Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweek segment called Ask a Nutritionist.

My name is Brittany Vincent and I am a registered and licensed dietitian at Nutritional

Weight and Wellness. On today's show, I will be

answering a question from one of our listeners. Today's question is, what causes Charlie Horses?

Before we dive into the causes, I want to talk a little bit more about what a Charlie horse is.

Charlie horses, also known as a muscle cramp or spasm, these terms are often used interchangeably,

but technically a muscle cramp is more severe than a spasm.

So just for consistency's sake, I'll be referring today to Charlie Horses.

So a Charlie horse is an involuntary contraction of a muscle. And that muscle stays contracted for a period of time because it's unable to relax.

And oftentimes this happens in your legs, sometimes your feet, but really it could happen in other areas of the body as well. I have

personally been here. I've had these Charlie horses. I would get them in the middle of the night

in my calf. It would cause me to fly out of bed. I'd have to stretch out my

leg for it to stop. And it definitely disrupted my sleep pretty frequently. So I'm going to be

sharing what helped me and what I also see help my clients that have these Charlie horses. So two of the most common causes that I see clinically are magnesium deficiency and

electrolyte imbalance.

I want to dive more into the magnesium deficiency first because this is the most common cause of these Charlie Horses or muscle spasins that I see

and was the cause of my Charlie Horses.

Magnesium is an extremely important mineral for your body.

It's involved in hundreds of different biochemical reactions in our body. And think of it as your

relaxation mineral. And one of its major functions is to help relax muscles. So it makes sense if you

don't have enough magnesium, then you may get a Charlie horse because you're not able to properly relax that muscle

after contraction. Most people really are deficient in magnesium, and there's multiple reasons for

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