Leg Spasms: What You Can Do to Treat Them

If you haven’t already experienced leg spasms or cramping, chances are you’ll experience them at some point in your life. They hit with no warning and can cause excruciating and debilitating pain.

Although many leg spasm episodes resolve on their own, if the problem persists, it can interrupt your normal daily activities, exercise regimen, and sleep schedule.

Fortunately, there are many approaches you can take to relieve or altogether cure your leg spasms. Let’s take a look at what causes them, and what you can do to treat them.

Leg Spasm Definition and Symptoms

A leg spasm is a sudden, sharp contraction or tightening of a muscle in the leg. This can last a few seconds to a few minutes.

When you have a muscle cramp anywhere in your body, you will experience a sudden contraction of the muscle. This is an involuntary function, meaning you don’t have control. You may experience the following symptoms:

• Extreme pain
• Extreme discomfort
• Extreme tightness of the impacted muscle

Leg spasms are typically brief and go away on their own, but if you experience frequent or lengthy leg spasms, you should seek treatment.

Leg Spasm Causes

There are a variety of leg spasm causes:

Dehydration or Peripheral Artery Disease

This is a classic cause of leg spasms and leg pain. Fluid can cause the nerve endings to become sensitized, triggering muscle contractions in this area.

Peripheral artery disease affects how the body moves electrolytes, so can cause leg cramping.

Mineral Deficiency

When you sweat, you lose not only water but also electrolytes. If you have low electrolytes, imbalances in sodium, calcium, magnesium or potassium can affect nerve transduction and lead to muscle spasms.

Hypothyroidism

If you produce too little thyroid hormone, this is known is hypothyroidism. Over time, this deficiency can damage the nerves that send signals from your brain and spine to your legs. You could experience tingling or numbness in your muscles or leg cramps.

Spinal Misalignment and Muscle or Connective Tissue Injuries

Misalignments of the spine can compress nerve roots that lead to the leg. This, in turn, can cause radiating leg pain or leg spasms, particularly on the back of the thigh.

Certain injuries, such as tears, strains, and sprains can also lead to leg spasms and leg sprains.

Multiple Sclerosis

The nervous system disease multiple sclerosis can cause muscle spasticity. This can range from mild tightness or tingling in the legs to severe pain and cramping.

Pregnancy

Leg spasms are common in the second and third trimester of pregnancy, as calcium and magnesium deficiency are common at this time.

Leg Spasm Treatment

The right course of treatment for your leg spasms will depend on the underlying cause. Your chiropractor can help identify the cause, and develop a customized course of treatment to relieve or entirely eliminate your leg cramps.

Nutritional Advice

As we touched on above, leg spasms can be caused by dehydration or nutritional deficiency. As a part of your holistic care, your chiropractor will evaluate your diet and suggest changes that will help address any nutritional deficiencies that could be contributing to your leg spasms.

Chiropractic Manipulative Therapy

When your spine becomes misaligned, the vertebrae compress the nerve roots that radiate from the spine and into the arms and legs. If you have a misalignment in your lower back, this can lead to radiating leg pain or leg spasms.

Putting the spine back in alignment through chiropractic manipulative therapy can relieve the pressure on compressed nerve roots, thus alleviating your leg pain.

Your chiropractor may also recommend exercises to strengthen your back and core muscles and stabilize your spine, preventing future misalignments.

Massage Therapy

Many chiropractors also offer chiropractic massage. Your chiropractor may suggest or perform massage therapy to relax your leg muscles, which can prevent or lessen the severity of muscle spasms.

Massage therapy can also help to relieve any inflammation that accompanies your leg spasms, decreasing pain and swelling in the area.

Physical Therapy

If you are experiencing muscle spasms due to a soft tissue injury, your chiropractor may perform physical therapy to help the soft tissue heal and restore range of motion to the injured area.

This can include exercises or other modalities such as ultrasound therapy aimed at promoting tissue healing.

Stretching

Gentle stretching can often help to release leg spasms. However, stretching too aggressively or incorrectly can actually make leg spasms worse.

Your chiropractor will show you how to stretch correctly, helping your muscles to loosen when you experience a leg spasm.

Leg spasms are common but painful and often debilitating. Fortunately, there are a variety of treatment options that can help relieve your pain and address the root causes of leg spasms. Reach out to your experienced Florida chiropractor for guidance and treatment today!

About the Author:

Dr. Singer has been a practicing chiropractor for more than 20 years, and USA Health & Therapy has been around since 2004. Over the course of his career, Singer has helped tens of thousands of people with all kinds of issues by using a wide variety of treatment strategies. He has extensive knowledge of chiropractic modalities, including Gonstead, Diversified, Thompson Drop Table, and Activator, and in 1997 he earned a special adjunctive Chiropractic Certification in Spinal Trauma (CCST) to better provide care for car crash victims. Dr. Singer is licensed to practice chiropractic medicine in both Florida and New York.