drinking pickle juice

[warpalien]

anyone heard of doing this? i remember hearing about it with some college football teams but i forget what the purpose of it was for. i think for fat loss but im not positive. anyone know?

[Pykee]

Yeah I've heard of this too. I heard they used to do it back when they thought salt pills were good to take before two a days. I think they used it similar to salt pills because it's packed with sodium. They thought it would help you retain water during practice. Never heard of it for weightloss though. Pickles are packed with sodium so it seems like it would make you retain water.

[warpalien]

ah ok. i didnt really remember i just concluded maybe it was for weightloss. cool thanks

[zozer7]

its used for getting high blood pressure.

[Speedracer59]

Drinking pickle juice for weight loss sounds like somthing my grandmother would say. She is full of old home remadies

[lovetoeat]

The sports teams who have used it, including the Eagles do so to keep from cramping during hot weather. Nobody is sure how it works as no one knows the ingredients of pickle juice, could be the sodium.

[Pykee]

Originally posted by lovetoeat
The sports teams who have used it, including the Eagles do so to keep from cramping during hot weather. Nobody is sure how it works as no one knows the ingredients of pickle juice, could be the sodium.

It would be the sodium that they thought would keep them from cramping up. It's the same reason they took salt pills back in the 70's, but it does not help with cramps, if anything they had a placebo effect. That's a very old school view, ever since Korey Stringer teams just make sure their big men have tons of water.

[lovetoeat]

Not knowing the ingredients of pickle juice we can't really say if it's a placebo or not.

[lovetoeat]

Let me add that a placebo won't prevent cramps, thinking that something is helping prevent cramps isn't going to help in the least.

[Pykee]

Originally posted by lovetoeat
Not knowing the ingredients of pickle juice we can't really say if it's a placebo or not.

The only ingredients to make pickle juice are vinegar, water, and spices to taste, of course you've got to have the cucumbers to pickle. The spices can include sugar, salt, peppers, garlic and all kinds of different spices that may have health benefits. Aside from that I don't see how it would prevent cramps. You don't have to know the ingredients to get a placebo effect, the entire point of a placebo is the power of suggestion.

Originally posted by lovetoeat
Let me add that a placebo won't prevent cramps, thinking that something is helping prevent cramps isn't going to help in the least

I can see your point on that, but having someone tell you "if you drink this then it will prevent cramps" might help the players to try and ignore the pain, or think that they would have had worse cramps if they didn't drink the pickle juice. I seem to ignore cramps easier if I eat a banana before practice, and the potassium in a banana, as I was told, prevents cramps. At any rate, I don't see any need or benefits from drinking pickle juice so I wouldn't suggest it to one of my friends. Just drink water.

[lovetoeat]

Originally posted by Pykee
The only ingredients to make pickle juice are vinegar, water, and spices to taste, of course you've got to have the cucumbers to pickle.

How do you know? I recall someone contacting one pickle company asking for the ingredients and they wouldn't disclose it, perhaps it's not that simple. Unless of course you're in the pickle business.

[Pykee]

How to make pickles is not a big secret. It takes vinegar and water to pickle anything, eggs, fruits, cucumbers or whatever. Asking a company for their ingredients is kind of like asking Colonel Sanders for his original recipe, it's not going to happen. I do pickle my own eggs from time to time, nice change once you get sick of plain hard boiled eggs.

[artimus]

Its the marrying of all the ingredients toghther that makes it an awesome drink. I add jalapenos with the pickles and get a pow pow from drinking it before I go the gym--especiallly on hot day

[FUZO]

DRINKING PICKLE JUICE IS LIKE DRINKING PISS

[Supnut]

There would also be the viniegar which basically helps after a workout by slowing energy production so that your muscle cells can swtich from a mode of "I'm working out I must make energy" to "I'm in recovery mode let me store glycogen" This is something of a dumbed down explanation, there is a huge thread on the matter of at Avant although I've never heard of pickle juice being used per se.