Doctors share readers’ feedback
IT’S been a busy month for letters, so we’ll get right to it. Regarding nighttime leg cramps, many readers offered home remedies.
A reader in Pennsylvania wrote that “when attacked by leg cramps in the middle of the night, I manage to make it into the kitchen and put a rice bag in the microwave for a minute or so. The heat from that, or even a hand towel run under very hot water and wrung out, is very effective when applied to the cramp.”
A reader from Simi Valley, California, says standing tall and slowly bending forward, aiming for the floor (“if your knees hurt, as mine now do at 74, I bend them) delivers a thigh and calf stretch that helps banish cramps.
One more, from a reader who drinks “1/2 to 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water (no, it is not the water by itself that does it, I’ve tried). The cramp will be gone within a minute or two.”
We recently wrote about a fascinating study in which researchers found that a wound suffered during the day heals twice as fast as one suffered at night. A reader from Louisville, Ohio, wondered whether this applies to the operating room as well.
“What about surgery, since that is a type of wound, and since many doctors like to do surgery early in the morning, is there any evidence about faster healing for surgery done a special time of day?”
Yes. The time at which surgical cuts are made affects their healing rate as well.
The study tied the speed of wound healing to the body’s circadian clock, the rhythms of which are keyed to daylight and darkness. The incisions from an emergency surgery performed at night healed more slowly than similar daytime incisions. Although the study didn’t go into differences in healing rates between early-morning wounds and afternoon or early-evening wounds, we’d love to see that data.
Readers may email questions to askthedoctors @mednet.ucla.edu.