Quinine and Muscle Cramps

Patients ask me all the time what to do about their leg cramps. Barring any major electrolyte imbalance, there really is no good answer why this happens or what to do about it. This article from the SCOPE Blog sympathizes with this issue. I used to recommend a glass of tonic wather, but as they say,

Forget about quinine water. You’d have to drink a few liters of it to get any efficacy for muscle cramps, and by the time you were done you’d probably have cramps in another important organ.

As for all the patients who claim that putting a bar of soap under the sheets at the bottom of the bed, no idea why this helps but I can’t see how it would hurt, so feel free to try it and report back!

2 responses to “Quinine and Muscle Cramps

  1. I am a 53 year old woman with RA, PsA and Psorisis. I suffer from leg cramps but it almost always goes away if I drink enough water, for me leg cramps is a sure sign that I am slightly dehydrated.

  2. Gail Dunneback

    Muscle cramps are temporary contractions of the muscles and they usually appear during physical effort. The sensation is similar to the one you have when you feel a strong, involuntary tightening of the muscle group that you can’t control any more. There are many causes which bring about cramps, but they happen most often because of insufficient warming up before training. Good and correct warming up has two stages: the general one (cardio), for increasing the body temperature (running, cycling, etc.) and the specific one, during which the main joints and groups of muscles which will be involved in training are warmed up. It is enough not to give, from different reasons (rush, superficiality, ignorance), the necessary time or importance to one of these stages, and cramps can become a current phenomenon.^

    Have a look at the newest blog post on our personal web page
    <i="http://www.healthmedicinecentral.com/can-guys-get-yeast-infections/

Leave a comment