Sleep Apnea cause chronic muscle cramps in arms and legs?

Let's see now...

When I experience cramps I go and work in the yard and garden. I find myself stretching and exercising almost every muscle in my body.

Afterward I sit down and have a spinach salad to replenish my magnesium.

When I hit the sack I am tired and quickly fall into a restorative sleep. When I wake up I find sore muscles but no cramps.

I don't know if this will help you, but if all else fails why not give it a try...?

Low magnesium levels are generally the main cause of night cramps (and in the day as well) but not the sole cause. Dehydration is one and poor blood supply to the affected area is another.

While magnesium supplements can work sometimes it's not enough. One thing that works for me is quinine sulphate/bisulphate tablets. If I have a bad attack of the cramps I find that just a couple of daily doses of quinine sulphate is enough to last for at least a couple of months. Your GP can prescribe these for you.

There are sleep disorders with a lot of movement, and that can be determined in a sleep study, usually.

Have you had bloodwork checked? Several people have mentioned magnesium.

I had restless leg syndrome that was getting really bad. 2-3 hours a night, intense need to shake one of both legs constantly. It was messing with my sleep. No muscle cramps. Prior to that, I would have restless leg syndrome maybe once every month or two, and only about an hour or so. This was every night for hours. I had a few other symptoms that I did not know were related. I wrote down everything that was bothering me, took it to the doctor, and let her decide what might be related. She had me tested for iron. Very low. I looked up iron deficiency online, and it covered ALL my symptoms plus a few I had but had not mentioned. I started iron supplements. Restless legs stopped within a day. Some of the other problems took longer.

You could be low in one thing, or several things. Make a list of everything that has changed, and see what your doctor thinks. Looking back on some previous bloodwork (two visits to the ER months earlier for food poisoning and later a 2 week headache), I could see that the numbers that were slightly out of range were all related to low iron. But they weren't far out of range, and that was unrelated to my ER visits. Just evidence that my iron was on the way down at that point.

Are your cramps only at night? Are they the intense charley horse type cramps where you have to jump out of bed and do stretches to relieve the pain? Or are they more subtle and pass quickly without intervention? Periodic limb movements of sleep are sometimes described as cramps because of the tension and release of the involved muscles. If one wakes during the movement it can feel like a cramp releasing. Wouldn't hurt to confirm before your sleep study that it is ordered to wire and monitor your legs.

Most of my problem is in the day, not at night. Haven’t heard of sleep apnea causing alot of daytime cramps...hence why I started this post.

Julie wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:43 pm

TAS - my note re seeing a doctor came BEFORE he said he'd gone...

So he added the first line to his first post? Ok Good enough for me.

I used to get cramps in my diaphram constantly that would continue to spasm for a minute to several minutes, as soon as I started on cpap, that stopped instantly. I don't get diaphram cramps anymore.

Try a physiotherapist or a registered massage therapist. When you over worked your muscles 4 weeks ago, some muscle or fascia may be out of sync with your body, causing other muscles/body parts to struggle to accomodate the change. It's the old song, "the leg bone's connected to the kne bone ......" muscles and fascia included.

I eat a banana every day to prevent leg cramps. Bananas are one of the very best healthy fruits, qplus they taste better than mag tablets.