Vitamin K2 at night for muscle cramps?

[apod]

I came across an interesting tidbit in Mercola's new book, Fat For Fuel. He recommends taking vitamin K2 at night rather than during the day for reducing muscle cramps on low-carb diets -- I'd love to find a published article that might back up this claim with some sort of proposed mechanism. I had gotten in the habit of taking it with d3 and all of my fat-soluble vitamins at breakfast.

Lately, I'm in the habit of using a few grams of sea salt ("real salt") in the morning, a couple grams of 2:3 potassium chloride : sodium chloride in the afternoon ("lo-salt"), and 200-400mg of Mg via magnesium glycinate after dinner to prevent muscle cramping issues.

[Julie G]

Hmmm, I'm taking my K2 similarly to you, apod. For me, leg cramps are definitely related to low salt intake. Whenever I attend multi-day conferences or trainings and have to rely on whatever food is available, I wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in my calves. They form convulsing, knotted ball-shaped lumps. I've even awoken with bruises on the back of my calves from these episodes. Needless to say, I've learned to travel with my own salt. Packing it now for my LA trip .

[Sandy57]

Julie what kind of salt?
Thanks Frank

[Julie G]

Any salt works for me, Frank. FWIW, I use Pink Himalayan when I'm at home. When I'm on the road, my diet is very similar to my diet at home, I just don't have access to salt leading me to guess that's what's contributing to my cramps. Anybody else have this problem?

[Gilgamesh]

Anybody else have this problem?

Yes, all my adulthood....

Supplemental Na at bedtime is the one thing that consistently makes my cramps go from horrible to bad-ish, on avg. I add in K to the mix because of – probably silly – blood pressure worries; it's usually a bit under a gram of Na and K each. Have seen no effect from Ca or Mg. The other thing that has helped is eating more at dinner, or (not sure which it is) simply being overweight (BMI 23–24, which is overweight no matter what some govt. says). Na and pigging out, combined, have reduced cramping from an all night, nearly every-night torture-fest, starting at the 2- or 3-hour sleep mark, when I was on more extreme CR and wasn't taking Na at bedtime, to a twice-a-week bad experience at the 5-hour sleep mark from which I sometimes am lucky enough to recover.

My case is unusual, though, because I have benign fasciculation syndrome.

G

[slacker]

purely anecdotal and speculative, but I'm pretty sure that I was in ketosis during the Bredesen Immersion program 2 months ago due to my complete lack of hunger after the first meal and "wicked" nocturnal calf cramps. Increasing my table salt (whatever was available there - it looked white to me) resolved the cramping.

[Tincup]

A lot of people I know respond to magnesium, orally or topical. I happen to take K2 in the evening because that is when I take most of my supps. I also take sodium, potassium (only 200 mg) and magnesium when I fast for multiple days.

I guess I could make a case for K2. In layman's terms, as I understand it - it tells calcium where to go. So it may be a calcium balance thing. This is just me thinking about it.

Of course, mag is known as nature's calcium channel blocker.