Pickle juice, the humble liquid inside the jar of gherkins in your fridge, is getting attention on the world stage.
When tennis player Carlos Alcaraz won Wimbledon in July 2023, commentators pointed out he was drinking pickle juice during breaks of the grueling almost five-hour final match.
Dr. Elliot Tapper, a liver specialist at the University of Michigan Hepatology Program, says his phone “blew up” as it was happening. He’s been studying the impact of pickle juice on muscle cramps and has found sips of it can make them less severe.
Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, says using pickle juice as an anti-cramping agent during exercise is one of his favorite topics.
“It definitely works, and I use it for a lot of my patients, particularly tennis players,” Metzl tells TODAY.com. “It’s a good trick to have.”
Why does pickle juice stop cramps?
Muscle cramps — sudden, involuntary and often painful muscle contractions — are very common and often happen in the context of exercise or at night, according to the National Library of Medicine. They usually affect the legs, feet, arms, hands or abdomen.
Weeks before he won Wimbledon, Alcaraz lost a key match at the French Open when he “started to cramp (in) every part of my body,” he said, according to ESPN.
Tapper began researching prickle brine as a simple way to treat muscle cramps after he noticed cyclists and other athletes using it.
His study, published in 2022 in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, involved people with liver damage who often experience life-disrupting muscle cramps.
In the trial, almost 70% of patients who sipped pickle juice when an episode began said their cramps stopped, compared to 40% who drank water, Tapper found.
The findings would apply to anyone who is experiencing muscle cramps…
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