Riding Your Charlie Horse to Victory

It is late at night and your sound asleep. You stretch your leg out and all of a sudden you feel a painful cramp that feels like someone is tearing your leg off. It is so bad it makes you jump out of bed and you try to walk it off but your sound sleep was already ruined and for the rest of the day it feels like that leg is bruised or sore.

They are called many things depending on the country your from such as dead leg, chopper, granddaddy, or corked thigh. But I have always heard them called charlie horses. They are the most painful experience that anyone could have at night. And last night I had a really bad one so bad that even now it is still bothering me. I find myself limping around my apartment.

Of course I decided to do some research about Charlie Horses and ways to win the war over them and I'm kind of surprised that I did not find too much information. My next door neighbor saw me limping and asked what was wrong and I told them it was a Charlie Horse and she said you should be eating banana's because it has to do with potassium deficiency but for me that should not be the case because I take daily supplements.

So I went over to the library and  I found some more information it actually can be caused by quite a few different things besides the potassium deficiency while it is a main cause there is a few other things that can cause them too such as:

•     Muscle fatigue
•     Heavy exercising
•     Dehydration
•     High weight (not necessarily obesity)
•     Electrolyte imbalances
•     Medications (statins, prednisone, others...)  

 Now I know I have not done any over exercising but I have not been drinking enough water I can tell because my lips have also been chapped and painful I just have not had the time and have been busy. So I've realized that I need to try and fit more water into my daily schedule. I at least wanted to do a blog post about it because most of us do not think about this. Sometimes we get caught up in our work and we drink soda or sugar drinks which do not keep ourselves hydrated well enough.