Are Holiday Stress and Leg Cramps Related? What You Should Know

The holiday season offers abundant occasions to celebrate with loved ones, fill your calendar with festive happenings, bake sweet treats, enjoy indulgent meals, and stress over disrupted routines, extra financial costs, hosting houseguests, or air travel.     

Could all that seasonal stress be the reason you’ve been experiencing new or worsening leg cramping? It’s possible. In this month’s blog, our team at Advanced Vascular Surgery takes a closer look at the relationship between stress and leg cramping, especially when underlying vascular issues are involved.   

Spontaneous leg cramping symptoms

Leg cramps are intense muscle spasms in the calf, foot, or thigh that occur suddenly and without warning. They feel like a tightly clenched muscle that’s been twisted into a hard knot. 

Whether it happens during the day or wakes you from your sleep, leg cramping may cause the affected muscle to tighten uncontrollably for a few painful seconds — or several unbearable minutes. You may experience muscle soreness for hours after the cramp has eased, too.  

When holiday stress leads to leg cramping 

A range of factors can trigger leg cramping; if your muscle spasms seem to coincide with holiday stress, the following interrelated mechanisms may be to blame:

Stress hormone release

When you’re feeling stressed for days or weeks at a time, the resulting stress hormone surge and low-grade systemic inflammation can constrict blood vessels, increase blood pressure, and impair circulation — setting the stage for leg cramping. 

Increased muscle tension

Stress can also cause muscle tension that manifests as physical pain, including headaches and involuntary muscle spasms — especially in the neck, back, and legs.

Physical overexertion

From endless shopping trips to long hours of cooking, baking, and decorating, the extra physical activity of holiday preparations can lead to leg muscle fatigue and cramps — especially if you’re usually more sedentary. 

Changing hydration status

Holiday travel or at-home holiday preparations often derail normal eating patterns and routines. If holiday stress has disrupted your usual hydration habits, leg cramping may be the result: Dehydration is a common trigger of muscle spasms. 

Sleep disruption

Holiday stress, along with late-night celebrations and over-booked calendars, can derail your usual sleep schedule and leave you feeling tired. A lack of restful, restorative sleep can also fatigue your leg muscles and make them more prone to cramping.    

Activity level changes

Long periods of sitting (e.g., long-haul air or car travel) or mainly standing still (e.g., while cooking, at parties), as well as other unusual changes in activity level, can cause leg strain — via sluggish circulation or muscle fatigue — that leads to cramping.

Leg cramping can also be a vascular issue 

Leg cramping can have many possible triggers. It may be a side effect of medication, for example, or simply another irritating pregnancy symptom. Sometimes, the cause is more serious, as in the case of underlying vascular disease. 

Leg cramping is commonly associated with conditions like:

• Peripheral artery disease (PAD)
• Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI)
• Swollen, advanced varicose veins

With PAD, plaque-filled arteries cause sluggish blood flow to your legs, depriving them of oxygen-rich blood and causing your muscles to cramp when you’re active (and to improve with rest). 

With CVI and varicose veins, lower extremity blood pooling (poor venous circulation) can trigger leg cramps when you sit or stand still too long. Deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or a blood clot in a large leg vein, can also trigger leg cramping — but it tends to worsen as time goes on, not improve.  

Is it holiday stress — or something serious? 

If holiday stress and related factors like dehydration, poor sleep, and being on your feet more than usual are giving you sporadic leg muscle spasms, you’ll likely notice that your cramps emerge following specific activities, like long shopping days or late-night parties. 

 You may also notice that your leg cramping improves greatly — or disappears altogether — if you make it a point to stay hydrated, stretch, wear supportive shoes, get more sleep, and better manage your stress levels.  

If you have a vascular issue, your leg cramping is more likely to happen during exertion and improve with rest, wake you from your sleep at night, or occur when you sit or stand too long. You may also have varicose veins that become more inflamed and tender.

Worried about leg cramping? We can help 

Do you keep getting leg cramps? Don’t ignore them — our team can help you get to the bottom of the problem with a thorough evaluation. Schedule your visit at Advanced Vascular Surgery in Kalamazoo, Allegan, Battle Creek, Coldwater, Sturgis, or Three Rivers, Michigan, today.