Paola Marchi asked this question:

Hi Anthony, first of all I want to thank you for all your posts and advices, they're very helpfull, and also I must warn you about my English, wich isn't very good so I hope you can understand me. Ok, I'm going to start telling that I started to practice Ashtanga about 10 months ago, and I'm doing my practice every day since April. All my life I suffered from cramps, mostly in my twenties (now I'm 35 years old), sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible cramps, mostly in my right leg (gastrocnemius or soleus muscles, I don't know exactly). Well, I toke some magnesium for a while and the cramps stopped. But now, in my practice they came back: during purvottanasana, sometimes in bhujapidasana, halasana, uttanapadasana and sirsasana (every time that I want to strech my feet). Another thing wich is important, I'm vegetarian, since 4 years ago and I'm trying to be vegan for about 5 or 6 months (I only eat dairy or eggs socially). I started to take magnesium again and I'm better but I don't think that's the solution, I don't want to be an artificial supplement dependent, right? I eat oat, bananas and others fruits, greens and vegetables, seeds, nuts... So I don't know what is wrong with me. I will appreciate if you can give me some advice or share your wisdom with me and help me to find any solution. One more time, thank you so much.


Answer:

You are very welcome. Your question is a very good one and addresses a common challenge that is associated with worse health problems if not addressed. It is also common and unsolvable at its’ cause by western medicine. Of course I can’t say for sure what the problem, nor would I because I don’t play doctor. Even doctors don’t address this accurately and completely.

It is valuable first to consider what is artificial nutrition in your mind. The ancients were processing food for storage and making extracts, concentrates and esoteric remedies that can only be described as alchemy. The market place is flooded with artificial or poor quality nutritional supplements; herbs that are not what they claim to be, that are grown and harvested with low consciousness, vitamins that are manmade and isolated from their important co-factors, remedies that are not nearly as strong as the ones used in the studies and experiments that proved their benefit, etc.. The reason I mention this is to open your mind to accepting the possibility that high quality nutritional supplements can be a sustainable method of health and healing. For instance, the magnesium that you use, what form is it in? Studies show that the manmade types ( the best at present is magnesium glysinate ) are not nearly as good as the food concentrates or those grown, for instance in saccharomyces cerevisiae, which are much more bioavailable  and therefore , more effective.

If the magnesium helps, it makes sense to test your pH to see if you might be too acidic. The easiest, not the best but easiest for you and cheapest, would be litmus paper. Check your pH throughout the day the most important time being first thing in the morning before you eat or drink anything. If you get up a 6 am and go to pee, splash a drop or two from mid stream on the paper and check the number. Check saliva at the same time by first rinsing your mouth with water, wait until your natural saliva comes back, a few minutes and then spit on the pH paper. You are looking to find a number that is close to 7 which is neutral pH. If you find that it is 5, you are on the right track and now need to work with alkalizing your body. In this case the cramps are being caused my low pH that further causes the de-mineralization of muscle, bone and blood. The way I works is, blood pH is most important so the body intelligence will deplete the alkalizing minerals from the bones ( osteopenia or osteoporosis) and the muscles causing cramps rather than letting the blood pH get to low which could result in death. This is practical as death is worse than cramps or weak bones.

Because you mention the gastrocnemius and the soleus, if it were me, I would look to adrenal stress as another possible contributing factor. The muscles mentioned share lymphatic pathways with the adrenal glands. Basically, if the adrenal glands are suffering so are the associated muscles. I personally would look to herbal, nutritional and or glandular support in that case. More than likely it could be both the pH and the adrenals.

Now it gets a bit tricky, you can read the blog post on Surgery is just the beginning. If the propriaceptive mechanisms (sensory mechanisms in the tendon or the muscle belly, responsible for communication between the muscles) are not communicating efficiently and the prime movers (in this case the gastrocnemius and soleus) are co-contracting with their antagonist muscles ( generally the muscles on the opposite side of the joint/bone) you will get frequent cramps. Another scenario would be when the antagonists (apposing muscle) are weak or flaccid or not firing for some other reason ( usually neurological in nature), the prime movers, in this case the Gastrocnemius and soleus will constantly be in over contraction and frequent cramps will occur.

There are certainly more scenarios but this is a good start. I would start with the pH and adrenals. Have you been under a lot of stress, are you deficient in B vitamins especially B12, do you eat a lot of acid forming food, has your transition to vegan cause a detoxification that has lowered you pH ? Let me know how it goes.