Bar of soap in bed for leg cramps

[Guest guest]

Yesterday at the gym a bunch of us were talking about muscles,

joints, cramps, etc. One of my friends who has RLS mentioned

something about putting a bar of soap in your bed to relieve

nocturnal leg cramps. I was stunned and skeptical, and found it is

an 'folks wisdom' but am passing this info on to anyone who may be

interested.

And if, perchance, you have tried this bar of soap for nocturnal leg

cramps, let us know. What was your experience?

~ Gretchen

Soap Dope

http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/legcramp.asp

Claim: A bar of soap between the bedsheets will prevent leg cramps.

Status: Undetermined.

Origins: Many people are plagued by noctural leg cramps, those

involuntary and agonizing muscle contractions that strike in the

depths of the night, waking sleepers with jolts of pain that leave

them awash in waves of suffering until the kinks finally relax.

While many possible causes have been posited for these contractions,

those afflicted by them are far more concerned with getting rid of

these debilitating cramps than they are with understanding their

origin. Over the years, many preventions have been suggested,

including:

Stretching one's calf muscles prior to going to bed.

Swearing off caffeine in the evening.

Increasing one's intake of potassium, magnesium, calcium or Vitamin

E.

Sleeping on one's back with toes pointed towards the ceiling.

Taking quinine (now available only by prescription) or drinking tonic

water (which contains small amounts of quinine).

Increasing one's intake of water during the day.

While all of the above have been said to avert the problem in at

least some cases, one further suppression trick appears to work, at

least according to anecdotal information, for almost everyone so

bedeviled: sleeping with a bar of soap in the bed. No one has yet

produced a plausible explanation as to why snoozing with one's Ivory

might stave off those devastating nocturnal leg cramps, yet the

reports of its doing so are numerous.

Slipping a bar of soap into the bed as a leg cramp prevention has

been advanced by a number of authorities, both medical and otherwise.

Ann Landers has mentioned the soap cure in her column on a number of

occasions, with each airing prompting a load of letters from readers

thanking her for this information because it worked wonders for

them. " They were thrilled and grateful to be liberated from those leg

cramps, " said Ms. Landers.

As to how this works — or even if it does — we're still in the dark.

Perhaps soap releases something into the air that is beneficial to

those predisposed to this condition, with the bedsheets working to

contain the helpful emissions to the area where they are needed. Or

perhaps this is a case of believing making it so — the soap itself

has no effect, but the sufferer's faith in the procedure serves to

effect the miracle.

Yet skepticism aside, for those subject to noctural leg cramps, this

bit of folk wisdom is clearly worth a try, in that the only potential

downside is their having to share their beds with slivers of soap.

(Well, that and having their spouses think them a bit loony.) As to

what sort of product and where to place it in the bed, although some

who pass along this bit of housewifely lore indicate specifics such

as the soap's having to be unwrapped or not be a specific brand (Dial

and Dove are often mentioned as bars to eschew), those who swear by

the procedure have had success whether they used large bars or the

small ones commonly found in hotel rooms, whether the cakes of soap

were wrapped or unwrapped, and whether the afflicted leg was rested

on top of the soap or not. As for which brand is best, cautions

against Dove and Dial to the contrary, they all seem to work about

the same.

As to what to do about an existing leg cramp, folk wisdom once again

offers a variety of potential answers:

Ingest a teaspoon of yellow mustard.

Drink a glass of water that has a quarter of a teaspoon of baking

soda mixed into it.

Pour salt into your hand and lick it.

Pinch the skin between the nose and the upper lip.