FifthYou may have already heard that cramps are linked to dehydration, and if you want to avoid them, all you need to do is drink more water. Until the 1990s, we had every reason to believe that dehydration was the real cause of cramps. Early work, dating back more than 100 years, identified convulsions in miners working in extremely hot and humid environments, leading to dehydration. It's the same for athletes: cramps happen at the end of a race, after running for a long time and sweating a lot. This hydroelectric theory of the origin of convulsions has been the favorite theory for more than 90 years.
But in 1997, a new theory emerged: the neural origin of exercise-related cramps. According to this theory, the mechanisms involved in convulsions are not located at the muscle level, but rather at the level of the nervous system, more specifically at the level of motor neurons.
What happens in our muscles?
Our muscles are controlled directly by nerve cells in the spinal cord, called motor neurons. They are the ones who give the command to our muscle fibers to contract. It receives nerve messages from the brain, which allow us to make voluntary movements, but it also receives a large number of other nerve messages.
