What Is a Muscle Spasm?

Muscle spasm (commonly known as cramps) is a spontaneous tonic contraction of muscles. Muscle cramps that occur in the lower legs and toes are the most common. The pain during the attack is intolerable and can last from a few seconds to tens of seconds. Especially in the middle of the night when cramps often wake people up. Leg cramps are mostly caused by calcium deficiency, cold, and local neurovascular compression. Normally, you can take appropriate amount of calcium, take a lot of sun, sit and sleep to avoid nerve and blood pressure, and you can also do local muscle heat compresses and massages to strengthen local blood circulation. If there is no improvement, you should go to the hospital for treatment.

Basic Information

nickname

cramp

Visiting department

orthopedics

Common locations

Muscle, common gastrocnemius

Common causes

High fever, epilepsy, tetanus, rabies, calcium deficiency, or strenuous exercise, work fatigue, lack of sleep, cold irritation, etc.

Common symptoms

Spontaneous muscle tonic contraction, pain

Causes of muscle spasms

Systemic cause

High fever, epilepsy, tetanus, rabies, calcium deficiency, etc. can cause cramps.

Local cause

Gastrocnemius (commonly known as calf belly) spasms, often caused by sharp movements or fatigue at work or severe twisting of the tibia, often occur when lying down or sleeping.

3. Poor sleep posture

For example, if you lie on your back for a long time, press the quilt on your feet, or lay your face on the bed for a long time, forcing certain muscles of your calves to be absolutely relaxed for a long time, causing the muscles to "passively contract".

4. Fatigue, sleep, insufficient rest or excessive rest

Leading to accumulation of local acidic metabolites can cause muscle spasms. Such as walking or exercising for too long, excessive fatigue of the lower limbs or insufficient sleep can make lactic acid accumulate; excessively long sleep and rest, slow blood circulation, and carbon dioxide accumulation.

5. Cold stimulation

If the room temperature is low during winter nights, the quilt covered during sleep is too thin or the legs and feet are exposed.

Differential diagnosis of muscle spasm

1. Whole body tonic convulsions

The muscles of the whole body are stiff, twitching, and angulated with a bow, that is, the head is tilted backwards, the whole body is bent backwards in a bow shape, and the eyes are turned up or stared, unconscious.

2. Limitation of ventilation

Only local muscle twitches, such as only one limb twitch, or facial muscle twitches, or finger or toe twitches, or eyeball rotation, nystagmus, blinking actions, gaze, etc. Most are unconscious. The fashion of the above convulsions can be a few seconds or several minutes, severe cases can last for several minutes or recurrent attacks, and those with convulsions that last more than 30 minutes are called the continuation state of convulsions.

3. Fever convulsions

Mainly seen in children from 6 months to 4 years old with convulsions during high fever. High fever convulsions are short-lived, and the consciousness recovers quickly after pumping. Most of them occur in the early stages of fever. In a case of fever, usually only one attack, which can rule out brain diseases and other serious diseases. The electrogram is normal.

Muscle spasm treatment principles

1. Actively treat the primary disease based on the cause.

2. Symptomatic treatment, such as those with high fever should cooperate with cooling treatment, oxygen and so on.