This is my Recommended Potassium/Magnesium:
In essence if you’re cramping during a workout it is a potassium deficiency or potassium issue now let’s talk about what happens if you cramp in the middle of the night because we’ve all experienced that before okay i’ll be laying in bed and all of a sudden my calf will just cramp at 2 30 in the morning and then what the heck’s going on like i didn’t do anything
To deserve this but that is more than likely it’s so easy to think that when your muscles cramp up that you’re just deficient in electrolytes in general you might think that hey maybe i’m not getting enough sodium or maybe i’m not getting enough potassium or some random mineral right well truth be told depending on what you are doing and what kind of activity and
Where you are in terms of your activity level versus rest it could be a very specific mineral issue so there’s different kinds of muscle cramps and that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video now this is for informational purposes only i’m not a doctor honestly i’m just some guy on the internet that used to be fat and i know a little bit of biochemistry
So let’s break down what’s happening when your muscle cramps between a workout cramp or just a cramp in the middle of the night and how you can go about fixing the issue before i get into the biochemistry hit that like button hit that subscribe button and turn on that little bell to turn on notifications so you never miss a beat all right here’s the science of
What’s going on when our muscle uh contracts okay now keep in mind that a cramp is just a contraction that’s not letting go if i flex my bicep that’s a contraction but if that sucker stays like that that turns into a cramp and it can keep going we’ve all experienced that before maybe when you’re swimming or something like that okay we have what is called an
Action potential an action potential is just like the name implies it is the potential to have an action and it’s set out by our nervous system so what happens is that action potential triggers the release of calcium that is inside our muscle yes that’s right we have calcium stored up in our muscle okay and what happens is the action potential releases calcium
The calcium binds to a protein and it triggers the muscle to contract now ordinarily in a normally functioning electrolyte system that calcium’s going to get taken back up by the muscle again and it’s going to repeat the cycle so released by the muscle triggers contraction by binding to a protein and then gets taken back up by the muscle and goes to the cycle
Again gets released again now the relaxation of a muscle when it releases that contraction is dependent upon the re-uptake of that calcium so if that calcium doesn’t go back into storage your muscle will stay locked up so here’s the caveat and here’s how you determine what kind of mineral you need okay and spoiler alert it’s not calcium you don’t need calcium
If anything you need less of it in this case to be more than honest okay it takes energy literally energy atp for the calcium to go back into the muscle so if you’re deep into a workout you could imagine that your actual literal energy is in high demand okay so you don’t have a lot of it to spare so after or during a hard workout it’s easy to cramp up okay now
Here’s the thing potassium is required to create the energy that allows the calcium to go back into the muscle let me say that again potassium is required for the energy that takes calcium and puts it back into the muscle so in essence without potassium calcium can never go back into its storage in the muscle and doesn’t let go so it stays tightened up okay now
Another way to explain this is if an action potential the potential for energy is coming at such a fast rate and the calcium reuptake can’t keep up with it the muscle stays contracted now let me give you sort of an analogy and this will make hopefully really clear sense all right let’s say you work at a restaurant okay and you’re waiting tables and a busload of
People come by and they sit down and you’re just going crazy trying to make sure that you can serve all these tables and you’re doing what you can okay and then another bus comes and another bus comes and another bus comes but you never get a chance to clear the tables okay the plates are going to pile up people are going to pile up there’s going to be a weight
Your muscle is cramped it’s stuck it can’t do anything okay but if you have enough potassium you’re spacing apart those shuttle buses giving yourself a chance to clear a table let someone else come in okay so that’s a perfect example of what’s happening when your muscle stays contracted so usually with electrolytes you don’t need a bunch of sodium you usually
Need a balance of potassium magnesium which we’ll talk about in a second by the way i do recommend a company called jigsaw down below if you’re looking for an electrolyte blend because its focus isn’t on sodium it’s focused more on potassium and magnesium which are the two things we really need to focus on here when we’re looking at muscle cramps in general so
Highly recommend you check them out they have something called a pickleball cocktail they created it for the pickleball community but quite honestly it’s just a tremendous electrolyte blend so highly recommend you check it out sweeten with monk fruit so it’s super good to go for fasting jigsaw is a great supporter of this channel so i highly recommend them check
Them out down below in the description trust me you won’t be disappointed okay let’s talk potassium for just a second at a little deeper level okay so what happens is we have a balance of sodium and potassium at a membrane level it’s called a gradient okay we always need to have a certain level of sodium and a certain level of potassium to keep fluid in check and
To keep energy in check when we sweat we don’t lose perfect equal ratios of sodium and potassium in fact arguably people tend to lose a lot of potassium it all depends on the activity how big the muscle group is etc okay so if we’re sweating and we’re losing potassium then do the math then we end up with more calcium and potentially more sodium or potentially
Just a skewed membrane gradient that throws off how a muscle contracts so in essence if you’re cramping during a workout it is a potassium deficiency or potassium issue now let’s talk about what happens if you cramp in the middle of the night because we’ve all experienced that before okay i’ll be laying in bed and all of a sudden my calf will just cramp at 2 30
In the morning and then what the heck’s going on like i didn’t do anything to deserve this but that is more than likely a magnesium issue here’s what’s going on magnesium reduces neuromuscular excitability okay so neuromuscular excitability can occur at any point it doesn’t have to be during a workout if you just have over excitement of a muscle then you’re
Going to end up with a cramp a lot of times magnesium assists in this because magnesium regulates the calcium okay remember how i talked about calcium leaves the muscle and goes and binds to a protein and triggers a contraction well it turns out magnesium is sort of a gatekeeper and makes it so that calcium doesn’t just totally rush out of the muscle binding to
Everything so going back to the analogy of waiting tables imagine this magnesium is like a speed bump that stops the shuttle buses from coming in so close together by putting some magnesium speed bumps in the buses have to slow down making it so that when you get a surge of customers you actually have a chance to clean up before the next shuttle bus arrives so if
You’re magnesium deficient which again can happen with electrolyte deficiencies from working out but also just general living then yeah the shuttle bus buses start coming again and they’ll come randomly at random hours of the night you’ll end up with a cramp the short answer is when you’re deficient in magnesium you have this neuronal over excitability so think
About when you’re stressed out you’re like this right well magnesium helps modulate that neuronal excitability i can speak from my own experience that magnesium helps me sort of relax i feel like my shoulders relax sometimes you know we’ve all been stressed out we feel like your shoulders are up to your ears and i’m like that all the time you probably notice it
In some of my videos just because i’m high strung sometimes and that just helps calm me down okay and that’s how magnesium works so usually when you’re looking at electrolyte blends to modulate cramping it’s a little bit less about the sodium i mean that’s very important but in my opinion more about the balance of the potassium and magnesium potassium for the
Short term intra workout cramp and magnesium for the long tail after effect or nighttime cramps as always please keep it locked in here in my channel and remember i’m just some guy on the internet not a doctor see you tomorrow
Transcribed from video
Potassium Deficiency vs. Magnesium Deficiency – How to FEEL the Difference By Thomas DeLauer
