I was going through a phase of horrible leg cramps when I stumbled on this thread. I’ve had a bar of soap - wrapped in a sock - in the bed for several months. No more leg cramps! The darn thing migrates up and down as well as across to hubby side - who’s complained about rolling over onto it in the middle of the night.
But…no cramps!
I’m the OP and I want to thank you for letting us know this Weird remedy worked for you, too. I haven’t slept with the bar of soap at the end of the bed yet, but have one on my bed stand to rub my feet with when they happen. Doesnt the soap slip down the end of the bed?
I told my aunt about this when she asked me about remedies for her leg cramps (when you are a nurse, people often confuse that for being a doctor). Unfortunately, completely ineffective for her. I think she now thinks I’m a flake. :">
I occasionally get a charlie horse in my calf in the middle of the night. Years ago, a friend who worked at NIH told me to immediately sit up and pinch the bridge of my nose as hard as I could till the cramp subsided. Apparently, it’s an eastern medicine remedy, having to do with acupressure points. Whatever the basis, scientific or not, it works, at least for me and it’s very low tech. When one of my sons developed the same cramps, we told him to eat bananas and I taught him this trick. He said it works, too.
Isn’t the cramp going to subside regardless of whether you pinch your nose? I don’t know how you’d go about proving that the nose-pinching shortened something that had a natural time limit. It’s like many cold remedies - your cold is going to be over in X days regardless of what you do.
I don’t get leg cramps but I get terrible hand/finger cramps. I eat bananas and take magnesium supplements. My fingers contract into a claw and the pain is awful. No rhyme or reason when the attacks occur but when they do they cluster over a period of time. I have to massage it to get it to release. Will try soap! 
Put the soap under your bottom sheet in the area you put your feet.
For those of you who have found it has worked, what kind of soap are you using?
Dial bar soap. It has to be fresh. If you’ve had it awhile all you have to do is crap it up, not throw it away. I read somewhere some chemical is released that is the cause for this remedy.
“Dial bar soap. It has to be fresh. If you’ve had it awhile all you have to do is crap it up, not throw it away.”
^^How does one crap up a bar of soap?
dial
It gets old and dried out and magic stops
All I know is that if I do the bridge of the nose pinching, the pain begins to subside almost immediately and when I don’t, it takes much longer to subside, sometimes as long as 20 minutes. I know that’s anecdotal, but the person who told me about it was a highly educated researcher at NIH. I don’t know WHY it works, physiologically, although I presume it has to do with receptors and neurons and connectors.
I am very fact based and, like your husband, generally have little truck with folk remedies. However, this works for me and there isn’t any down side or ill effect, so I threw it out here…
yes, since magic is how the world works…
Sigh. I used to think that people would recognize the placebo effect.
Dragonmom, the pinching may have more than a simple placebo effect. Acupuncture? Soap… I am not so sure.
But who cares? A bar of soap is cheap.
Also, I have noticed that when I travel and completely forget about the soap I am
prone to foot cramps.
Scrape, I thought I typed that not crap…LOL
What’s the mechanism? The soap releases what, which then does what?
Could be some kind of aromatherapy/essential oil type thing? Olfaction is pretty powerful and not that very well measured and understood yet.
Found this: http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/can_a_bar_of_soap_between_your_sheets_ease_muscle_cramps
I do recognize the placebo effect but the way this pinching was explained to me is that it is part of an eastern healing tradition (e.g., acupuncture, as mentioned by @BunsenBurner ) involving a connection between the different nerves. There is validity to a number of aspects of eastern medical practice. Even reputable medical institutions, like Columbia Presbyterian, offer alternative therapies in conjunction with standard Western medical treatment.
I handle cases involving Chinese plaintiffs and many of them utilize alternative therapies. Some of them also use Western medicine and some don’t. The eastern methods must work or billions of people would not continue using them for thousands of years. I used to scoff at them until I saw how often they work. It can’t always be the placebo effect. although I am certain that it is placebo for some users.
I don’t believe in magic and I don’t think this is magic. If you ever get a cramp or charlie horse, try it. It can’t hurt and it might help.
I reserve judgment on the soap solution, primarily because we use liquid soap and I don’t even think I have any bar soap in the house.