Has a sharp cramp in your calf ever awakened you at night or prevented you from falling asleep? While leg cramps are benign, they shouldn’t interrupt your rest and it’s important to keep an eye out for any symptoms that are painful, recurring, and keep you from getting a good night’s sleep.
Leg cramps at night are common, but if they’re keeping you up at night or waking you up frequently, leaving you sore and stiff in the morning, read on to discover more information from Center for Vein Restoration about leg cramps at night and how to prevent them.
A leg cramp is a sudden and involuntary spasm in your thigh, calf, and foot. Leg cramps can encompass your whole leg down into the foot or be isolated to just one part of your leg.
Usually known as a “Charley Horse”, leg cramps are a spontaneous and intense involuntary contraction of the thigh, calf, and foot muscles. You may experience muscle spasms in that area or be unable to flex your leg or foot through the cramp. Leg cramps can last for several seconds to several minutes, with the affected muscles feeling stiff or sore after. Leg cramps tend to happen more frequently at night because you’re resting and not engaged in movement.
If you’re experiencing frequent leg cramps impacting your sleep, talking to your provider to rule out other more serious issues like a blood clot in the leg is essential. Leg cramps do not include redness, swelling, or bruising and the pain subsides quickly after the initial cramp.
Leg spasms, or Charley horses, are extremely common and, unfortunately, extremely painful.
Once you and your provider have ruled out more serious issues like deep vein thrombosis or a neurological condition such as restless leg syndrome, look into therapies and remedies to help you stop the spasms and sleep easier.
The symptoms of leg cramps at night are:
Sudden Calf Pain: The most common symptom is a sudden, sharp pain in the calf muscles.
Muscle Stiffness: Stiffness in the affected and surrounding muscles
Sudden Thigh Pain: Sudden, sharp pain in the thigh muscles.
Muscle Spasms: A twitching and cramping of the muscles in the affected area.
Mild Soreness: After the cramp subsides, the area may be sore for a few minutes after.
Sleeplessness: Being woken up from sleep or being unable to fall asleep because of the leg cramp.
Nightly leg cramps don’t have to impact your life and disrupt your sleep. After you’ve been evaluated by a healthcare professional for any serious underlying causes to be sure you’re not confusing the pain of a Charley Horse for something more urgent like vein disease, here are some potential causes.
While leg cramps at night are extremely common, there are no definitive causes for exactly why it happens, but lifestyle factors play a big role in this rude wake-up call:
Dehydration: Being dehydrated or not drinking enough water may cause leg cramps, as blood and nutrient flow are seriously diminished when you’re dehydrated.
Strenuous Activity: Intense workouts have been attributed to nightly leg cramps, which may go in hand with dehydration as it’s likely for you to be dehydrated after a heavy workout.
Tight and Stiff Muscles: Either from overuse or being sedentary, going to bed with tight or stiff muscles is believed to cause leg cramps.
Being on Your Feet All Day: Research has shown that being on your feet all day but not moving around much causes blood and water to pool in your lower body, causing muscle and tendon shortening, which can lead to cramps.
Not Stretching: Sitting behind a desk all day or ignoring your warm-up before a workout can shorten your tendons and lead to cramping.
Awkward Sleeping Position: Your sleeping position plays a role in nightly cramps. If you sleep with your feet pointed forward in the “plantar flexion” position, you’re shortening your calf muscles, increasing the possibility of a nightly cramp attack.
Nutrition: If you lack magnesium, potassium, calcium, or a combination of the three, you may experience leg cramps at night. This is why staying hydrated to prevent cramps is important, as the water in your system aids in the flow of nutrients to your muscles.
Changing Seasons: Research has shown that people report more leg cramps in the summer than in the winter months. This may be because people are suddenly more active after a long winter of inactivity.
Pregnancy: Nightly leg cramps are common in pregnant women due to the increased weight gain and changes in their circulation.
Medications: Some medications, including diuretics and blood pressure medication, can cause leg cramps.
Health Conditions: Diabetes, neuropathy, arthritis, and depression have been linked to leg cramps at night.
Sedentary Lifestyle: Sitting for long periods of time, just like standing, can cause fluid retention in the lower body, a known cause of nightly leg cramps.
Aging: Leg cramps may just be part of getting older. Losing motor neuron function is a common cause of muscle cramps and spasms.
Pinched Nerves: Pinched or compressed nerves in the upper spine and neck area can contribute to cramping and pain.
Knowing the causes and underlying factors can help you combat the unpleasant interruption to your sleep schedule that nightly leg cramps can cause.
Experts agree that preventing leg cramps is the best treatment:
Stretching: Completing a round of hamstring and calf stretches before bed can reduce leg cramps while you sleep.
Change your sleeping position: If you’re sleeping with your toes pointed or in plantar flexion, which is typical for stomach sleepers, consider changing your sleeping position to lying on your back with a pillow under your knees. Avoid sleeping with bulky covers, as they can compress your feet downward.
Physical Activity: Increase your physical activity, being mindful to stretch, warm up, and cool down appropriately to avoid tight muscles.
Modify Your Workouts: If you have more nightly leg cramps on days you’ve hit the gym hard, consider modifying your workout and staying hydrated.
Keep Hydrated: Staying hydrated can help with blood flow and distributing minerals and nutrients throughout your body, helping prevent cramps.
Pay attention to your nutrition: If you suspect your leg cramps may be caused by a lack of minerals, check with your provider for suggestions on how to combat that particular trigger.
Move Around: Small changes to your daily routine can help improve your circulation, especially if you’re either sitting or standing all day.
Leg pain can come in all shapes and sizes, and after you’ve successfully ruled out more serious issues and risk factors with your provider or treatment team, with some simple lifestyle changes you should be back to sleep in no time.
While the best treatment is prevention, if a leg cramp rips you from sleep, you can apply some home remedies to combat the tightness, such as:
Applying heat to the affected area
Applying cold to the affected area
Massaging the muscle
Taking an over-the-counter pain reliever
If your leg cramps persist and the pain lasts longer than a few minutes, is not alleviated by stretching or massage, and is accompanied by bruising, swelling, discoloration, and the affected area near your calf or thigh becomes hot, seek medical attention immediately.
Your medical provider will massage the area to assess muscle damage and potentially order some lab work to check for mineral deficiencies. Their main goal will be to rule out more serious issues.
Leg cramp symptoms usually occur after you’ve been resting for a while, lying down, or sitting for long periods of time. They’re usually sudden and sharp, with intense tensing of the calf or hamstring muscles in the backs of the legs. Leg cramps don’t cause swelling, discoloration, or warmth in the affected area and the pain only lasts a few minutes, with some slight residual soreness after the cramp passes. You should be able to resume normal activities, such as falling back asleep after the attack.
If you’ve ruled out any other underlying issues with your medical provider, physical therapy is typically the next step in treating stubborn nightly leg cramps, along with recommended lifestyle changes.
Yes. Lifestyle changes like staying hydrated, being mindful of moving your lower body, stretching before bed, and changing your sleeping position have all been shown to decrease the frequency and severity of leg cramps.
Leg cramps at night are an inconvenient and sometimes very painful way to wake up. It’s essential to consider the frequency, intensity, and factors into consideration and talk to your doctor to be sure it’s not a symptom of something more serious like a blood clot, deep vein thrombosis or restless leg syndrome. There’s no definitive cause for leg cramps at night but they can be caused by many different lifestyle factors such as not stretching, staying hydrated, or even your sleeping position.
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