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What Causes Muscle Cramps?

Many endurance athletes and daily exercisers alike suffer the pain of muscle cramps, usually in the calves, either during a sporting event or workout session or directly after. What causes these painful cramps?

There are many possible causes for why the cramping occurs. Some of these include dehydration, low blood sugar, salt imbalance due to sweating, nerve damage, compromised blood flow, heat or cold and even a disruption of energy along acupuncture meridians. While many of these are general causes of cramps, there is disagreement whether they are actually involved in exercise-induced cramping.

Research conducted by South African doctors on triathletes, and reported in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, July 2005, found that none of the these conditions seemed to actually cause the cramping. Rather, by conducting EMG studies on the athletes, the researchers demonstrated that the most likely cause of the cramping was muscle fatigue or a tear in the affected muscle itself.

The EMG studies showed noticeably higher electrical activity in the nerves that controlled the cramped muscles. They concluded that the muscle cramps appeared to be caused by exercise-induced damage to the muscles themselves. If that’s the case, muscle cramping can be prevented by slowing down when you feel tightness or soreness in any particular muscle.

Regular chiropractic care, along with pre-exercise stretching of the muscles are probably the two best ways to avoid muscle cramping. Should you start to feel a cramp or tightening, grabbing your toes and stretching the calf may stop the cramp, but most often, the muscle needs to simply rest for a bit.