Muscle cramps -- get them gone.
Swimmers, runners, tennis players -- even loungers -- who doesn't encounter them occasionally - and hate them? An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (July 11, 2016) by Matthew Futterman shares findings from Nobel Prize winner Rob MacKinnon and Harvard neurobiologist Dr. Bruce Bean, who have a solution. If you've been trying bananas, quinine, pickles or beets, try something else. MacKinnon and Bean suggest spicy liquids: wasabi, hot chillies. “The primary origin of the cramp is the nerve, not the muscle,” said MacKinnon.
He and Dr. Bean have invented a spicy drink to neutralize the nervous system’s excessive firing of motor neurons, which causes muscle cramps. By applying a strong sensory input and by stimulating receptors in the mouth and esophagus spicy foods overload nerve receptors, producing a numbing effect. “The strong sensory input causes inhibition of the motor output,” says MacKinnon.
For the article see, http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-way-to-prevent-muscle-cramps-1468256588.
Swimmers, runners, tennis players -- even loungers -- who doesn't encounter them occasionally - and hate them? An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (July 11, 2016) by Matthew Futterman shares findings from Nobel Prize winner Rob MacKinnon and Harvard neurobiologist Dr. Bruce Bean, who have a solution. If you've been trying bananas, quinine, pickles or beets, try something else. MacKinnon and Bean suggest spicy liquids: wasabi, hot chillies. “The primary origin of the cramp is the nerve, not the muscle,” said MacKinnon.
He and Dr. Bean have invented a spicy drink to neutralize the nervous system’s excessive firing of motor neurons, which causes muscle cramps. By applying a strong sensory input and by stimulating receptors in the mouth and esophagus spicy foods overload nerve receptors, producing a numbing effect. “The strong sensory input causes inhibition of the motor output,” says MacKinnon.
For the article see, http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-way-to-prevent-muscle-cramps-1468256588.