Did you ever experience the twitching of muscles in legs or hands that slowly twist or get stiff? Muscle cramps can occur at any time at the middle of the nights or post workout and cause intense pain in forearms, arms, calf muscles, flanks, abdominal walls, quads, and hamstrings.
What Causes Muscle Cramps?
- Poor blood flow
- Dehydration
- Fatigue muscles
- The absence of physical activities
- Consumption of spicy and dry foods
- Extreme hot temperatures
- Cold temperatures
- Staying in the same position for an extended period
Muscle cramps are more common in pregnant women, athletes, and people overdo workouts. To put an end to the debilitating pain of a muscle spasm, a lot you need to learn than just rubbing. Several medications are available to treat cramps, buy the best anti-cramp medicines offered by reliablerxpharmacy.com. Here are a few ways to get rid of a muscle spasm.
Tips to Avoid Muscle Cramps
- Warm up your body every day – If you don’t want the involuntary attack of a muscle cramp, always warm up with some stretching exercises. Stretch your neck muscles, hands, legs, and other do another bending that allows nerves to stretch all those minutes to clear any muscle tension. By stretching and priming your muscles, flooding the areas with blood, you prepare them for intense movements. These warm-ups sessions help to relax your muscle thereby relieving pain and stiffness. A 5 minutes warm-up session can help kick start your day.
- Hydrate yourself and check your carb intake – Dehydration is one of the major causes of muscles cramps. Dehydration plays a crucial role in muscle cramps because when you lose fluids and electrolytes like sodium and potassium of your muscles, which interfere with the fluid balance in your body. This leads to muscle spasms. To keep muscle cramps away, water is not just enough. For maintaining adequate electrolyte balance in your body, you should consider having energy drinks packed with high nutritional content such as chloride, sodium, and potassium. A slight disruption in the electrolyte balance can hamper most of the functional systems and tend to cause muscle spasms. Prefer drinking an electrolyte carb beverage during workouts. Purchase carbohydrate-based products and use them during long workout sessions when you are more likely to fatigued.
- Rejuvenate with essential oils – When a muscle cramp attacks you, don’t panic. All you need to do is to relax your muscles. Nothing works best than an oil massage when it comes to treating a muscle spasm. Warm the oil of your choice and apply on the affected part of the body and gently rub in circular motion. You can also use a hot water bag to encourage blood circulation in the affected area. If this is not just enough, give your entire body a massage treatment using almond oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, or any medicated oil. Oil massage aid muscle contraction and allow your tensed muscles to relax and calm.
- Heat the tension away – You can use an electric heating pad or a hot water bottle on twisted muscles to relax and increase blood flow. Make sure you don’t overheat the pad and apply for 20 minutes then remove it and wait for 20minutes before reapplying. Taking a warm shower can also help you to relieve the pain. For added relief, pour some Epsom salt to promote muscle relaxation.
- Press out pain – Try to find the epicenter of the muscle cramp. Press it with your thumb and hold the pressure for at least 10 seconds, leave it, and again press it for 10 more seconds. After a number of repetitions, the debilitating pain resulting from the cramp will start to diminish.
- Get rid of nighttime leg cramps – before going to bed, consider drinking a glass of tonic water containing quinine, popular treatment remedy for leg cramps. Research studies supported the use of quinine for leg cramps. Taking vitamin E supplements improves blood circulation through the arteries.
