Why did soap fail to prevent leg cramps?

Q. My fiancee had terrible leg cramps at night until she heard of the soap remedy. This worked exceedingly well for her.

Last night, however, she had foot cramps and was dismayed to find the remedy no longer effective. It turns out that the housekeepers had visited that day and had changed the sheets. They laid the bar of soap on the dresser rather than returning it to the bed.

A. You are not the first person to report initial soap success followed by disappointment. This frequently happens when the soap is misplaced.

The wife of a physician surreptitiously placed a bar of soap on her husband’s side of the bed under the sheets. (She knew he would resist such a home remedy.) For the next few nights, he was amazed that his nighttime leg cramps disappeared.

When the cramps came back, he complained bitterly. Upon investigation, his wife discovered that the soap had fallen onto the floor. Once the soap was replaced, the leg cramps disappeared once again.

Not everyone gets benefit from soap, even when it is placed under the sheets near the feet.

Q. A few weeks ago, you published a letter from a man who tried biotin to stimulate hair growth. He did not get hair growth, but noticed that his tinnitus noise was reduced.

I have tinnitus, so I tried biotin gel caps. I punctured the gel caps and applied biotin all over my head. I shave my head, so this method was easy to do. It takes three gel caps to cover my entire scalp, and I do it twice a day.

My tinnitus noise is much softer and not nearly as intrusive.

A. You astonished us with your approach. We assumed that our previous reader was taking the capsules orally.

We have been unable to find research showing that biotin can alleviate tinnitus, but it is a low-risk approach.

Q. I drink two 8-ounce glasses of cranberry juice per day to prevent recurrent urinary-tract infections. This seems to do the trick.

But now I am concerned about my blood sugar being too high. If I substitute a cranberry pill, will I get the same benefit against UTIs as I do with cranberry juice? Does the pill act the same way?

A. A recent study randomly assigned 160 women undergoing gynecologic surgery to take cranberry-extract capsules or a look-alike placebo for six weeks after surgery (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, August 2015). Since the surgeries involved urinary catheterization, these women were at very high risk of urinary-tract infection.

The good news is that the cranberry-extract capsules (two capsules twice daily, equivalent to two 8-ounce servings of cranberry juice daily) cut the rate of post-surgical UTI in half. It seems you can switch to capsules with confidence.

We also have heard from a number of readers who have found that d-mannose supplements can ward off recurrent UTIs. There appears to be little research on this supplement, although one small study found good results from a combination of cranberry and d-mannose (Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, November-December 2014, Suppl. 1).

2015 King Features Syndicate, Inc.