A tablespoon or a sandwich's worth. Basically the cheap stuff, not fancy.

 

I use Baclofen for cramping.

As I said, this has been a lifelong condition for me, in its minor form. I've been through several anti-spasmodics and find that Baclofen works as well as any and has a lot less side effects than, for instance, Flexeril or Valium. It seems the doctors believed the drug company advertising and wanted to prescribe hard hitting drugs for me, but I need something subtle. I can't even take half a Flexeril without a 24 hour hangover (so I learned how to take a third of a pill). With Baclofen, I can take up to (3) pairs of pills a day without turning into a motionless lump.

I won't do alcohol or pot because I hate their side effects as much as the side effects of any other drug. They completely stop me! Maybe a couple of months ago, I drank 5 ounces of wine after 20 years on the wagon and the only thing I wanted was for it to go away! The hot flash is miserable in the Florida summer heat and all my muscles just wanted to lay there. Got nothing done until the next day! I'm not even going to try pot. Thirty years ago, it was already defining, "stoned" as sitting there like a rock. In my 20's, I could roll a breakfast roach and clean house with the energy of a locomotive all day. That quit somewhere in my 30's, and all I could do was sit there wishing I could get up and do something. So, thanks, but no thanks. I have a good doctor and drugs that are effective without rendering me supine.

Right now, my muscle tone is coming up for the day. I feel good, healthy, energy available for my use, and I took 4 Baclofens yesterday. If I drank a cup of coffee right now, I would turn into a hyperactive person with a spinal column that won't put up with that. Bottom line: I'm a light weight drug user. I can be affected by a single ounce of wine and a Flexeril pill will take me out for 24 hours.

 

Yellow mustard works wonders for leg cramps, just a little will stop them. Don't know if it would help other types of muscle spasms.

Ingested or topically applied?

 

You eat it. It's an on going thing in the newspaper column called' "the Peoples Pharmacy". http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2013/09/23/a-spoonful-of-yellow-mustard-makes-the-leg-cramps-go-away/ I guess people take the little packs of mustard from restaurants to keep in the nightstands, just in case.

 

Slept well and deeply last night. Ravenously hungry for the last 3 days. Good energy for half of the daytime. These are good indicators.

 

Ingested or topically applied?

Interesting, I recently read an article about folk medicine / eastern medicine. How pharma companies initially poo-pooed eastern medicine and now they are using it as an inspiration or starting point for new active ingredients.

In yellow mustard, Turmeric seems to be the active ingredient for ingested anti-inflammatory use.

Mustard seed, or ground mustard seed poultice (applied externally) have been used for aches and pains but apparently can cause skin irritation and burns if left on too long.

Neither seem to be proven medicine and there are plenty of people who claim to have eaten mustard their whole lives and still have cramps, aches and pains. Unfortunately, nobody is going to fund a double-blind test on mustard because there is no money in it.

If it works, use it. If you think your friends will label you as a goon for believing in herbal remedies, keep your mouth shut.

 

I have long mourned the loss of ancient wisdom caused by the hubris of the, "scientific" approach. I knew this from listening to stories about American Indian medicine in the nineteenth century. A man that could diagnose certain diseases by walking into the patients room and smelling the air. (Now we have cancer sniffing dogs.) A granny that knew potions would consult with a woodsman about the location of certain plants. These things don't hold a candle to an image guided microtome doing a laminectomy, but they were good information that seems to be lost now.

About 20 years ago, I had a mink of a girlfriend. How much of a mink? I lost 14 pounds in 3 months trying to keep up with her in the bedroom! Problem? Certain small, round, male parts began to ache. She went to an, "All Natural" food store and got me an ounce of tincture of licorice. Half today, half tomorrow. Fixed that problem immediately! What I'm bragging about is the knowledge of simple remedies, like mustard. What section of the phone book would a person look in to find people that know these things?

 

I have long mourned the loss of ancient wisdom caused by the hubris of the, "scientific" approach.

Cut out the liver of an adult male frog. Build a small fire using popsickle sticks. Wrap the frog liver in coconut leave and place in a small woven basket. Wave the basket over the fire and chant the following:

OHWHA! TAGER! KIAM!

 

Yep. That's hubris.
It's like pretending that the first white man with a college degree to see Uluru discovered it.

 

Hubris? I call it humor. Sometime lost.

 

Hubris? I call it humor. Sometime lost.

I can live with that.

 

Interesting, I recently read an article about folk medicine / eastern medicine. How pharma companies initially poo-pooed eastern medicine and now they are using it as an inspiration or starting point for new active ingredients.

In yellow mustard, Turmeric seems to be the active ingredient for ingested anti-inflammatory use.

Mustard seed, or ground mustard seed poultice (applied externally) have been used for aches and pains but apparently can cause skin irritation and burns if left on too long.

Neither seem to be proven medicine and there are plenty of people who claim to have eaten mustard their whole lives and still have cramps, aches and pains. Unfortunately, nobody is going to fund a double-blind test on mustard because there is no money in it.

If it works, use it. If you think your friends will label you as a goon for believing in herbal remedies, keep your mouth shut.

When I was a kid, we used a "mustard plaster".

Do that whenever a chest cold, fever, or a variety of ailments kicked in.

Much the same as castor oil!

 

A tablespoon or a sandwich's worth. Basically the cheap stuff, not fancy.

Well, didn't work last night. Won't give up to see if it helps.

 

I wonder if the power of suggestion has anything to do with it.

Taking a full heaping tablespoon of French's Yellow Mustard does feel like taking medicine.

I would wake up in the middle of the night with a major charlie horse. I would push it out on the bottom bed stand, then take the mustard.

After about 5 minutes the spasms would subside. When I tried toughing it out they didn't.

 

I wonder if the power of suggestion has anything to do with it. After about 5 minutes the spasms would subside. When I tried toughing it out they didn't.

I think you'll agree, it doesn't matter whether you, "tricked" your spasm into stopping, as long as it stops!

 

Another thing the Peoples Pharmacy claims that works for night leg cramps, is an unwrapped bar of bath soap under the sheet. They can't explain why but get tons of people saying it does.

 

Yep. That's hubris.
It's like pretending that the first white man with a college degree to see Uluru discovered it.

Well I'm sure "Mount Rushmore" had a real name too before some white man discovered it. And just about everything else.

What's the proper name for Mount Rushmore?

Either you believe that when a culture colonises/civilises a new land and build infrastructure like roads and cities etc, they have a right to name things, or you believe they don't have a right to name things.

Depending on how you feel about that you can start re-naming everything in America back to its Navahoe or Apache names, or you can just admit that Ayre's rock is Ayre's rock. It doesn't need two names. Neither does New York.

Who gave you the impression "white man names" had to be re-wound anyway?

 

Spoken like an Aussie.

Come to Oklahoma, it is nothing but American Native names. After forcing them to move there with the Trail of Tears, the 5 civilized tribes got naming rights at least.

 

Let me try that again. I could get drawn off course and ask whether the Chinese think Marco Polo discovered them, but better to get back on track. It's like saying no safe and effective treatment or cure exists unless someone with a college degree, "discovered" it.

In medical school, a dozen ordinary enough gadgets have to be learned as Dr. Somebody's clamps (or whatever). There are dozens of "folk" cures that you can't get from a doctor because they haven't been through years of testing by people with college degrees. I've seen an M.D. get back surgery 3 times without ever consulting a Chiropractor or a D.O. because M.D.'s don't "believe" in that.

The part that bothers me is the idea that nothing exists unless somebody with a college degree wrote about it, and thousands of bits of good information are being lost because of that belief.

I took one look at Yellowstone, and declared, "When this place burns, it's going to be horrendous". The policy was to never touch anything that dropped off a tree and expect to stop all small fires immediately. (Men plan, God laughs.) There were signs posted that said nobody is allowed to pick up dead wood for a campfire. Any farmer could see the whole place was a tinder box, but nobody with a college degree said this was a bad idea. The result happened in 1988.

 

I wonder if the power of suggestion has anything to do with it.

The placebo effect is huge, and many drugs that work in double-blind testing have difficulty showing efficacy beyond a placebo, because that hurdle is so high. There was an interesting radio show on the topic not too long ago, about trying to harness and maximize the effect, and teaching doctors to USE it, not to just whisk in and out of exam rooms without engaging with the patient.