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How Does Soap Soothe Cramps?

How Does Soap Soothe Cramps?, People’s Pharmacy – Online, August 5, 2012. Sometimes we come across a home remedy that seems so preposterous it hardly deserves a second thought. That happened to us nearly a decade ago when readers of this column started telling us that they were putting soap under the bed sheet to prevent nighttime leg cramps. A chemist at NC State University analyzed the outgassing of several brands of soap mentioned in reader testimonials. He discovered a volatile compound used as a fragrance common to the most popular soaps.