Suffering from muscle cramps and spasms? Learn the potential cause of your muscle cramps and the therapies you can try at home.
Muscle cramps or spasms occur when your muscles involuntarily contract for seconds to minutes producing burning, achy pain. You may feel a muscle knot or tightness at the area of muscle contraction. Causes of muscle cramps can vary from benign to more serious medical conditions in otherwise healthy individuals. Sometimes the cause of your muscle cramp is not known, which is called idiopathic.
What can cause muscle cramps?
- Prolonged standing or strenuous physical activities
- Electrolyte disturbances
- Medication side effects
- Pregnancy
- Kidney disease and dialysis
- Liver cirrhosis
- Iron deficiency
- Diabetic neuropathy or nerve damage
- Radiculopathy or pinched nerve
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- Nerve hyper-excitability
How to diagnose muscle cramps?
Your doctor may send you for a blood test to look for electrolyte abnormalities, kidney and liver disease, anemia, or diabetes.
An electromyogram (EMG) and nerve conduction study (NCS) done at Neurotest of New York can help your doctor determine if your muscle cramps is from muscle or nerve injury versus non-neurological causes.
Treatments
Most muscle cramps can be treated at home with self-care measures. For frequent episodes that do not respond to home treatments, your doctor may prescribe medications to relax the muscle.
- Stretching and massaging muscles
- Apply heat or cold
- Staying hydrated before working out
- Over the counter daily vitamin B complex