![]() ![]() “Pickle juice is an especially formulated product for cramping, and a hydration aid on top of that. ![]() Plus, brine also has added sugar, “and that might not sit very well”, she says. One caveat, says Reid, is that real pickle brine has a much higher sodium content than commercial pickle juice supplements, and this higher sodium can cause stomach upset. Some Hawthorn players, she says, would use it preventatively – during the break before the last quarter of a game if they knew that’s when they normally cramp – while others would use it if they felt a cramp coming on. “So, the pickle juice company” – the ones that make the specially formulated supplements like athletes commonly drink – “will say that’s not 100 per cent pickle juice, it’s got sugar or other bits, but when I was working in AFL, we would often use the juice strained from the pickles, and they would swirl enough of it in their mouth because it doesn’t taste great,” says Austin. So can the rest of us just drink real pickle juice and get the same effect? This is why, she adds, some athletes don’t swallow the juice, but just gargle it, which many find to be sufficient. “We don’t really understand, still, what causes cramps, but the idea of the pickle juice is that when you put it in your mouth, there’s receptors in the back of your throat and we think it hits them, and they basically send a signal back to the muscle to ease the cramp,” says Austin, who was the Hawthorn Football Club’s dietitian from 2008 until 2020, and is author of the book Eat Like An Athlete. The magic in pickle juice (both real and replicated), says Simone Austin, past president of Sports Dietitians Australia, lies with the acetic acid in the vinegar. The pickle juice she uses – and that Warner likely used – isn’t actually pickle juice, though, but instead a commercially produced replica of pickle brine that features vinegar, which is the primary active ingredient that aids in muscle cramping. Literally, if you use it properly, you can stop cramping within 15 to 20 seconds.” ![]() “Most of the athletes that will use it that I work with do feel a benefit from it. “Everyone responds differently, and there’s no guarantee that it will work for every athlete,” she says. But, she adds, though there has been some research backing up the claim, it doesn’t work for everyone. ![]()
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