cramps

[deereman64]

I have to be honest I have been overdoing it for the last few weekends. The weather is ideal for cutting up old fallen trees etc and perhaps because the weather was cool I was not drinking enough.....gatorade that is. Sure enough as I was driving the leg was at an awkward angle and it suddenly hit. The most intense and totally consuming pain in the leg. It was old fashioned cramps, but if that road had been any busier it could have been a serious accident.

I got to thinking how do you guys in the south manage with humidity or do you just know when to stop

 

[Onthesauk]

Odd that you should mention it. I've never really had a problem with cramps before, but like you, out cutting firewood for a long day. Ended up with one in an arm and later in my back. Had a bottled water and a V-8 all afternoon, probably just not enough liquid. Or maybe just part of the normal aging process?

 

[zzvyb6]

I'm still a hockey player as well as a retired farm boy. 3 years ago I was getting quite a few leg cramps and ignored them. Then I started feeling funny one day. Ya know it really does feel like someone's sitting on your chest. My heart was skipping beats and I "was 2 hours off the paddles". This is a common reaction to being severely dehydrated. Turns out the after game beer or 2 makes the situation worse. Now I buy liquids by the case and have one before the games. Same for hay making, fence repair and other hot sweating work.

I even drink restaurant water now.

Its humorous to talk about it afterwards, but the way it makes you feel at the time it happens, just makes you want it all to end...

 

[ampsucker]

aside from dehydration, the most common cause of cramping is low electrolytes. specifically potassium and magnesium. these two minerals are usually deficient in most american diets and are often removed in the water purification process when making bottled water.

eat bananas for potassium and use magnesium chloride lotion to replenish mag. or take a decent multi mineral supplement. you'll probably see improvements in other areas, too, and fewer muscle cramps.

glad you weren't hurt when the leg cramps hit!

amp

 

[Danno1]

.

Or for electrolytes, drink Gatorade. However, it doesn't absorb anyway near as fast as water. So, just like antifreeze, cut it 50/50 w water. I find I like the taste better that way too.

.

 

[deerefan]

i've heard vinegar works well, but i wouldn't drink it straight.

 

[fltem06]

Here in Florida, the heat & humidity can literally kill you. We take a small cooler of water bottles along with a few individual serving packets of sqincher/gatorade for a mixture of water & electrolytes. Seems to work very well. Water is good,but the sweat needs more than just fluids.

 

[BrentD]

Here in Texas, with the humidity and heat as high as they are most summers, you're a lot more likely to get heatstroke before you're dehydrated enough to make cramps a problem.

I actually came very close to heatstroke a couple of summers ago. Was installing an aftermarket cruise control on my Geo Tracker on one of the hottest days we had that summer. I slept in that day and skipped breakfast then went outside and went to work as soon as I got out of bed. (Probably around noon that day. I like to sleep late on weekends.) I'd take brakes and go inside to drink water and rest in the air conditioning. About 4:00 in the afternoon I was finished up with the install and about to start the cleanup but thought I'd take another break and go in and rest for a bit. I sat down a the kitchen table and drank a coke, while I was completely soaked with sweat head to toe. I started feeling a little chilled so I finished off the coke and headed back outside. When I walked back out the door and the heat hit me, I started feeling kinda odd. Almost a little light headed. By the time I walked the 20 feet to where the car was parked, my head was spinning so bad I could barely walk. I sat down in a chair I had handy and then the nausea hit me. By the time I stopped throwing up I was curled up on the ground in my back yard, totally unable to tell what the temperature was anymore, but my head had at least stopped pounding and I could mostly see straight again.

I crawled back to my chair and found my cordless phone sitting on the toolbox close by. I called a friend of mine, told him what was up and told him if he didn't hear from me again in about 15 minutes he needed to call 911. I rested for a bit then went inside and took a shower with water just warm enough to cool me down slowly. I was mostly ok after that, just exceptionally tired and every muscle in my body hurt.

Still not sure whether it was the heat, the lack of food, the rapid temperature changes, or the sudden blood sugar spike from the coke (or all of the above) that got to me, but it's a situation I never want to repeat.

 

[funny farmer]

I had pretty much the same thing happen to me a couple of summers ago, while we were baling hay. We were doing the small square bales and it was hot for our standards, over 95 degrees. The first day went alright, just miserable, drank plenty of water and we still had 2 full wagons to unload, so we decided to wait untill the next day. That night I consumed 12 to 18 beers and went home. The next morning I went to work and hung some sheetrock till around noon, and went back to my buddies house to unload hay. We had already had the bottom rows stacked in his steel building and was using his backhoe to get the bales up higher, towards the rafters. Well it was hot out that day too, and probably around 120 degrees at the top of the hay stack. That lasted about 2 or 3 trips with the backhoe, untill I knew something was wrong. I basically slid down the hay pile, and barely made it outside. Once outside I could stand in a little breeze, but everything was going dark around me for a couple of minutes. When I got into the breeze I was acually cold, I didn't puke or get really sick, but I thought that was the closest I've come to heat stroke, or passing out. After about a 12 to 15 minute break and some more water, we continued to unload the wagons, we just stayed to the lower parts of the stack and decided that we could make it taller after it cooled off.
After that we baled up a couple of more wagon loads, but there was a slight breeze out in the fields, so it wasn't to bad.

 

[SailorBob]

Down here where it is really hot and humid in the summer It can be in the upper 90's with 90% humidity in the summer. I drink a lots of water. I keep an insulated bottle of water on the tractor and drink almost constantly. Also, I take frequent breaks and jump in the swimming pool to cool off. Then I am still wet when I go back to work.

I suppose that you get climatized if you live here long enough.

 

[jimmyj]

I have had either heatstroke or sunstroke 2x (don't know if they are the same thing or not) and both were from doing roof shingles. Now I make sure to drink a lot of water and a supplement with salt and stuff in it like gatorade or v8 or something. When I was making an ATV through the bush last year it was not uncommon for me to drink over a gallon per day just while I was working. Maybe it is because I sweat more now that I'm older or something but if I don't drink my heart pounds so hard I can hear it in my ears and I get headaches and so on. Never cramps though oddly enough.

I do drink beer too I must admit but never hard liquor. Mmmm, Beer...

 

[Redneck in training]

aside from dehydration, the most common cause of cramping is low electrolytes. specifically potassium and magnesium. these two minerals are usually deficient in most american diets and are often removed in the water purification process when making bottled water.

eat bananas for potassium and use magnesium chloride lotion to replenish mag. or take a decent multi mineral supplement. you'll probably see improvements in other areas, too, and fewer muscle cramps.

glad you weren't hurt when the leg cramps hit!

amp

I agree 100%. We ride bicycles a lot. We do 7 days trip across Iowa from Missouri to Mississippi river every year. One hot day I just cramped for hours. I wanted to prevent dehydration and drank a lot of purified water previous day. Apparently I was loosing all minerals. When we reached our overnight place I was just craving pickle juice. Some time after I drank about a pint of it the cramps stopped. For next few days I ate bananas, drank V8, Propel and Gatorade together with water and had no cramps for rest of the trip.

 

[tommu56]

I get leg cramps on a regular basis if I don't hydrate, I also take potassium but be careful with it.

When I was hiking alot we would cammel up were you had water drink a liter and fill water bottle back up.

I also prefer a hydration pack once you get in the habit to sip it regularly it is almost second nature to take a sip if you get it set right you dont need any hands.

tom

 

[dex3361]

When I work outside in the heat and sweat a lot I will tend to cramp up that night. My father in law told me how he has dealt with it for years. He takes a healthy pinch of salt and chases it with water. When I am cramping the salt doesnt tast as salty (if that makes any sense) I guess because I am craving it. May not be the healthiest solution but it sure works for me.

 

[mrutkaus]

hmmm...just a note of warning, check out: Deep Vein Thrombosis | Vascular Disease Foundation

blod clots which can be deadly do form in the legs and can cause great pain.

mike

 

[AchingBack]

Toss the Gatorade. An EMT told me to simply add honey and lemon juice to my drinking water, and that those two ingredients contained all of the necessary electrolytes. Also, before going out to work in hot weather, drink water ahead of time.

Finally, if you are getting muscle cramps from lack of magnesium, remember, you heart is a muscle, and the older we are, the more critical our need for magnesium.

 

[Wis Bang]

My friends father was sheet metal guy involved in roofing. He drank water & lemon juce by the galions. Said it was the only thing they drank up on the roofs.

He had 6 kids and supplemented by making sheet metal ductwork in his basement, had an 8' brake and all! Next to his 'hot' work area [sodering iron furnace] was a fridge kept full of Ballentines Ale for 'nights'...

 

[Richard]

The wife of a guy I work with has multiple health issues... I can't even begin to remember them all. Addiysons is the root of them I think...regardless...she also has a problem with cramps and was told in addition to bananas, she could eat apricots and they too, were a great source of potassium.

 

[deereman64]

The strange thing is that cramps will often bring amusement to the onlooker. Several years ago I was involved in a race that meant running up Mount Snowdon in Wales. The start was from the sea and so to the top it was about 10 miles and 2500 ft and so you can imagine by the time I reached the top I was in a state of complete seizure. Now, the Victorians in their infinite wisdom had built a railway to the top of the mountain and as the passengers alighted from the train this spinning and dying cock roach was met with much derision