Have you Cramped through a Marathon Run? Have you tried Pickle Juice?
Okay, here's one that you probably haven't heard of before - if you are preparing for a marathon run, 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 recent research study. They had experienced marathoners come in for the study. They set them all on exercise bicycles curiously modified to make them possible to pedal on only one side. The study was trying to get these athletes to sweat very hard; they cranked up the temperature in the room. The athletes exercised so hard and for so long, that they actually lost a couple of pounds of body weight to sweat in the time they exercised. You could say that they were dehydrated. And then they went and stimulated an artificial cramp. They took the leg that had received no exercise, and they stimulated the big toe with electricity to give each athlete an artificial cramp that lasted about a couple of minutes.
Now that the scientists know how long a each person was liable to cramp, they cranked up electricity all over again for a cramp; and this time, they passed around pickle juice. In lots of those marathoners, there was a dramatic improvement. It relieved the cramp right away, about a third as fast as water. For trainers who need to work on a marathon run, the cramp is an unending source of trouble. Scientists have never understood why it is that cramps come about.
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 wee 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.