WWTBAM Bored

I had tried potassium, and magnesium, and bananas.

Finally found something that mostly works: tonic water (which includes quinine) before bed.

It tastes bitter, but the solution is: enough lime juice to nearly cover the bottom of the glass, plus about four ounces of tonic water. It mixes itself if you do the juice squirt first, and tastes like drinkable lime soda.

I've had two cramps in a week of this treatment, when before, it would have been 4-5 a night.

It may just be that I am better hydrated, but whatever.

I guess the other solution would be gin, but this is way cheaper. And other things.

Skoop --

When I was having leg spasms, this is the exact thing that my doctor recommended, since bananas and potassium weren't working.

As with your experience, it didn't eliminate the cramps completely, but did cut them down significantly.

I think it's the combination of the quinine and the hydration.

TLAF used raisins soaked in gin. Used to keep a screw-lid jar of them in the refrigerator. Took a teaspoonful every night. Someone's old folk recipe, apparently. Worked like a charm for her.

Feel better my friend

The remedy Mom discovered for something else was precisely nine gin-soaked raisins.

Cracks me up that it is exactly nine.

Ritterskoop wrote:The remedy Mom discovered for something else was precisely nine gin-soaked raisins.

Cracks me up that it is exactly nine.

That was it! NINE!!

It cracked me up, too.

I'm glad you found something that works. I was lucky; potassium worked for me. I had probably one bad cramp per day, and the potassium took care of it.

My mother suffered from them also. She tried the gin soaked raisins but they didn't help her. She finally started sleeping with a bar of Ivory soap down at the foot of the bed and said that her leg cramps diminished tremendously. Who knows? Placebo effect? Whatever it was, she followed that practice for the last 10 years of her life and never complained about leg cramps during that time.

I'm awake at this early hour because a leg cramp woke me up. I blame my drive to here in Albuquerque from Denver and not an electrolyte imbalance.

I read about the soap treatment and couldn't work out why it would help some folks.

But it does.