Does eating bananas prevent cramps?

Thanks to its richness in potassium, the banana would be the miracle remedy once morest cramps. Really ?

By Boris Hansel, with Guillaume Paret (video)

Published on 02/17/2023 at 6:30 p.m.

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Every Friday, find on Le Point.fr the nutrition chronicle of P^r Boris Hansel, endocrinologist and nutritionist at Bichat Hospital in Paris. He is also the host of the PuMS health channel on YouTube.

Bananas would be an excellent way to treat and prevent cramps. In any case, this is the idea that is circulating everywhere. We will see together if this idea is true. A cramp is a sudden, involuntary contraction of one or more muscles. Everyone knows the intense and characteristic pain. Some suffer from it during a sports session, for others it will be at night during sleep.

We have been looking for a long time for the origin of cramps and how to treat them. There are quite a few leads. One of them is related to potassium. What is certain is that hypokalemia, that is to say the drop in potassium circulating in the blood, can manifest itself in the form of cramps or a feeling of fatigue in the muscles!

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This is simply explained: a low potassium level in the blood is also a sign of a lack of potassium inside the cells, especially in the muscle cells, which use this potassium to function! More specifically, within the cell, it plays a major role in nerve impulses and muscle contraction.

That’s why it seems logical that getting enough potassium through food is an effective remedy for cramps. And if we look at the list of fruits and vegetables that contain the most, the banana is very well placed. It provides regarding 350 mg or 10% of the daily satisfactory intake.

But does that make it a real anti-cramp food? Not especially. Except in the case of genuine hypokalaemia, it has never been shown that potassium supplementation by a food supplement or a fruit such as bananas is effective in preventing or treating cramps.

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We can cite a study conducted among athletes who were made to eat up to 300 g of banana following physical exertion to measure the impact on blood potassium. The researchers show that the effects on potassium in the blood are too small to reduce the risk of cramps.

In practice :

• In case of potassium deficiency with hypokalemia, a doctor should be seen to understand the cause and treat it. Cramps can be corrected by treatment that normalizes blood potassium levels. But eating bananas will not be enough!

• If, on the other hand, your potassium blood level is normal, potassium supplementation with a food supplement or bananas has no effect once morest the cramp.

Anyway, it remains a very useful fruit, which contributes to the nutritional balance and which does not particularly make you gain weight!