Muscle spasms: identify the symptoms, causes and how to deal with them

Have you ever had a sudden feeling of a muscle contracting out of control, making it impossible for your muscles to relax? It could be that you are experiencing muscle spasms. However, do you know what muscle spasms actually mean? Come on, see a full review of this condition, including symptoms, causes, and how to deal with it.

What are muscle spasms?

Basically, muscle spasms and cramps are almost the same condition. Muscle spasms occur when muscles suddenly contract on their own and are out of your control. In fact, this condition makes the muscles not relax and feel stiff.

This condition is very common, in fact almost everyone may have experienced it. When these spasms last for a long time, they are then known as muscle cramps.

This condition can occur in some or all of the muscles in your body. However, the parts of the body that are often the site of seizures are the thighs, calves, areas of the legs, hands, arms, abdomen, and possibly around the ribs.

When experiencing this condition, you may experience pain ranging from mild to severe. Muscles that experience this condition certainly feel stiffer and harder than normal muscles, especially when touched.

In fact, your muscles may appear to throb when you experience it. This condition can last from seconds to minutes, and even longer. This condition can also occur repeatedly before it completely goes away.

Causes of spasms in the muscles

Since muscle cramps and spasms are similar conditions, the causes of muscle cramps and spasms are not much different. Here are some conditions that can be the cause:

• Less warm up before doing physical activity, especially strenuous exercise.
• Fatigue muscles.
• Too much physical activity in hot weather.
• Dehydration.
• Electrolyte imbalance in the body.
• Overworked muscles.
• Use of certain drugs.
• Certain health conditions, such as kidney failure or diabetes.
• Pregnancy.

In fact, you may experience cramps and seizures at the same time if you do either of these causes.

Frequent symptoms of muscle spasms

You may have had muscle spasms before, but weren't aware of them. Here are some signs or symptoms of this muscle problem that you need to pay attention to:

• Muscle pain or soreness that occurs because the muscles become tighter.
• Muscles become weak.
• Movement becomes slower.
• Sleep disturbances, due to frequent awakening due to sore muscles.

There are also symptoms of muscle spasms that are considered dangerous to health and must be treated immediately, such as the following:

• Areas of muscle spasms that are always the same, especially after sports activities.
• Accompanied by swelling or redness.
• There is fever, nausea, or vomiting.
• Accompanied by a sensation of heat and tingling.

How to deal with muscle spasms at home

Basically, the condition that causes muscle pain can go away on its own. That means, you can deal with this one condition independently at home. However, there are a few things that need to be known before treating the condition that can cause this muscle pain.

According to the American Osteophatic Association, there are several things you can do, such as:

• Stop all activities that are triggering this one muscle problem.
• Stretch and gently massage the muscle area that feels tense, leaving it in that position until the pain in the muscle is gone.
• Compress using warm water to help tense and stiff muscles relax.
• Compress using cold water to reduce pain in the sore muscles.

Prevention of muscle spasms

Instead of dealing with it, you certainly prefer to take precautions so you don't experience it. In addition to maintaining muscle health, there are several lifestyles that can also help you to be free from various muscle ailments, including:

1. Drink lots of water

As mentioned earlier, dehydration is a condition that can cause muscle spasms. Therefore, make sure you meet your daily fluid needs.

One condition that has the potential to cause dehydration is exercising or engaging in strenuous physical activity in hot weather. If you are in this condition, make sure to always consume water to prevent dehydration.

Overcoming dehydration is one of your efforts to prevent this one muscle problem.

2. Consume vitamins and minerals

Maybe not many of you know that a lack of minerals in the body can cause muscle cramps or spasms. Some minerals that must be fulfilled are potassium, calcium and magnesium to avoid this one muscle problem.

Unfortunately, there are medicinal uses that can cause the body to become deficient in minerals, one of which is water pills or diuretics which are usually used to treat high blood pressure.

Therefore, if you must take this drug, consult your doctor to find out how to keep the mineral levels in the body in balance.

3. Do stretching exercises

One way to prevent muscle spasms from occurring is to stretch regularly both before and after exercise, especially if you choose to do vigorous exercise.

The problem is that warming up and cooling down during exercise is often underestimated. In fact, if not done properly, your potential for muscle problems increases. Sure, you don't want this to happen, do you?

Therefore, make sure to always warm up for about 15 minutes before starting to exercise and do the same thing as a cool down after exercising.

4. Avoid smoking and consuming caffeine

Apparently, consuming caffeine and smoking has a bad impact on muscle health. The proof, consuming too often caffeine and smoking habits can also increase your potential to experience various muscle health problems, including muscle spasms.

You are advised to avoid both of these habits because smoking and consuming alcohol can increase your risk of developing this condition. So if you still have one or both of these habits, immediately stop.

5. Take muscle relaxants

Even though you haven't experienced muscle spasms, you can take muscle relaxants as a form of prevention against this condition. Especially if you have started to feel some of the symptoms of muscle spasms that appear. Not to mention if the muscles have started to stiffen and feel tense. Using a muscle relaxant can help relax your muscles.

Even so, the use of drugs that can also be used as muscle pain relievers should be according to the doctor's advice. Therefore, ask your doctor whether taking muscle relaxants is good for consumption if it is adjusted to your health condition.

This is important to do to avoid interactions between muscle relaxants and other drugs that you may be taking.