Charley Horse
 

worst.one.evah!

had to get up out of bed. and did you realize--no one knows the cause . . . OR the cure!

fuggit. :thepain:

What's a charley horse?

It's a painful upper leg muscle cramp. I wake up with lower leg muscle cramps sometimes. Most painful thing ever.

usually calf muscle, actually. Sometimes I get twinges--but THIS was more than a twinge.

Suggestions for prevention are: hydration, stretching, and taking your vitamins.

phooey!

Oh. Yeah that's what I sometimes get. Horrible.

Try pulling back on your toes (with your hand). That sometimes helps.

Go try it right now.

P.S. Isn't Charley Horse a cousin of Crazy Horse?

Eat more bananas.

I've heard that too, Jinx. There's speculation that being low in potassium has something to do with it.

I know that I wake up with excrutiatingly painful calf cramps in my left leg, after I've played gigs where I was really stomping on the hi-hat pedal.

I wake up with my calf muscle locked into fully-flexed position. I have to manually work my foot back and forth to loosen it up. Hurts really bad.

On those nights, I probably drank a lot of free beer; so I may be dehydrayted, too.

They are very common when you're pregnant. There are lots of different causes for different people (like jinx said, a potassium deficiency can cause it too,) but the cause during pregnancy is almost always a calcium deficiency. Taking a calcium supplement right before bed completely cured it for me. (And on nights when I forgot to take it, I woke up with vicious calf cramps, without fail.) Might be worth a try, since women need all the calcium they can get anyway.

that's the first thing I did (when I was able to walk); drink a gulp of my "Bone Health" Emergen-C.

Will try.

go away, horsey!

The alcohol flushes the potassium from your system. Per my lady DR. at VA.
Yes I have craps also. The potassium stops mine. Some folks use to take quinine, before they stopped selling OTC.

Intersting about the alcohol/potassium. Thanks.

Re: Quinine, what about tonic water? Is there not enough of it in there?

buster -- you have craps? I think that's another malady altogether . . .