Try Pickle Juice to Prevent Muscle Cramps

Prior to a long distance race or training run, it’s a good idea to drink pickle juice to keep muscle cramps away. Now, this isn’t a joke. Actually, this is something that sport coaches have known in an informal way for some time now. Concentrated salty liquids will keep muscle cramps away. Walk into any marathon training camp, and you’ll see the pickle juice of theory at work – the trainers will be passing around the pickle juice regularly. It is so effective they say, that if you drink in some in the middle of a cramp, you can make it go away in seconds. They don’t really know why it works though. Traditionally, they’ve believed that it’s possible that all the sweat that you lose over marathon run gives you your cramps in the pickle juice replenishes it. That’s just a shot in the dark.

So they tried to test it out in a research study recently discussed in a New York Times article which you can read in its entirety here: Can Pickle Juice Stop Muscle Cramps?

It was easy for everyone to assume that a marathon run that makes you lose so much salt to sweat, makes your muscles spasm. This understanding has influenced sports drink design over the years too – they have lots of salt in them. This experiment shows though that the salt in pickle juice couldn’t possibly be mending their cramps. It takes time for whatever we ingest to be absorbed into the blood. These athletes were seeing their cramps get better in a little over a minute. There must be something about the pickle juice other than salt. They believe now that there must be some kind of chemical in pickles that helps calm down the nervous system. When we exercise too hard, our muscles begin to lose their coordination – some pull while the others push. Doctors wonder if this is what could be happening through a muscle cramp. And chemicals in our vinegar and pickles do have a way with the nerves that could calm down the lack of coordination.

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