The Enduring Mystery of Muscle Cramps
Any dialogue of muscle mass cramps demands to start out by revisiting retired baseball infielder Munenori Kawasaki’s detailed explanation of how he avoided a repeat of the cramp that experienced hobbled him the previous day.
Kawasaki: Monkey never ever cramps. Mainly because a monkey eat each day banana. Two.
Interviewer: So how lots of did you have now?
Kawasaki: A few.
I adore that job interview so substantially that it pains me to forged question on his advice. It is based mostly on the standard watch of workout-related muscle mass cramps, which attributes them to dehydration and the reduction of electrolytes like sodium and potassium (which bananas incorporate in abundance) from prolonged perspiring. That theory dates again almost a century, and it stays dominant: a survey of 344 endurance athletes, printed past calendar year, uncovered that 75 % of them believed that taking added sodium wards off muscle mass cramps.