Did This Special Water Really Help Russell Wilson Recover From a Head Injury?

Russell Wilson drank the water after experiencing a bad hit in the NFC Championship game last year. (Photo: Jason LaVeris /GettyImages)

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson is raising eyebrows after making claims that a brand of bottled water helped him recover from a head injury.

Wilson is a paid spokesman for Reliant Recovery Water, a $3 bottled water that includes nanobubbles and electrolytes and claims to help people recover quickly from workouts. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Wilson said it also helps people recovery from injury — including himself, after he took a hard hit during last year’s NFC Championship game.

“I banged my head during the Packers game in the playoffs, and the next day I was fine,” Wilson told Rolling Stone. “It was the water.”

His agent interjected, “Well, we’re not saying we have real medical proof.”

“I know it works,” Wilson added. “Soon you’re going to be able to order it straight from Amazon.”

Wilson also wrote a follow-up tweet about his claims on Wednesday evening:

Recovery Water is a form of electrokinetically modified water, which, according to the National Cancer Institute, is water with added minerals such as calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, and potassium bicarbonate. It also contains more oxygen than normal water.

Recovery Water contains nanobubbles and electrolytes. (Photo: Reliant Recovery Water)

But can Recovery Water actually heal — and prevent — an injury?

The Recovery Water website doesn’t go as far as Wilson in its claims, but says the product “improves your body’s natural restoration process, which means less muscle soreness and fatigue.” It also says the water “heightens your sense of well-being, helping you stay sharp and focused for what lies ahead.”

The product’s website points to research published in 2013 in the Journal of Applied Physiology that found subjects who drank electrokinetically modified water had “significantly reduced exercise-induced muscle damage and inflammation and improved functional recover.” However, the study was only conducted on 40 people (20 of whom drank the water).

The site also links to another study, conducted by the same authors as the other study cited, which was published last year in the Hindawi Physiology Journal. That study also followed 40 people (20 of whom drank the water) and concluded that drinking electrokinetically modified water for 18 days before high intensity resistance exercise “can significantly enhance” muscle function by reducing muscle fatigue, as well as the person’s perceived exertion.

But experts aren’t convinced of Wilson’s claims.

Registered dietitian nutritionist Beth Warren, author of Living a Real Life with Real Food, tells Yahoo Health that the claims aren’t necessarily wrong, but the product probably doesn’t provide you with any benefits you wouldn’t get from ordinary water.

Related: For the Last Time, You Don’t Need to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day

“Ultimately, hydration enhances recovery and the faster you get rehydrated, the more it helps your recovery,” she says.

New York City registered dietitian Jessica Cording also isn’t buying into it. “The evidence is too thin to be able to make a claim that it could prevent a concussion,” she tells Yahoo Health.

However, Cording points to information from the National Cancer Institute that says electrokinetically modified water “may have a beneficial effect on fatigue. This water may protect muscle cells against damage and may improve skeletal muscle function.”

Even Paul Borsa, PhD, an associate professor of applied physiology and kinesiology at the University of Florida, who co-authored the research cited by Recovery Water, tells Yahoo Health that scientists aren’t exactly sure of the health implications for electrokinetically modified water.

Related: Can Drinking Alkaline Water Keep You Extra-Hydrated And Disease-Free?

“We are only scratching the surface as to their potential health benefits,” he says, adding that he has “no idea” what its potential impacts on the body’s nervous system or brain would be since he has only studied the water’s impact on muscles.

As for those “nanobubbles” Wilson referenced — Borsa says they’re “charged stabilized nanostructures” that are thought to act on the body’s cell membrane in some way to alter its function. “What exactly it does at the cell membrane is not exactly known yet,” he says.

But Bert Mandelbaum, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Santa Monica Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Group in Santa Monica, California, and author of The Win Within, tells Yahoo Health that Recovery Water can have benefits (for muscles, at least) — it’s just not the only thing athletes should turn to. “There are a lot of factors that can affect muscle recovery, from ice to heat, to rest to stretching, to hydration and electrolytes,” he says.

Mandelbaum says Wilson’s claim about Recovery Water’s ability to repair muscles may be valid, adding, “Does water with electrolytes help all that? It most certainly does. But at the end of the day, it’s water.”

Cording says there’s likely no harm in drinking the water, but adds that she wouldn’t encourage athletes to spend their money on it: “Regular water is a great way to stay hydrated.”

Borsa also cautions that electrokinetically modified water isn’t for everyone. “I would definitely say that not everybody should be drinking it just yet,” he says. “There is still a lot of work that has to be done on the water to determine if there are any side effects, such as GI distress or other effects on other body tissues or organs.”

Read This Next: 9 Weird Things Dehydration Does To Your Body

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