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Are cramps caused by lack of salt?

Published: 
Wednesday, May 2, 2012

 

Cramps, a common affliction has often been ascribed to low salt levels in your diet, but what causes these painful aches is still a mystery. You wake up in the middle of the night in agony. Your calf muscle seems to have a life of its own and is in spasm, causing an agonising pain down the back of your lower leg. You try to force your leg to relax without success, and you know you are in for a sleepless night. What you have is cramp, or charley horse as it is also known in North America. 
 
Cramp occurs most often in the calf muscle at the back of the lower leg, the hamstrings at the back of the thigh or the quadriceps at the front. Or in rare cases, cramps can be caused by very low levels of calcium because of a problem with the parathyroid gland in the neck. But as Raymond Playford, Professor of Medicine at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, says cramp is not associated with needing more salt in your diet in the majority of cases.
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