Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's just the two of us. But we're here with
Speaker 1: a horse named Charlie a k A crippling temporary leg cramp.
Speaker 1: You know what I immediately think of when I think
Speaker 1: like cramps? Now right? Remember round up? That's right. You
Speaker 1: totally got one of these, didn't you? Like whow we
Speaker 1: were recording? Yeah, it's on video everyone. If you want
Speaker 1: to go look up one of our internet roundups. I
Speaker 1: wish I could remember which one. Maybe I'll should you
Speaker 1: should suffer through all of them to try and find it,
Speaker 1: but I gotta just out of nowhere, like cramping. It
Speaker 1: was so funny that we were like, all right, we
Speaker 1: should just leave that in there. We have to keep it.
Speaker 1: I think I demanded that we keep it, and that
Speaker 1: was just just so great. Yeah, which is weird. I
Speaker 1: don't cramp up like that much, so it was very
Speaker 1: much out of nowhere. Um, I don't know what happened. Well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you could have been over age fifty at the time. No,
Speaker 1: you might have been hydrated maybe, but I drink a
Speaker 1: lot of water. Perhaps you've been sitting too long without moving.
Speaker 1: There's always a chance of that, or standing too long
Speaker 1: on a hard surface, probably not a chance of that.
Speaker 1: Or you could have been sleeping in your brain may
Speaker 1: have misdirected your leg to move, confusing your leg resulting
Speaker 1: in a cramp. So those are some risk factors for
Speaker 1: getting a Charlie horse. But before we explain what a
Speaker 1: Charlie horse says, we should talk about the origin of
Speaker 1: the word. Do you did you read about this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a word that is very much American. You won't
Speaker 1: hear that word in England apparently. And there are a
Speaker 1: couple of different stories that I saw, maybe more than
Speaker 1: that even but in the late eighteen hundreds in baseball,
Speaker 1: one story said that there was a lame horse named
Speaker 1: Charlie and it said it pulled the roller at the
Speaker 1: Chicago White Sox ballpark. I'm not sure what that means. Um,
Speaker 1: probably whatever flattened out the dirt. Maybe that's what That's
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. That's all I can come up with.
Speaker 1: There may be the thing that the hot dog spin
Speaker 1: on as they're cooking. I'm not sure what's the other story.
Speaker 1: The other one is that Charlie Radborn who was a
Speaker 1: picture you mean old hoss, Old Hoss was another name
Speaker 1: of his knee. I looked him up. He's the greatest
Speaker 1: picture of all time based on the r A. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: he was also a terrible person, Um, Lobster Boy asked,
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, Uh, no murder involved, I
Speaker 1: don't think. But he apparently got a Charlie horse in
Speaker 1: a baseball game in the in the middle of a
Speaker 1: baseball game. He played for Providence in Boston mostly um,
Speaker 1: and it's possible that it was named after him in
Speaker 1: that significant event. Yeah, what I've always heard of Charlie
Speaker 1: horse was, or how I've always used it, was not
Speaker 1: just a leg cramp, but it was when you got
Speaker 1: punched in the thigh or something, or or nie somebody
Speaker 1: in the thigh and you would give someone a Charlie Horse,
Speaker 1: and you had to say Charlie horse, as if they
Speaker 1: didn't know what was happening. Don't freak out, you're not
Speaker 1: imagining things. I just gave you a Charlie horse. And
Speaker 1: this is called having the wind knocked out of you.
Speaker 1: So the yeah, but it does seem to um. It
Speaker 1: can come from that from a sudden blow to a
Speaker 1: leg muscle, and usually it's your thigh muscle. Your calf
Speaker 1: muscle or your hamstring is where you get a Charlie horse.
Speaker 1: But as you also know, I didn't touch you that
Speaker 1: time you got one for Internet round up. It just
Speaker 1: came out of the blue. So Charlie horses. It's different
Speaker 1: from like a leg cramps, say, like your muscles cramping
Speaker 1: up from overuse on a long run. That's probably just
Speaker 1: from dehydration or a loss of electro lights from sweating
Speaker 1: too much. Charlie horse is kind of leg cramp, but
Speaker 1: it's a little more specialized in that it's like a
Speaker 1: not that just suddenly comes out of nowhere and affects
Speaker 1: one of those areas and your legs. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that medical science is like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Here's some best guesses, but we're not sure.
Speaker 1: Have you what did you used to do? The thing
Speaker 1: called frogging someone? Yeah, that's it's essentially the same things
Speaker 1: that your knuckles on your fingers are a certain held
Speaker 1: a certain way when you punch them right. Totally, it's
Speaker 1: a knuckle punch. And I always was um frogged. I
Speaker 1: didn't do much frogging because I was a nice guy,
Speaker 1: but uh, someone would stick out their center knuckle and
Speaker 1: do sort of a swiping punch across the arm, not
Speaker 1: like a straight punch, and the knuckle would hit it
Speaker 1: and cause the same sort of sensation like a little
Speaker 1: not in a bump would form. Yeah. I was never
Speaker 1: very good at that either. But some kids had like
Speaker 1: almost a preternatural sense of like a muscular pressure point,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I have a feeling you were a
Speaker 1: champion pencil breaker though, No, I don't remember pencil breaking.
Speaker 1: What was that? Oh, you guys didn't do that? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: like some somebody would hold two winds the farthest ends
Speaker 1: of the pencil and somebody you just karate chop it. Well,
Speaker 1: you would use another pencil and you would just take
Speaker 1: turns until the pencil broke. But there are all sorts
Speaker 1: of various techniques, you know, for maximum breakage. I'd forgotten
Speaker 1: all about that. When I think pencils in school, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I think, did you guys have the smelly pencils like
Speaker 1: caramel corn? Yeah? Yeah, that's what I think. That This
Speaker 1: tastes to great. Were you good at pencil breaking? I
Speaker 1: wasn't very good. You know. There was always the one
Speaker 1: bugs mini you could do it in one fatal blow.
Speaker 1: Is that another Encyclopedia Brown reference? I think, so maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break. Yeah, then we can go
Speaker 1: solve an Encyclopedia Brown crime and then come back and
Speaker 1: talk more about Charlie horses. All right, Well, now we're
Speaker 1: on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn
Speaker 1: a thing or two from Josh Damn Chuck. It's stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, all right, Okay, So Charlie horse, leg cramp,
Speaker 1: sudden spasm, sudden muscle. Medical science is baffled. Go yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can get a Charlie horse at night when
Speaker 1: you're sleeping. It's called a nocturnal leg cramp, and just
Speaker 1: like a daytime when it can go away very quickly,
Speaker 1: or it can be a few minutes. I can't imagine,
Speaker 1: like the one I had an Internet round up was
Speaker 1: such a tight, violent thing. I can't imagine that going
Speaker 1: on for several minutes because it lasted maybebe thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: probably the longest thirty seconds of your life. Full minutes
Speaker 1: of that would just be hell. Yeah. And this is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as restless leg syndrome that also
Speaker 1: happens at night, but that is when you sort of
Speaker 1: have the Jimmy legs and you have the urge to move. UM.
Speaker 1: But in I think both cases they don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on. No, they don't. UM. But and you
Speaker 1: can actually solve both cases if you get Charlie horses
Speaker 1: at night while you're sleeping and they wake you up,
Speaker 1: or if you have restless leg syndrome the Jimmy legs, um,
Speaker 1: you can solve both by doing stretches before bed. Um.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I get restless leg syndrome. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have it to a clinical degree
Speaker 1: or whatever, but like, especially when I first lay down
Speaker 1: to go to bed, sometimes I can't sleep because my
Speaker 1: legs are just bugging me. And get up and do
Speaker 1: this hamstring stretch and it works like a charm, Like
Speaker 1: I'll be asleep in thirty seconds afterward. You know, they
Speaker 1: say stretching is just sort of one of the keys
Speaker 1: to life. Like if you start in your twenties and
Speaker 1: thirties just stretching a really great uh every morning and
Speaker 1: every night, then your body is going to be the
Speaker 1: better for it. Do you remember we did an entire
Speaker 1: episode on Sarcopania that's stoop that you get from old age,
Speaker 1: did we? We totally did. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: a really good way to combat sarcopenias, to to be
Speaker 1: limber and stretch your back muscles too. Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: about keeping those muscles lumber. YEA, let's do it, chuck.
Speaker 1: Let's let's commit to stretching at least five nights a week. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so uh the other thing you have virtual Pinkie swear.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do, like you mentioned, is
Speaker 1: plenty of fluids if you're exercising, especially because your muscles
Speaker 1: need those fluids to relax and contract like they should.
Speaker 1: And you just gotta you know, if you're going out
Speaker 1: there and running or even doing a good exercise walk
Speaker 1: and you're not stretching beforehand, and what are you doing.
Speaker 1: You're a chump. You're a sucker. You're just a stump.
Speaker 1: You know you're a chump. You're a chucker. Oh, speaking
Speaker 1: of Charlie, I called you Charlie on an email I
Speaker 1: think yesterday. I noticed that my head just ripped into afterward.
Speaker 1: It just blew my mind. Why you're not a Charlie.
Speaker 1: You're a chuck. But the idea that it's almost like
Speaker 1: you turned into went with Paltrow and sliding doors all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like you very easily could have gone
Speaker 1: the life of a Charlie, but you went the life
Speaker 1: of a Chuck. And I guarantee you your life would
Speaker 1: be different in noticeable ways had you been a Charlie.
Speaker 1: Will you call me Charles sometimes though totally different from Charlie,
Speaker 1: agreed Charlie. And in New Jersey I went by Charles.
Speaker 1: Oh did you have a little pencil than mustache? Too?
Speaker 1: You were nothing but turtlenecks, Charlie horses. I think we're done. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know there is one more thing right about the
Speaker 1: old eat a balanced diet thing, which they literally say
Speaker 1: for every single condition known to humanity. In this case,
Speaker 1: it's really true. If you eat a balanced diet, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get some good calcium and potassium, magnesium, and that's
Speaker 1: really going to help how your muscles operate. Those minerals
Speaker 1: are super important to your muscles. Yeah, especially I think
Speaker 1: read sodium and potassium have like a twenty three to
Speaker 1: one ratio for your intake. Is what you're going for
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, which is harder to do than
Speaker 1: you would think. But they as I think, sodium goes
Speaker 1: in potassium comes out and vice versa. And when they're
Speaker 1: doing that, they actually produce this battery, this electrical charge
Speaker 1: across your cell that helps conduct electricity throughout your muscles.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you want to have these minerals and like
Speaker 1: good amounts, and you also want to have water because
Speaker 1: water is like the thing that everything, all of these
Speaker 1: magnificent metabolic processes take place in. So if you're dehydrated
Speaker 1: and you lose a bunch of electro lights or your
Speaker 1: electro lights are out of proportion, you're much more susceptible
Speaker 1: the muscle cramps of all varieties. So yeah, eat a
Speaker 1: banana or I saw an avocado is a really good
Speaker 1: balance of potassium and sodium too. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of avocado in our house. Same here you be found
Speaker 1: five for nine cent avocados yesterday. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like they must have been about to rot or
Speaker 1: something like that, and I checked and they were all
Speaker 1: like pre ripen. They're like on their way to being ripe.
Speaker 1: They're not rotted at all. She got them from h
Speaker 1: Mart and I just couldn't believe it. You're like, she
Speaker 1: got it at covid r Us. So I think you're fine. No,
Speaker 1: I'm worried. I hadn't thought about that part. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the case. COVID are us great? Are
Speaker 1: you got anything else about Charlie horses? Sir? Are you
Speaker 1: having one right now? I'm not. Well. That's good. Then.
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