I have been having very painful muscle cramps at night, usually in my left hand or left foot. It hurts so bad it wakes me from my sleep. I have a pretty high pain tolerance but this is hard to deal with. I take Baclofen 20 mg 3x a day and 4mg of Xanaflex at bed time. I have a little spasticity during the day, but at night it is 100x worse. My neuro says it is worse at night because our muscles are at rest. During the day we are constantly stretching them as we go about our every day routines.

Any suggestions???

Does your bed have a footboard?

I've had muscle spasms in my legs and feet since I was a little kid. (makes me wonder how long I've had the MS now)

What I used to do when I was younger and my childhood bed had a footboard was to put my foot on the footboard when the charley horse/spasm hit and press down on my toes and ball of my foot to make the spasm go away.

Now what I have to do, since my grown-up bed doesnt have a footboard is to get up immediately as soon as I feel a charley horse starting up. Then I have to either stand there precariously, depending on how far charley got, and then walk around. (and then pop a baclofen or two)

I think I need to go buy a bed that has a footboard...either that or sleep with my head at the foot of the bed and use the headboard as a footboard from now on.

I'm expecting to have a stampede of charley horses hit me tonight. I finally had the energy to get to the gym and ride the exercise bike today. (yay!) I just hope it's more a couple of slowly walking small shetland ponies instead of galloping clydesdales leading the stampede of charley horses.

Your Neuro said it Nicci..stretching is the answer. I find that if I do some light stretching exercises before going to sleep, it helps a lot. If I'm really hurting, then I'll take a couple of Asprins, too.

I hope you sleep well tonight.

when I am crampy at night, I pop a couple of tums. the calcium in those pups really helps on crampy nights.

others use magnesium with good results.

Try some yoga or gentle stretches during the day to help keep your muscles tone.

I take calcium, magnesium, vitamin d and LDN. Nothing is really helping now. I guess it's just something else I have to learn to live with.

If I did cyber-hugs, I'd send you one.

I could deal with the cramps in my calves...slide out of bed and stretch them out.

I can't have the blankets tucked in, or my feet and ankles cramp. I didn't even know you could HAVE cramps in your ankles until MS.

Then I started having spasms in my thigh muscles, both the inner thigh and the front one right above the knee. That was pain that took my breath away and made me want to barf. Holy Cow.

I started taking a small dose of quinine sulfate back before the FDA yanked it because of certain risks. I get it in Canada now. Do I recommend doing that? Nope. There ARE risks, that's why it's not available here unless you have malaria.

I'm not much of a risk taker, but I was making myself sick just being afraid of one of those suckers hitting me during the night.

Other folks I know have had good results with other meds.

LDN can cause some severe sleep problems.

jackD

At first but I'm on LDN 7+ years now and no problems at all with falling asleep, now. Different strokes for different folks though.