athletes do some weird stuff or at least
it looks kind of strange from the
outside when you see a marathon runner
chugging dill pickle juice before a race
or downing a ten banana smoothie for
breakfast 40 types have sworn by these
foods for decades claiming they prevent
the dreaded charley horse and other
muscle cramping during intense workouts
why even bother eating normal food when
he got scientists engineering fancy
sports drinks and energy gels in the lab
they probably taste at least a little
bit better than ice cold glass of briny
cucumber juice lots of athletes do use
those energy gels and sports drinks but
pickle juice and bananas are useful too
I just don't actually agree on the exact
mechanism that makes muscles cramp after
intense exercise but one of the more
popular theories is that as we sweat our
muscles dehydrate losing electrolytes
like sodium and potassium are important
because they transmit nerve signals
inside our muscle tissue telling it when
to relax or contract that's why sports
drinks and energy gels are full of them
plus carbohydrates for extra fuel a
single pickles beard contains twice as
much sodium as an 8 ounce cup of
Gatorade and just one serving of banana
has 10 times the potassium so these
foods are popular with athletes hoping
to pack their muscles with electrolytes
before a hard workout recent studies
suggest that these foods might actually
be good for athletes for other
unexpected reason in a 2010 study 10
athletes from Brigham Young University
were made to exercise until they were
dehydrated which is kind of sad and then
the researchers induced muscle cramping
using electricity and gave some of the
subjects pickle juice and some water and
others no drink at all the athletes who
drank pickle juice got rid of their
cramps a whopping 45 percent faster than
those who didn't drink anything and 37
percent faster than their buddies who
drank plain water oddly enough it took
only about 85 seconds for the pickle
juice to take effect not even enough
time for it to be absorbed by this
stomach much less make its way to the
muscles one possibility is that the
juice hitting the back of the throat
somehow triggers nerves to instruct the
cramping muscles to relax and only 10
subjects though it's hard to draw too
many conclusions some more studies will
have to be done before we know for sure
now bananas are pretty awesome too one
study in 2012 gave 14 cyclists either a
sports drink or half a banana every 15
minutes over the course of a 75
kilometers
both groups perform similarly but the
group who ate bananas ended the trail
with more elevated dopamine and
antioxidant levels so it seems like we
have plenty more to learn from bananas
as well thanks to patreon patron Mary C
for asking this question and thank you
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