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3147776 tn?1549545810

Muscle-cramp fighting foods

Stretching and getting regular physical activity are the best way to prevent muscle cramping, but nutrition also plays a part:   https://www.medicinenet.com/muscle_cramps_foods_that_help_prevent_cramping/article.htm

Which of these foods have you added to your diet to prevent muscle cramps?  I love avocados, but have to be careful  not to get too much of a good thing, since they're high in calories.
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I don't understand this post -- exercise creates muscle cramping, it doesn't decrease it, as it is the exertion that causes the stress.  Static stretching feels good, but there's little evidence to support it having much utility.  Now, I don't necessarily accept this as fact, evidence is often misleading.  There is a reason people have always stretched and it's hard to believe they didn't get some benefit from it, but after a lot of years of it I have come to read only studies showing there is no evidence it does much in the way of healing.  I'm still for it, but it has to be the right kind.  Nutrition does play a very large role in cramping, but that's the electrolytes mostly, and avocados wouldn't be the best food for those.  And while it is high in calories, that's not the problem, as calories are not all created equal.  Nobody ever got fat eating avocados or salmon.  The problem is more that it's saturated fat balanced by a fair amount of antioxidants, but it's likely the benefits of avocados are highly exaggerated as part of an advertising campaign to sell more of them.  We've seen the same thing happen with coconut products, another high saturated fat food that is relatively high in antioxidants but so are many foods with less saturated fat, such as leafy green vegetables.  Hydration is another factor in preventing cramping.  One very large cause of cramping in our society today are the medications we are all taking -- many of them cause muscle tension and cramping.  But again, exercise is great for many things, but the more you exercise, the more you are prone to overdoing it, which can cause cramping.  Certain injuries also cause cramping by pinching nerves, such as hip problems and neck problems.  But here's the main thing -- if you do exercise you will need to do more to prevent cramping, not less.  The main nutrients thought to ease cramping are magnesium and potassium.  Leafy green veggies are high in magnesium, and bananas are high in potassium, just to name some foods.    
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Runners are taught to stretch to avoid cramping.  One of the reasons for stretching before exercising is to get blood flow into the muscle which helps to prevent cramping. I'm sure other sports also benefit from stretching to avoid cramps.  Cramping also comes about not just from over use but infrequent use and all of a sudden being used. So, regular exercise is preventative as well. I also find cramping worse when I'm not well hydrated.  My two cents.  
This is how I was raised, and as far as I know, still the way it's done.  But I was pretty amazed at a meta-analysis, actually a couple of them, that showed no proven benefit at all from stretching.  The rationale for it used to be, it elongated the muscles, but it turns out that's not actually physiologically possible -- your muscles are the length they will always be.  Getting blood flow doesn't need stretching -- warming up would do that much better than static stretching such as a light run or walk or bike.  I have not idea who is right -- ideas in medicine and fitness ebb and flow and then ebb and flow all over again like an endless piece of repetitive music -- but so much of it is advertising that it's very hard to discern evidence from marketing.  What I do know is that people have stretched for as long as we have historic records, such as yoga, but whether it does anything or just feels like it does appears to be very much in question.  And that's downright weird, but so it goes.

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Arlington, VA
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