muscle cramps...please help
 

Hello to all and wishing you all a comfortable day. I hope you can give me some advice. I've started having bad muscle cramps in both my rsd leg and normal leg. The pm doc told me to drink tonic water since it has quinine in it but that doesn't work. My mobility is severely limited from the rsd and the little mobility I have is being destroyed by the cramps. Please, can you tell me what you do? I don't want to see the little mobility I have disappear!!!
I have a tough time with any meds that make you zonked out.That's why the pm doc suggested the water. Even on small doses I'm a zoombie so I'm hoping there is something else. I am getting worse so quickly. Any advice would be so appreciated. Thanks to all you nice folks.
Jeannie

Hey Jeannie,

Muscle cramps suck :( I was going to suggest something like baclofen but if you don't react well to drugs then that's not a great plan! I think some people take magnesium supplements to help with their muscle spasms. Have you had any reaction to the tonic water? maybe you could start on a tiny dose of quinine if you haven't reacted to it?

Hope others can help more!! and it improves!

Love

Frogga xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_cupping

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in628788.shtml

Have someone professional try this. However, my husband is not a professional and did this last night. I can say that I had a good remainder of the evening - my knee was still in extreme pain but my muscle cramps/spasms stopped and gave me a break.

Hope this helps.

At the end of the 20th century, another method of suction was developed in which a valve was constructed at the top of the jar and a small hand-operated pump is attached so that the practitioner could suction out air without relying on fire (thus avoiding some hazards and having greater control over the amount of suction). Both glass and plastic cups were developed, though the plastic ones are not very well suited to moving along the skin once in place, as the edges are not entirely smooth and the strength of the cups is limited. The modern name for cupping is baguanfa (suction cup therapy).

http://bigcrazystore.com/pro619299.html

Okay. I know a bit about muscle cramps and RSD, having had them beginning with a sudden onset one night in the Fall of 2001 - a few months into the RSD - when I woke up in the middle of the night and both legs were in such complete spasm they had turned to some form of living but incredibly painful stone.

Forget about the tonic water. It's useless. Xnay on quinine too. (In fact, the FDA has recently banned the use of quinine for muscles cramps. So much for tonic water!) However, among the nutritional supplement, folic acid [800 mcg./day] comes recommenced as does a gram a day of magnesium, as Frogga has pointed out. There may be other supplements that are useful as well.

Following again on Frogga's comments, what I think you really need are one of two drugs that really work in controlling CNS induced muscle spasms, Zanaflex or Baclofen. (This is in contrast, for instance, to Flexeril, which addresses cramping due to local muscles tears and the like, and is not nearly as effective in my experience for RSD related cramping.) I was initially on Baclofen but stopped taking it when I was still working as a lawyer and it was interfering with my short term memory. I went to Zanaflex instead (up to 24 mg./day). That took some getting used to as it made me more than a little sleepy for the first year that I was on it. That went away eventually. Unfortunately, the Zanaflex itself suffered from diminishing returns to scale, so in the last few months, I've gone back to Baclofen, which I'm taking up to 40 mg./day, and that really helps.

(And as for the memory issues, I'm also taking 30 mg./day of Namenda and an working up to 16 mg./day of Razadyne, both of which seem to help as well. But then again, I'm no longer in a position where I can practice law, e.g., bet other folks' money on my memory.)

There is a whole other area to be looked at as well. Recent experimental research has shown that opioids (narcotics) tend to bind to the wall of the intestine, causing not only constipation - which many of us know only too well - but also a "bloom" of bacteria in the small intestine that produces neurotoxins! After this was confirmed with gas spectrometry of my breath - blowing up little mylar balloons over a 3 hour period - I was first treated with a ten day course of an expensive antibiotic which insurance didn't cover - Xifaxan - that set me back a little over $300.00, but instantly resolved the cramping.

Since then, as a prophylactic measure, I do three things to keep my GI system in check. First, I take in pediatric dose of Erythromycin E.E.S. 200 200/5ml [1 ml. in the a.m.] in order to assist peristalsis. Next, every time I take a narcotic analgesic, I wash it down with Naloxone HCL (Narcan) (.4 mg. [1.0 cc]) taken orally in order to specifically block intestinal opioid receptors. For a link to trials of a new but closely related drug currently in phase III clinical trials to address this specific issue, go to http://www.pubmed.gov and run a search for "Methylnaltrexone: MNTX." Having said this, please note that Narcan is usually given IV or IM and is a gnarly drug, used to - violently - pull someone out of an OD situation. However, given orally, it's been entirely benign in my experience, except - for those who care - it also seems to block the "high" of the narcotic experience, while allowing the analgesic effect to go on unimpaired. See, also, Vickers AP, Jolly A. "Naltrexone and problems in pain management," BMJ, 2006 Jan 21;332(7534):132-3; free full text at: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7534/132.

Finally, I just take 2 tablets a day of Senna-S, which is a good natural vegetable laxative/stool softener, and that, coupled with everything else, seems to address both the obvious GI issues related to the use of opioids and the more insidious neuro-toxicological issues as well.

I hope this is useful. In any event, I've spent years working with this, and it's the best I've been able to come up with.

Mike

I have found that a high dose of magnesium helps with some of my muscle problems -cramps, spasming and twitching. Magnesium relaxes your muscles. In addition I do have to take muscle relaxants for my spasms that lock my jaw.

A note on the magnesium- my mom even found that it helped her with her heart palpitations as it relaxed the muscles of her heart!

I am happy when I find a natural supplement that can help me as it is easier on my body than drugs are. However, a lot of times you cannot find something natural that helps to the degree you need. Then I choose to use drugs as well as whatever natural supplements I am able to take.

I find the best way to deal with my muscle cramps is a calcium magnesium supplement. Also pottasium. These work really well even for my most intense, can't walk cramps.
Tracy

hi jeannie,
the night cramps were horrid for me. now, i cannot tolerate many medications either, but my PM gave me tranxene 7.5mg to help me sleep and it worked extremely well for the cramping. so, just thought i'd give you yet another choice. hope something works for you, i know that pain well. my cramps would get stuck and i could not unlock them, i did the bending of the toes too to unlock them but sometimes it would take a long time, too long ... keep trying stuff until you find one that works for you. joan

Thank you to everyone. I'm going to try the supplements first as well as the stretching and see what happens. I would love to be able to take the meds but I'm having a real tough time with the side effects. Every time I try a new med I miss out on several days of living. I just don't want to miss out on much more. Hopefully I can find a more viable solution. But, thank you all for your replys. Jeannie