What helps with everyday aches, cramps and dizziness?

Five small problems with real fixes, and each page carries a line about when the small problem is not the problem. Those lines come first here, because the pages put them first.

When to stop reading and get help. From the leg-cramp page, in the NHS’s wording: calf pain that is not a cramp, one leg that throbs and lasts, a leg that swells, skin around the painful place gone red, blue or darker, or veins that stand out, can be a clot, and that is an urgent GP appointment or 111 in the UK, your doctor the same day or urgent care in the US; with breathlessness or chest pain it is 999 in the UK, 911 in the US, or the emergency room, because a clot can move to the lungs. From the back page, and it is not the accounts’ but named public-health guidance: back pain with numbness or tingling around the genitals or buttocks, trouble controlling bladder or bowels, difficulty passing urine, or weakness in both legs is an emergency tonight, 999 in the UK, 911 in the US. From the headache page, in the NHS’s list: a headache with a seizure, numbness or weakness in the body or face, one that started suddenly and is extremely painful, one following a head injury within the last three months, or one with difficulty speaking, balancing, walking or remembering, drowsiness or confusion, loss of vision, a rash that does not fade under a glass, or a very high temperature with a stiff neck and light hurting the eyes, is 999 or 911 or emergency care. And from the standing page: if you have ever actually fainted from standing up, or it happens often, that is a doctor’s job promptly, because the same feeling can come from low blood pressure, a heart-rhythm problem, a medication, anaemia, pregnancy, dehydration or internal bleeding, and a fall can do more damage than any of them.

Tense your legs before you stand. Tense your legs before you stand says the grey-out is blood pooling in your legs, and fifteen separate conversations arrive at the clench, with five refining it toward the legs, which is where the cardiology guidelines on fainting also land, listing leg-tensing and leg-crossing as counter-pressure manoeuvres. Squeeze thighs, buttocks, calves, cross and press the legs, and better still tense as you stand. The correction the page is built around, from the paramedics in those conversations and three separate corrections: straining with your breath held is a different manoeuvre that can slow the heart and drop you faster, and so can coughing, and one person went down anyway and broke their nose. Tense, do not strain, do not cough, keep breathing. If it is not clearing within a breath or two, get low, so that if you do go, you go from a foot off the ground.

Pull your toes toward your shin. Pull your toes toward your shin is for the calf that has turned to stone in the night: straighten the leg and pull the toes toward the shin, or stand with the heel flat, because both stretch the calf while standing on your toes tightens it. Six conversations pull the toes up, and one account says doing it at the first twinge stops it seizing; seven stand on it, and their clarification is that the heel is forced to the floor. The NHS page on leg cramps says both may help. Two conversations then untuck the sheets, because tucked bedding restricts leg movement and sets cramps off. The page’s smaller cautions: do not stand on a cramp if pain makes you faint or your balance is poor; slamming the foot down or onto a stair edge is how people get hurt, and punching or wrenching the muscle can tear it.

The bed is the wrong place for a bad back. Get up and move; the bed makes it worse is four separate conversations saying the same thing first: get up and move, gently, because staying active heals a strained back faster than rest and lying still lets the muscles around it waste. Build back in small steps, and if a movement aggravates it, do less of it next time rather than nothing, because one caution there says aggravation is not damage. UK health-service guidance, named on that page because the accounts did not cite it, says the same: keep moving, avoid long rest, see a doctor if it is not improving after a few weeks. The one stop is sharp pain. The page also carries the argument you were raised inside, six accounts to five, whether to squat down to a load or hinge at the hips with a flat back, and the correction that sits under both camps: the spine does not need to stay vertical, it needs to stay flat and braced.

The knot, and the moving car. Roll the tennis ball against the wall traps a tennis, lacrosse or golf ball between your upper back and the wall, finds the knot and leans in until it lets go; four conversations do that, two put two balls in a sock and lie on it, and four others say the cheaper fix is a sentence, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, stretch now, because three accounts did not know they were holding anything until they were told. Four say drink water first, and the NHS says the same. Show your eyes the motion explains travel sickness as a mechanism rather than a weakness: your inner ear feels every swerve while your eyes, fixed on a seat-back or a page, report a still room, so show your eyes the motion, face forward, watch the horizon or the road ahead, and do not read. People there recover faster looking out the front windscreen than the side windows, where the world smears past. The stomach levers are humbler and well attested: travelling empty backfires, so something plain beforehand, and ginger is that subject’s favourite remedy. The page carries the reading argument with no winner and one honest note, that susceptibility varies and the compensators may simply have milder wiring.

Who this is not for. The headache page carries an NHS line the accounts did not have: painkillers taken too often or for too long can themselves cause headaches, which it calls overuse or rebound headaches, and you should see a GP if you get headaches several times a week, if they are severe, if they are not getting better or are getting worse, or if painkillers and relaxing do not help. The back page names nine contraindications from its own accounts, including a diagnosed spinal condition or surgery pending, a herniated or bulging disc, and heavy lifting without instruction. The cramp page says pregnancy, usually later on, and some medicines including statins and diuretics are among the NHS’s listed causes, and if either is you, the cramp is a thing to mention to whoever prescribes for you. And the standing page says anyone with high blood pressure, a heart condition or a hernia should ask a doctor before making a straining habit of any of it.