This weeks topic! MUSCLE CRAMPING explained by TheFITBODYrx!

This week's topic is MUSCLE CRAMPING! There are diverse etiological backgrounds for cramps. The most popularly accepted are injury (cramps would serve as a protective mechanism here), dehydration (especially when coinciding with sodium depletion), unusual body fluid shifts (such as in cirrhosis of the liver or dialysis for kidney failure), low blood calcium and magnesium (due to hyperventilation, inadequate dietary consumption and/or malabsorption due to vitamin D deficiency and digestive disorders), and low potassium. The previous doesn't mean a whole lot until we are trying to find a way to fix this problem without having to go to the medical doctor. So with that in mind, especially for those of you who are getting ready for a show and say, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"- here are some ways you can prevent or alleviate muscle cramping. 1- Drink spring water not distilled water. Much like you wouldn't think to eat an over-cooked dry nutrition-less piece of meat, you don't want to try to hydrate with water that has been over-cooked and stripped of all essential minerals. Drinking distilled water can exasperate dehydration and thereby lead to cramping. There is an anti parasitic treatment that utilizes distilled water as part of it's protocol but generally speaking, distilled water should not be used for any extensive amount of time. 2-Eat your vegetables! After handling nutrition for over a decade, we have seen many diet strategies(meal plans) by "rookies" and "gurus" alike that only focus on macronutrients. That means that the diet only considers fat, protein, and carbs as important to health. These types of diets omit vegetables. Vegtables are foods that provide a substantial amount of minerals and "micro nutrients" to the diet. Contrary to popular belief, because of homogenization and pasteurization, dairy is not a good source of calcium. Actually, green leafy Vegtables are a better source while costing you less calories in general. It's very hard to find post infancy milk consumption in the animal kingdom, well except for sick inflamed human beings. 3-Maintain an acidic gut. You are probably thinking, "Huh, Ain't nobody got time for that!" Well let us first explain what they don't commonly teach in medical school. There exists a condition that is more common than we know- hypochlorhydria. This is a lack of acid production in the stomach and has been associated with childhood asthma. Why is this important? An acidic stomach is needed to breakdown protein(to think you might be eating a lot of expensive protein that is only putrefying in your gut), ionize minerals especially calcium into a form that can be utilized, to empty the stomach properly, to sterilize the stomach and as a first line of defense against ingested bacteria or yeast, and to trigger proper bile release from the gallbladder which aids in fat breakdown. Of the above, what influences cramping the most is the need for proper ionization of calcium in the gut so it can be put to use later AND proper breakdown of fats so that the calcium that is absorbed can be transported into the muscle tissue. Bet you didn't know fats are needed for that huh? 4-Get out in the sun but don't forget to consume "good" fats when you do! There has been a lot of attention given to vitamin D in the last couple of years and rightfully so. Although vitamin D is synthesized naturally in our bodies when we are exposed to the SUN, we still find many people are extremely deficient. One probable cause is the OVERuse of sun screens and sunblock.We are so paranoid of the sun that it makes us wonder how we ever survived this long on an earth where the sun can kill you. So no sun exposure>no Vitamin D, no vitamin D>no... getting calcium out of the gut and into systemic circulation. Indirectly, a lack of vitamin D will cause a calcium deficiency at the tissue level because calcium would still be "stuck" in the gut. While vitamin D opens the door to let the calcium out EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) serve as the vehicle that gets the calcium into the tissue, such as muscle tissue. Abundant levels of circulating calcium does us no good unless we can shuttle that calcium into the muscles. Something to think about for those of you who are still stuck in the prehistoric age of dieting and believe to cut out all fats from the diet is to diet. Obviously, we are looking at cramping from a purely nutritional deficiency perspective and in doing so assuming calcium is chiefly responsible for muscle contraction and relaxation. There isn't much proof in the way of studies that link low calcium consumption with cramping. However empirically, many testify that once foods containing calcium and/or essential fatty acids were added to the diet, cramping subsided. It is clear how calcium is responsible for muscular contractions but unclear how it aides in muscle relaxation or avoiding cramps. It's speculated that calcium's role in muscle relaxation is due to its alkaline effect on muscle. I hope this brings some clarity and insight as to why we suggest certain eating habits and what can be some possible ways to prevent cramping.