Foot cramps, eye issues

[Schatzi]

Hello!
I'm a 45 yr old woman. For several years, I've been getting increasingly bad foot cramps at night. Sometime last year, I was actually woken up in the middle of the night with BOTH feet cramping. The only thing that helped was lying on my back with the soles of my feet against the wall. So, I said to myself "Self, why don't you try eating a banana every day?" And the foot cramps are pretty rare now.
Then, a couple of days ago, in the middle of the day, my vision blurred. Best way I can describe it is like seeing the heat shimmering off blacktop. There was also a streak of white light in my peripheral vision, left eye, NOT just a flash. This lasted about 10-15 minutes and was just gone.
No pain. I considered stroke, but I'm REALLY worried about retinal detachment.
With the cramping history though, does this sound like what some of you have gone through with MS? The eye thing has me most worried. With any luck, it was just an ocular migraine (never had one before).

[NHE]

Hello!
I'm a 45 yr old woman. For several years, I've been getting increasingly bad foot cramps at night. Sometime last year, I was actually woken up in the middle of the night with BOTH feet cramping. The only thing that helped was lying on my back with the soles of my feet against the wall. So, I said to myself "Self, why don't you try eating a banana every day?" And the foot cramps are pretty rare now.
Then, a couple of days ago, in the middle of the day, my vision blurred. Best way I can describe it is like seeing the heat shimmering off blacktop. There was also a streak of white light in my peripheral vision, left eye, NOT just a flash. This lasted about 10-15 minutes and was just gone.
No pain. I considered stroke, but I'm REALLY worried about retinal detachment.
With the cramping history though, does this sound like what some of you have gone through with MS? The eye thing has me most worried. With any luck, it was just an ocular migraine (never had one before).

Perhaps you should get your eyes checked out by an ophthalmologist.

[Scott1]

Hi,

I concur with NHE about the eyes. Being 45 and having a change in vision is very common. Always check the obvious first.

On the cramps. The banana will give you potassium as well as other goodies (like tryptophan) so if they don't cause problems such as allergic reaction then keep going. Magnesium should also help.

Don't blame the feet for the cramps. Look at how tight the muscles in your calves may be and go even further up the leg into glute med and glute min. A good massage therapist can tell if your tight but you will feel it anyway when they work on you. It's probably time to start stretching and strengthening throughout the leg muscles. I find Pilates actually works the right way for me. Lying on your back with your feet like that suggests the glutes, periformis, external rotators and down through the hamstrings all need work. If you lie on your side whilst sleeping and your periformis is tight you will slowly apply pressure to the sciatic nerve and that can trigger all sorts of reactions down the leg. From what you say I would look first at the glutes, hamstrings and calves. Only you can fix it with exercise like pilates but massage can provide assistance along the way.

Regards,

[Schatzi]

Thank you for your feedback, never considered leg muscles etc. Will consider it now.

[jimmylegs]

glad to hear things are on the mend. with work on dietary potassium and some cramping still in the picture, you may also wish to consider this:

Refractory potassium repletion. A consequence of magnesium deficiency.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1728927

related:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?dbid ... #foodchart

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... #foodchart

same foods in the top three, on both nutrient pages. bananas appear only on one of the two lists, and nowhere close to the top three.

do check in with the doc - but i'll also comment that in my personal experience with ocular migraine, magnesium has put a stop to the symptoms. these have included shimmering and sometimes a bright jagged lightning bolt - luckily for me very infrequent and other than that, i've only had two migraines that were really painful.

that said, don't mess around with your eyesight. (hypocrite speaking - my eye exam requisition is 7 yrs old..)

[Schatzi]

Thank you for the info!

[jimmylegs]

np

[Sherwin]

Your visual disturbance sounds like an ocular migraine. Often, the aura you describe is the only symptom.