Cramps in the leg muscles - causes and treatment, what to do

January 17, 2021

Cramps are uncontrollable contractions of the leg muscles that appear unexpectedly. As a rule, they appear in the evenings before going to bed or in the morning after waking up. Based on the duration of the manifestations, there are short ones, lasting a few seconds, and long ones, the duration of which can be up to 15 minutes. If they are single in nature, they do not cause serious problems. However, they lead to discomfort, disruption of rest and muscle function. With repeated repetitions and the appearance of pain, they serve as a separate symptom indicating a number of diseases.

From this article you will learn the reasons why your calves cramp in the morning, what first aid should be given for cramps, treatment and prevention.

Causes of seizures

Morning cramps that do not require medical intervention include involuntary contractions that occur when:

keeping the body and legs in an uncomfortable position for a long time;
wearing ill-fitting, uncomfortable shoes;
lack of water in the body, and vice versa, excess fluid;
lack of vitamins and microelements in the body;
lack of physical activity, and vice versa, excess of it;
being in all sorts of stressful situations;
excessive alcohol consumption, smoking.

If the pain is recurring and manifests itself, it is necessary to consult a doctor, since muscle spasms may indicate a number of diseases, such as:

varicose veins, other manifestations of venous pathologies, such as atherosclerosis, venous insufficiency;
disruption of the heart;
thyroid disease or deficiency;
kidney pathologies;
infectious diseases;
excess body weight.

In this case, after a series of consultations and examinations of the body, treatment appropriate to the diagnosis is prescribed.

Diagnostics

Finding out on your own why your legs are cramping does not lead to a positive result. To establish a diagnosis, you should see a doctor. During your appointment, your specialist will find out the following:

When my legs started to cramp at night.
What preceded these symptoms?
Presence of concomitant pathologies.
Does the patient engage in sports, including physical training?
Spasms are acute or mild.
How often he cramps and twists his legs at night.

First aid for leg cramps

If your calves cramp in the morning and you need help, you can resort to the following actions:

You need to pull the toe up towards your head. In this case, the muscles are stretched, not allowing contraction;
If the spasms do not calm down, there is a need to get a massage. It is important to carry out carefully, without applying too much pressure;
Bring the body position to a position in which the limb being abducted is above the head. This is necessary to reduce blood flow and muscle activity;
Get out of bed and walk around;
Take a warm compress. A dampened towel works great;
Take a warm bath to relax your muscles.

First aid

There are several methods to stop spastic contractions of the limbs:

Actively massage the cramped leg.
Gently stretch the muscles of the lower leg or foot.
Strongly relax tissue.

In some cases, the attack makes itself known in advance. Cramps begin with tension, numbness, pulling pain in the limb, or the legs begin to twist. What to do if you notice these symptoms:

Rotate your leg, changing its position.
Achieve relaxation of the muscles of the limb.
Normalize blood circulation in the feet and legs.

The fastest way to eliminate spasms is muscle stretching. To eliminate night cramps in the lower limb, you need to pull your toes towards you with your hands. In this case, you should try to fully straighten the knee to relax the soft tissues.

If cramps occur frequently at night, you should do the following:

Sit down or take an upright position with your feet flat on the floor. If possible, take a few steps on a cool surface.
Gently rub the tense muscle, stroking it, patting it, shaking it.
Place your leg in an elevated position, for which you should place a pillow under your heels.

Emergency help for tonic leg spasms may include pinching the pulled muscle or a pin prick. These methods instantly relieve cramps both day and night. You can relax the muscle by pinching your leg or biting it. In this case, a reflex switching of activated nerve endings occurs with another stimulus.

Treatment

Depending on the diagnosis and further treatment, the attending physician prescribes medications. Some make up for the lack of vitamins and microelements - they influence the cause of the disease, others relieve spasms and improve well-being - symptomatic therapy is carried out. They are used together, complementing each other.

The most popular medications for treating calf muscle cramps are:

Tablets containing microelements - Asparkam, Panangin, Magnerot, Magnelis B6.
Vitamins - popular are Complivit, Alphabet, Calcium D3
Ointments - Venuron, Venarum, Heparin ointment, Diclofenac. They affect the veins, improve blood circulation in the legs and relieve pain.

In addition to medications, physiotherapeutic methods are used, such as electrophoresis, magnetic therapy, laser therapy, ion therapy and others.

How to treat

Regular paroxysms of the calf muscles can be stopped using pharmaceutical drugs. Traditional healers advise fighting seizures with their proven methods.

Drug treatment

There are a number of medications available to relieve muscle spasms. Their action is aimed at eliminating convulsive symptoms and pain. Tablets of Levetiracetam, Pregabalin, Trental are used after a doctor’s prescription for neurotic conditions.

If paroxysms are associated with a lack of microelements and vitamins, then Asparkam and Panangin are prescribed. To combat vascular disorders, which cause pain in tense muscles at night, you need to take the drugs Troxevasin and Venarus.

Ointments based on horse chestnut stimulate blood circulation and metabolic processes in the affected area. They are applied to the calves before bed, gently rubbing into the skin. It is known what to do if there is a deficiency of vitamins in organisms. The Dolgit and Complivit complexes will restore the conductivity of nerve impulses and prevent muscle spasms.

Physical methods

Among the main methods of relieving muscle tension at night is the effect of magnetic waves on the affected area. The magnetic therapy device normalizes the blood supply to tissues. The cells will receive sufficient nutrition and oxygen, and the convulsions will stop.

Relaxation of muscle tissue occurs under the influence of electric current and ultrasound. Used in cases where the leg is cramped, massage. Done regularly, it will relieve night pain. It is advisable to undergo a course of manual therapy to relieve the effects of frequent leg strain. The calf muscles will recover due to the normalization of blood flow in them.

A professional massage therapist will quickly relieve a seizure attack.

Folk remedies

Treatment with herbal preparations will have a beneficial effect on the condition of the limbs and will not cause side effects:

Medicinal wormwood 30 grams is poured with boiling water into 400 ml. After infusion and straining, drink a quarter glass 3 times a day. For rubbing, you can use tincture of wormwood in alcohol.
Take 1 teaspoon of chopped dill fruits, pour 300 ml of hot boiled water. Leave for an hour. Take half a glass or 1 gram of dry fruit powder three times.
For smooth muscle spasms, mint tablets under the tongue help.
Tincture of black henbane leaves is useful as an antispasmodic and analgesic. The medicine is prepared from 15 grams of raw materials and 100 ml of vodka. It is better to take 2 drops, diluting them in a tablespoon of water.
Celandine juice is added to Vaseline and lubricated with the resulting caviar ointment in the evening.
A pinch of salt is placed on the tongue and held for several minutes. The pain goes away instantly.
Chamomile flower tea is beneficial for those who suffer from nighttime calf muscle cramps.

Any remedy based on medicinal plants is taken after consultation with a doctor. After all, they may have contraindications.

Prevention

In order to avoid night and morning cramps in the legs, it is important to remember to follow preventive measures to prevent the occurrence of cramps. They include:

Maintaining a daily routine. The body needs proper rest and sleep at strictly defined hours;
A healthy diet, food should include calcium - milk, cottage cheese, cheese, almonds; magnesium - buckwheat porridge, walnuts, legumes; potassium - dried apricots, raisins, beets, sunflower seeds
As directed by the doctor, follow a diet, abstain from spicy, fatty, excessively sweet and salty dishes and foods;
Periodic calf massage will improve blood circulation in the legs and relax the muscles;
Wearing comfortable shoes will allow you to get an even load on the foot, helping to relieve and prevent tension in the muscles.

Muscle spasms

Cramps are a reflexive, automatic contraction of muscles due to overexertion; popularly this problem is described as “cramping the leg.” In this case, the person experiences sharp and quite severe pain. Experts say that if a large muscle is affected, for example, the thigh group, then the pain will be much stronger than with a spasm of the lower leg muscles.

If a person has not yet encountered such a problem, then he may not know how it manifests itself. In addition to pain, cramps include the following symptoms:

burning;
tingling;
itching

Perhaps the pain will be so strong that other signs will fade into the background and will not be noticeable. Cramps may be accompanied by numbness in the thigh.

For reference! A seizure attack can last from a few seconds to several minutes; in rare cases, a seizure can last up to 15 minutes.

Causes of hip pain

When pain occurs in the thigh muscle, the reasons can be different. Osteochondrosis complicated by intervertebral hernias causes severe pain, numbness, and burning of the thigh muscles. These problems usually arise in young and middle age.

Diseases of the hip joint are manifested by pain in the thigh. It occurs when there is movement or stress on the joint. Patients experience limited mobility. When trying to spread the legs, the joints become blocked and further movement is impossible. The disease often develops after 65 years of age. Treatment at the Yusupov Hospital can stop the degeneration of cartilage tissue and reduce pain in the thigh muscles.

With different leg lengths, the load on the lower limbs is not the same, which causes pain in the hip. The patient begins to limp, the body is distorted, the shoulders are set at different heights, torticollis develops, and severe pain occurs in the calf muscle. Often, false shortening of the leg causes a pelvic distortion.

Muscle pain in the thigh occurs with piriformis syndrome. It is localized between the sacrum and buttock. The patient has difficulty sitting. The pain intensifies with movement, over time the leg becomes numb and its volume decreases. The gait changes. The problem arises against the background of pathology of the spine or pelvis.

Iliopsoas syndrome is one of the causes of hip pain. It begins in the depths of the abdomen, less often in the depths of the lower back, and spreads along the front surface of the thigh. In women it may appear during sexual intercourse. The lumbar lordosis straightens, and lower back pain occurs periodically. If treatment is not carried out, the muscle keeps the hip joint under constant tension, its destruction occurs, the amount of cartilage decreases, and deforming arthrosis develops.

The causes of pain in the muscles of the thigh and leg are the following diseases:

obturator canal syndrome – acute pain radiates to the inner thigh and groin area;
Bernhardt-Roth disease, or meralgia paresthetica - pain in the thigh muscle of the front leg, which intensifies when trying to press the bent leg to the stomach;
radiculopathy or radiculitis of the nerve roots of the lumbar spine - severe pain in the thigh muscles occurs due to damage to the nerves of the lumbar spine;
sciatica, lumboischialgia, sciatica – pain begins in the lower back and intensifies in the hip area.

Muscle pain in the thigh can be a symptom of a pathology of the central nervous system, osteomyelitis, bruise, sprain or rupture of the femoral muscle. Hip pain when climbing stairs occurs due to iliopsoas tendinitis.

Treatment of pain in the thigh muscles

Before starting treatment, doctors at the Yusupov Hospital determine the cause of muscle pain in the thigh using modern diagnostic methods:

magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbar region;
radiography of the hip joint;
Ultrasound examination of the vessels of the lower extremities.

Treatment methods for pain in the thigh and leg muscles depend on the cause that caused it. Doctors at the Yusupov Hospital, having determined the cause of the pain syndrome, eliminate it, stop the progression of the disease, and carry out restorative therapy aimed at strengthening the spine, muscles and ligaments.

How to relieve thigh muscle pain? Muscle pain in the thigh can be relieved by stretching the muscles on the sore limb along the surface where there is pain, and on the opposite leg - the opposite surface. If the pain is localized along the back surface of the right leg, stretch the back surface on the right, and the front on the left. For arthrosis of the knee joints, we do stretches over the entire surface of the thigh. If you are bothered by stripe pain on the outer surface of the thigh, do the following exercise: lying on your back, without lifting your shoulder of the same name from the surface, throw the sore lower limb to the opposite side and leave it hanging, relaxing the muscles. Perform the exercise for 5-6 minutes.

Rub the skin of the thigh with a warming or pain-relieving ointment. Provide rest to the sore limb - take a horizontal position with your leg raised 30° (you can put a pillow or bolster under your shin). If the cause of pain in the thigh is varicose veins of the lower extremities, phlebologists recommend wearing compression stockings or tights in the morning, without getting your feet out of bed. If there is inflammation of the thigh muscles, the pain decreases after taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, diclofenac, nimesulide).

For muscle tension and hip pain, rehabilitation therapists use tapes. In order to apply the tape to the hip joint, the patient must lie on his back. Both legs are spread apart, bending them at the knee joints (frog pose). Rotate the leg outward to stretch the groin area (adductor muscle group of the thigh). Apply the anchor of the stabilizing tape on the upper part of the thigh and straighten the tape from the inside, ending just above the knee. The tape is applied to the thigh with virtually no tension.

When do you need to see a doctor urgently?

If your hands or fingers are cramped, you should seek medical help when this condition does not go away for a long time - 4 hours or more.

You should also urgently visit a specialist if you have ascending cramps that started in the legs and then moved to the arms.

Sometimes a cramp in the left arm can be a sign of a heart attack. In this case, the patient may lose consciousness. The reason lies in heart rhythm disturbances of varying intensity: from ventricular tachycardia to complete AV block. In addition, in a patient during this period, convulsions can be provoked by neurological disorders, but a similar situation is observed during a heart attack not often, in approximately 3-4% of cases. Acute chest pain and a drop in blood pressure come to the fore. If you suspect a heart attack, you should seek emergency medical help.

Transient seizures require consultation with a doctor, but emergency treatment can be delayed.