Leg cramps are painful and debilitating. They can stop you in your tracks during a busy day or wake you from a restful sleep. Perhaps you’ve already tried remedies like using heating pads, taking ...

What is a muscle cramp? It can happen after intense exercise or in the dead of night when you’re doing nothing at all but sleeping. A muscle — say your calf — seizes up without warning, leaving you ...

Patients often tell Dr. Kiran V. Patel they've been sipping on quinine water to help ease leg cramps. Well-meaning relatives and even some doctors recommend it, said Patel, who's the director of ...

Medical education is intense, expensive and focused on the idea of “evidence-based medicine” (EBM). The idea of home remedies is usually framed as outmoded, unscientific and potentially harmful. If ...

*Refers to the latest 2 years of stltoday.com stories. Cancel anytime. To Readers • A recent discussion of nighttime leg cramps brought an avalanche of readers' remedies, as it always does. I can't ...

You probably don’t spend much time thinking about your toes, unless you’re trimming your nails or getting a pedicure. That’s understandable, but our toes play a crucial role in movement, contributing ...

At a social function last week, a lady stood up and was hit with a leg cramp so severe she could not move. The hostess rushed to the kitchen, returned with some French’s mustard in a teaspoon and ...

Sometimes we come across a home remedy that seems so preposterous, it hardly deserves a second thought. That happened to us nearly a decade ago when readers of this column started telling us that they ...

Since quinine is no longer recommended for leg cramps, what do you suggest as an alternative? The patient had no success with gabapentin (Neurontin).—PAMELA P. JONES, MSN, FNP-C, Hornell, N.Y. What ...

calcium and magnesium - two minerals intricately involved in the contraction and relaxation of muscles. It's certainly a treatment that's worth trying as it's very safe: for dosage I'd recommend ...

Have you ever been awakened in the middle of the night because your calf is in a painful cramp? When it happens to me, I have to swing my leg to the floor to stretch the cramp out. After one cramp, ...