What do you think is better for stiff muscles Calcium, magnesium or potassium

Stretching and proper hydration..... Imagine that.

What about minerals What's better for stiff muscles?

Have you actually tried any lengthy stretching and proper hydration first?

Seems today's mentality is one needs to "take something" first and not do any proper physical preparations nor follow a thorough recovery process.

No supplement is going to make that better. The only thing that has shown any consistent benefit is NSAIDS, but the studies I'm aware of with those were done in exercise-naive subjects. And anabolic steroids, I almost forgot them. They decrease recovery time. I think we're all stuck with adequate rest, nutrition, warm up and progressive loading. The other stuff just makes for expensive pee (one way or the other).

Kryptonite

The Chief wrote:Have you actually tried any lengthy stretching and proper hydration first?

Seems today's mentality is one needs to "take something" first and not do any proper physical preparations nor follow a thorough recovery process.

Yep The Chief, I'm regularly stretching and I think that I have a proper intake of liquids. Then I'm mentaly prepared. But I'd like to know what mineral is better for stiff muscles since I've listened many different opinions about magnesium and potassium. So I'm not sure what is true and what is false

knoback wrote:No supplement is going to make that better. The only thing that has shown any consistent benefit is NSAIDS, but the studies I'm aware of with those were done in exercise-naive subjects. And anabolic steroids, I almost forgot them. They decrease recovery time. I think we're all stuck with adequate rest, nutrition, warm up and progressive loading. The other stuff just makes for expensive pee (one way or the other).

What NSAID have you refered to:?: Anyway, I'm not asking for NSAIDs...

Diego, do you mean "stiffness," as in muscles that are simply sore and somewhat painful to move after a few hours/days of exertion? Or do you mean sudden painful cramps that occur during exercise?

Hard and therefore sore muscles, even without doing excercise

Diego Sahagún wrote:Hard and therefore sore muscles, even without doing excercise

OK, that is a different story. If this has started recently, a real medical opinion could be useful (not just our random opinions from SP). Is it all over, or just in some muscles? Throughout the large muscle, or local?

Some prescription drugs have sore muscles and cramps as a side effect.

When I was in college, many of my friends got muscle cramps, mainly from K deficiency. The pattern was that they were often skipping breakfast, and moving more to meals with few fruits and vegetables.

It's in some muscles, sometimes local but often in a large area. I'm taking Magnesium but I don't know if Potassium would be good since Magnesium is not effective at all

Vitamin C is supposedly best.

I'm taking 60 mg of vitamine C almost all days. My diet must give me some more milligrams. The extra vitamine C helps but the stiffness and sore are still there

Magnesium and potassium have very different functions in the human body. I'd guess Mg deficiency is rarer. A blood test will usually tell if you have a significant deficiency in any electrolyte (if electrolytes are tested!).

As we discussed elsewhere of SP, some causes of bad muscle cramps are pretty serious, and not necessarily related to electrolyte balance. See a doctor.