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regulates · 1
One cost of long sitting is that muscles stop contracting for hours and stop taking fat and glucose out of the blood. The soleus is the fatigue-resistant slow muscle of the calf; in a short lab study in sedentary people, driving it with a seated, repeated heel raise made the rise in blood sugar and insulin after a meal smaller. This is a mechanistic signal, not a proven daily therapy, and it is no substitute for real exercise.
contrast · 2
Night-time calf cramps are often blamed on low magnesium, so many people take magnesium for them. A Cochrane systematic review pooling trials mostly in older adults found that for night cramps with no clear cause, magnesium is unlikely to give a clinically meaningful preventive effect.
Calf cramps late in exercise are often blamed on dehydration or low salt, so people reach for electrolyte drinks. The systematic review by Schwellnus 2009 concluded that the main cause of cramps during exercise is disturbed nerve control of a local muscle that has been worked too hard, not dehydration or electrolyte loss: a cramp strikes only the muscle that is already exhausted, and a whole-body imbalance cannot explain something that local.