Stop Charlie Horses In Their Tracks

For a couple of hours or so you've been in a state of absolute bliss. Out of the blue you get one of the rudest wakenings ever. The pain is beyond excruciating and your leg is drawn up like every muscle and tendon in it has been tied into knots and what's worse is it feels like it's trying to tie even more of them! You try stretching the leg but that makes the already unbearable pain positively mind-blowing. Your first instinct is to try to rub out the knot and with it the accompanying pain. It doesn't work. Instead, you find that even the slightest touch only makes it worse. At this point you're probably faced with the same dilemma I always was. You want to get out of bed and see if you can find some way to relieve the pain but you can't move without wanting to scream! You do finally manage to work your way off the bed and may even find that walking has a way of working out the knot and with it the pain.

There are only two things I have ever experienced that might be worse than a Charlie horse. One is a toothache and the other is a migraine. None of these are pains I wish to experience on a regular basis.

I have been taught that there are three nutrients in which deficiency can lead to muscle cramps. They are: calcium, potassium, and vitamin C. Since I eat a diet that bucks the USDA's recommendations (I favor nutrient-dense food over fillers like grain), I was tracking everything I ate at Fit Day and I wasn't coming up short on any nutrients, let alone those three. Between meat and vegetable consumption my potassium intake was 1,500 mg on a bad day. I eat a lot of green vegetables, especially the leafy kinds, as well as cheese, so my calcium was well within the set guidelines for my age. While I eat little in the way of fruit, what I do eat is mainly citrus fruit and strawberries which are excellent sources of vitamin C. I am also a huge fan of sweet peppers, both red and green, which have more vitamin C per serving than any citrus fruit. My daily consumption of foods with vitamin C resulted in an average of 200% of the daily required amount for that vitamin. I was also taking a vitamin supplement several times a week.

I don't remember exactly when I started getting Charlie horses fairly regularly but I know it was long enough ago that I still had a subscription to our local daily newspaper. Our paper featured a daily column written by Dr. Gott where he said many people had written to him to tell him they stopped their night time leg cramps by putting an unwrapped bar of soap under their bottom sheet near where their legs lay at night. Who am I to argue with the man who came up with the "No Flour, No Sugar Diet?" I tried it. It didn't work. I was still getting Charlie horses a couple of hours after I went to sleep at least twice a week.

Finally, I did stumble across something that definitely makes me believe that Charlie horses are caused by a nutrient deficiency, just not the nutrients I had always been told would cause such things. My unprofessional opinion points its finger at minerals like copper, magnesium, and manganese. I started eating roughly a quarter cup of nuts every day as an afternoon snack. After a week I hadn't had a single Charlie horse. I kept eating the nuts and weeks turned into months and months turned into years without one recurrence of the mind-blowing night terror of Charlie horse pain.

The only time since then that I've had problems was early this last spring. Trying to save money on the grocery budget, I decided to cut expenses by using peanuts in place of the regular nuts. It took somewhere around two or three months, but not only did I start experiencing the pain again, so did both of my daughters. In looking at the nutrient content in an ounce of peanuts in comparison to the regular nuts, the peanuts sure enough have lower levels of magnanese, copper, and magnesium than the average of those nutrients in our custom mix. An ounce of peanuts has 26% RDA of manganese, 8% RDA of copper, and 12% RDA of magnesium. The average percentages in our custom nut mix are: 51% RDA of manganese, 20% RDA of copper, and 17% RDA of magnesium. Since going back to our normal nut consumption we haven't had a single Charlie horse.

I just realize that last paragraph might sound like I'm trying to sell something here. Indeed I am not. Nuts are readily available in almost any grocery store but I will recommend raw or either low-sodium varieties. I buy raw almonds, hazelnuts (filberts), pecans, and brazil nuts in the bulk department of one of our grocery stores, then mix them into a large container. Sometimes I can find two-pound bags of almonds and pecans at Costco that are more economically priced, so I buy what I can there and pick up the remainder at the other store. It costs our family of five about $30 to $40 a month for nuts, but considering the nutritional benefits it's a small price to pay. Not only are we eating a nutrient-rich food, we are also saving ourselves from the possibility of medication with potential side effects.

Aside from the Charlie horse issue, nuts are a great source of nutrients, fiber, and energy. Fats usually satiate an appetite more quickly, as in 200 calories of fat will make a person feel full faster than 200 calories worth of carbohydrates, and generally fuel the body longer. They are easy to pack in lunches or a backpack for a hiking trip.