
How to deal with pain quickly?
So, my legs cramped, how to remove the pain urgently? There are some simple, easy-to-use and fairly effective tips:
- The foot needs to be relaxed as much as possible.
- Toe cramp - how to remove? Pull the toe of the foot toward you, relax and strain again, much stronger.
- You can stand with both (bare) feet on a hard, preferably cold surface - a sharp temperature drop will relax tense muscles.
- A spasmodic muscle can be pinched (sensitive enough) or pricked with a sharp tip of a pin.
- After removing the cramp, it is necessary to lie down - while the legs should be above the head (that is, slightly raised - you can put a pillow under them) - this ensures the outflow of blood and reduces the risk of recurrence of spasm.
These tips, performed in a timely manner, despite the acute pain in the legs, answer the question: how to quickly remove the cramp in the leg. But if cramps become regular and the above methods do not help, you need to consult a doctor. You may have to not only cope with convulsions, but also look for the causes that cause them.
Treatment methods
The answer to the question of how to remove a cramp in the leg will be given by a general practitioner after a thorough examination of the patient and establishing the cause of the pathology. Only drug therapy (or other treatment methods) of the underlying disease will help reduce the frequency of cramping. But there are also drugs that can relieve pain in convulsions - only the attending physician can prescribe them. The patient can independently:
- adjust the diet;
- choose comfortable shoes;
- do self-massage of legs, alternating it with contrasting baths;
- avoid excessive physical exertion, especially on the lower limbs.
Alternative methods of treatment
And a few more words about how to remove leg cramps at home: you need to constantly perform certain exercises to help reduce the frequency of muscle cramps. In addition, traditional medicine has many recipes for getting rid of leg cramps: all of them are based on the use of compresses and ointments made independently from decoctions of medicinal herbs, fruit and vegetable juices.
Doctors Recommendations
Often, leg cramps are not an independent pathology, but rather a complex problem, the causes of which are pathological changes in the body. The only right decision - an appeal to specialist doctors who will determine the exact cause and prescribe the appropriate therapy, self-medication in this situation can turn out, at least, simply to waste time and not bring the desired relief.
Prevention
There is an exercise, which, you can prevent the appearance of cramps in the legs: lying on your back, stretch your arms and legs. In this case, the heels should be apart, and the toes should touch each other. Now you need to stretch your arms and legs as it turns out as much as possible - you should tighten your muscles with a deep breath, and relax - with a slow exhale. Repeating this exercise 5-7 times and performing it daily (up to 2-3 times a day) helps to avoid the appearance of unpleasant and quite painful muscle cramps.