What to do if you have leg cramps

What should you do when you have leg cramps? Many people can only endure the severe pain caused by cramps when encountering this situation. Let us understand that leg cramps are muscle spasms. It is not a problem with the tendons as everyone thinks, but a problem with the muscles. When the legs cramp, you often cannot move or straighten them, and you can only let the pain relieve itself. However, many experienced friends can find ways to quickly relieve the pain when your legs cramp.

If you want to relieve leg cramps, you must start by understanding them. Leg cramps often occur after excessive exercise, and are also prone to cramps when you are tired, have poor sleep, and have poor blood circulation. Some people also suffer from leg cramps due to osteoporosis and calcium deficiency. So we will introduce the causes of leg cramps, emergency measures, and prevention methods, hoping to be helpful to everyone.

Causes of Leg Cramps

1. Muscle stiffness: If you are walking on the road and encounter a motorcycle thief who snatches your bag, your reaction will definitely be to chase him quickly. This sudden and violent movement without any warning can cause great damage to the muscles. When the motorcycle thief drives away and you give up chasing him, your muscles suddenly relax, which makes it easy for you to have muscle spasms.

2 Calcium deficiency: Calcium can reduce muscle nerve activity. If the body lacks calcium, the muscle nerves will be overexcited, which can easily cause cramps.

3. Being exposed to cold after exercise: Muscles become relaxed after exercise. If exposed to cold, the nervous system will stimulate the muscles to generate heat through rapid muscle contraction, making the muscles prone to spasms.

4. Wrong posture after exercise: Body posture can also cause muscle cramps. For example, curling up your legs after exercise can easily cause cramps, and the same is true when curling up your body when sleeping.

Emergency solutions for leg cramps

1. You should take action as soon as possible after a leg cramp occurs, otherwise it will cause further damage to the muscles, and the severe pain associated with the cramp will also make you unbearable. The emergency measures for leg cramps are relatively simple, divided into emergency measures with the assistance of others and self-help emergency measures for one person:

2 Alone: ​​When cramps occur, you are the only one present. At this time, you should quickly contract your feet, bend your toes toward the center of the foot, make the sole of the foot into an arc shape, and then use your hands to help straighten your legs. If you are sitting, you can press down on your knees with your hands to straighten them. Just hold on for 5 seconds. After the pain disappears, continue to press your knee, then slowly relax your thigh. If you feel pain again, straighten your leg again.

3 Assisting others: When someone has a leg cramp and doesn’t know what to do, you should quickly guide him to straighten his legs, lift his feet and lean them towards his head, as shown in the picture. Hold for a few seconds to contact the pain.

Prevention methods

1. Muscle cramps are preventable. In the fourth game of the NBA Finals, James suffered a leg cramp when the game was about to end because he did not take preventive measures. Fortunately, the game ended safely. Afterwards, James reflected on himself and said that he did not prepare well before the game, which led to such consequences. Below I will share a few simple preparation methods, which should be helpful to you.

2 Drink a bottle of milk: Drinking some milk four hours before strenuous exercise can replenish the calcium content in the body. In addition to milk, tofu products, eggs, dried shrimps, etc. are also foods rich in calcium.

3 Pay attention to warm-up exercises: Exercise should be gradual. Warm up by jogging before strenuous exercise, and then do a few downward movements (as shown in the figure below) to stretch your muscles.

4. Keep warm after exercise: After exercise, people sweat a lot, and many people will ignore the importance of keeping warm. If you want to prevent cramps, just avoid blowing cold wind.

5. Pay attention to developing correct posture: Try to keep your limbs stretched after exercise, especially when the weather is cool. Keep your knees straight while sitting, don't bend them.

Have you all learned what to do if you have leg cramps? In addition, friends who are prone to leg cramps should increase physical exercise appropriately, eat foods rich in calcium, and get more sun exposure, because sunlight can promote calcium absorption and can effectively prevent leg cramps.