Today's true sports drinks are still the classic Gatorade -- packed with the electrolytes potassium, magnesium, calcium, and sodium to provide energy during intense workouts -- as well as competitors such as Cytomax, Allsport, and Accelerade.
Certain medications can also cause Charley horse as a result of their side effects. Drugs such as statins or medicines prescribed for lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, diuretics, asthma medicines like terbutaline and salbutamol, morphine and lithium can trigger muscle spasms.
Charley horses develop when the nerves that carry signals to your muscles fire off too many messages at once. This causes your muscles to contract in an uncomfortable way, says Scott Garrison, M.D., Ph.D., director of the department of family medicine at the University of Alberta. Advertisement.