"Your Sports Drink may be dehydrating you" article
I thought this was an interesting article
I recently re-vamped my nutrition program to address my cycling needs. One of the questions I had for my nutritionist, Keith Klein, was whether or not I needed to drink Gatorade. This article parallels the information he gave me on sports drinks.
It's from the Lee Labrada site.
Your Sports Drink May Be Dehydrating You
by Dr. Clay Hyght, DC, BSc, CSCS, CPT
With summer rapidly approaching, Lee Labrada and I want to drive home the importance of proper hydration. A few weeks ago Lee wrote a greatarticle on the importance of proper fluid intake and what detrimental effects dehydration can have. I want to go into a little more detail about how to optimally rehydrate yourself. First let me recap a couple of things.
A trained athlete can lose up to 3 liters of fluid per hour. Think about that for a moment. Picture a 3-liter container of Coke (there should not be one in your kitchen!) Now imagine sweating that much in one hour. That’s a lot of fluid lost from your body that needs to be replaced. For every 450 ml of fluid lost during exercise, you will lose about one pound of bodyweight. In other words, if you lose four pounds during your workout, you have lost almost 2 liters of fluid. With that amount of fluid loss, the body losses some of its ability to maintain its ideal core temperature, usually 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Muscular strength and endurance begin to decrease as well. With the above information and Lee’s article, you should now fully understand the importance of staying properly hydrated.
If you watch any Television at all, you probably think that the best way to replenish this lost fluid is by drinking a “high tech” sports drink like Gatorade or PowerAde, right? Wrong. These drinks are about as high tech as a phone made with two tin cans and a string in between. (There goes my chance for a big Gatorade endorsement contract.) The primary problem with these drinks is that they are too concentrated.
Now I need to go over a little physiology. Normally, physiology is about as fun as watching paint dry. So, for me to avoid putting you to sleep, why don’t you go take a Charge! capsule, then come back and read the rest in 30 minutes or so.
Welcome back. Now allow me to continue: The osmolarity of your body fluid is approximately 300 (milliosmoles per kilogram). A rehydration beverage needs to have an osmolarity lower than that of your body. In English, the concentration of the beverage should be less than the concentration of your body’s fluid. If it is not, and you drink a beverage that is more concentrated than your body’s fluid, your body will have to bring fluid into your intestinal tract from your blood stream in order to decrease the concentration of the fluid so that it can be absorbed. That’s exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You’re trying to get water into the bloodstream, not out of it. Drinking a concentrated beverage to rehydrate yourself is kind of like using water to put out a grease fire; it seems like it would work but it actually makes the problem worse.
A rehydration beverage should contain no more than nine grams of carbs per 8 oz serving. This will help to ensure that the osmolarity of the beverage is lower than that of your body. This is an over-simplified rule of thumb, but without going into molecular weight of different molecules and their effect on osmolarity and osmotic pressure, it will suffice. If you want to get a tad more complicated, you can look for a beverage that contains glucose polymers (maltodextrin) as the primary ingredient instead of sucrose, glucose, or high fructose corn syrup. The larger maltodextrin molecule does not raise the osmolarity of the solution as much as the smaller molecule sugars like sucrose.
Due to the fact that a substantial amount of electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) can be lost with prolonged activity, it’s important that your beverage of choice have electrolytes added. So, what is a good beverage for rehydration that has an osmolarity of less than 300? Pedialyte. Yeah, the wimpy baby-with-diarrhea-drink is far better than macho man Gatorade is! Sorry to burst your bubble. Pedialyte is specifically formulated to have an osmolarity of about 270 for optimal rehydration. If you’re not secure enough in your manhood to drink Pedialyte, you can dilute your sports drink by half or more to reduce the osmolarity. Keep in mind though, that you’ll dilute the electrolytes also. Eight ounces of Pedialyte has 187 mg of potassium while Gatorade has only 30 mg in its concentrated form. Dilute it by half and you’re down to 15 mg. That’s not so “high tech” after all. The ideal drink would have specific amounts of magnesium and calcium as well. However, to my knowledge, this has not yet been made commercially available.
Sifting through marketing hype can be tough. What we are led to believe is the latest and greatest is not always so. My goal is to help you filter out the nonsense and hearsay and get down to what is scientifically valid. Training and eating right are hard enough without wasting time on things that don’t work.
Can we make our own sport drink... let's put our heads together!
I have been pondering this same issue for a while (just haven't had the time to deal with it).
I dilute Gatorade, for the reasons in the article.... I find it too strong at regular strength....it sits in my stomach unabsorbed. I also do not like the fact I am ingesting food colouring. :eek:
Come on Ladies... can we put our heads together an produce a home made sport drink that is more natural? Whatta about lemmon juice, sugar, salt, and whatever else we need??? (there has to be someone on this forum who is into this field of work)
I'm game to being a tester :D
Aspertame? Bleckh! ~sticks out tongue~
Quote:
Originally Posted by SadieKate
Just curious as to what your argument against Aspartame is? Other than the controversy of the side effects of consuming too much.
Well aside from what CorsairMac said, here's an artical that my Aunt just sent me a couple of days ago in an e-mail. I have never liked aspertame and really don't like it now. :p
~Liz :p
"In October of 2001, my sister started getting very sick, she had stomach spasms, she was having a hard time getting around; to walk was a major chore. It took everything she had just to get out of bed, she was in so much pain By March 2002, she had undergone biopsies, and was on 24 various prescription medications. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick, she knew she was dying.
She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance, etc., in her oldest daughter’s name, and made sure her younger children were to be with her oldest daughter.
She planned a trip to Florida (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd. On March 19th I called her to ask her how one of her tests went, and she said they didn't find anything on
Friend of mine emailed to me... and I asked her... Do you drink Diet pop?
She told me yes, as a matter of fact she was getting ready to crack one open that moment, I told her not to open it, and stop drinking the diet pop....and I emailed her the following article. She called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she stopped drinking the diet pop, and she can walk...she went up the stairs, and the muscle spasms went away. She said she didn't feel 100% but sure felt a lot better. She told me she was going to her doctors with this article and would call me back when she got home.
She called me, and her doctor was amazed, he is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweetener. In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the aspartame in the diet soda, dying a slow death.
When she got to FL March 22nd, all she had to take was one pill, and that was a pill for poisoning....she is well on her way to recovery!....and she is walking!!! No wheelchair!!!! This article saved her life! The life saving article:
If it says "SUGAR FREE," on the label, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on "ASPARTAME" marketed as 'NutraSweet,' 'Equal,' and 'Spoonful.' In the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced that in the United States in 2001 there is an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus, that it was hard to understand what toxin was causing this to be rampant. I stood up and said that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject.
I will explain why Aspartame is so dangerous: When the temperature of this
sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to Formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. (Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants.) The methanol toxicity mimics among other conditions multiple sclerosis. People were being diagnosed with having multiple sclerosis in error. The multiple
sclerosis is not a death sentence, where methanol toxicity is!
Systemic lupus has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers. The victim usually does not know that the aspartame is the culprit. He or she continues its use, irritating the lupus to such a degree that it may become life-threatening. We have seen patients with systemic lupus become asymptotic once taken off diet sodas. In the case of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, (when in reality, the disease is methanol toxicity), most of the symptoms disappear. We've seen many cases where vision returned and hearing improved markedly. This also applies to cases of tinnitus.
During a lecture I said "If you are using ASPARTAME (NutraSweet, Equal,
Spoonful, etc.) and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss-you probably have ASPARTAME DISEASE!" People were jumping up during the lecture saying, I've got some of these symptoms: Is it reversible?" Yes, Not drinking diet sodas and keeping an eye out for aspartame on food labels, yes!
We have a very serious problem. A stranger came up to Dr. Espisto (one of my speakers) and me and said: "Could you tell me why so many people seem to be coming down with MS?" During a visit to a hospice, a nurse said that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Coke addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence! Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, etc. IS NOT A DIET PRODUCT!
The Congressional Record states that it makes you crave carbohydrates and
will make you FAT. The formaldehyde stores in the fat cells, particularly no
significant increase in exercise, etc., Dr. Roberts in his lecture stated that he had patient who lost an average of 19 pounds over a trial period.
Aspartame is especially dangerous for diabetics. We found that physicians
would believe that they have a patient with retinopathy, when in fact the
symptoms are caused by aspartame. The aspartame drives the blood sugar out of control. Thus diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are neurotoxic without the other amino acids found in protein. Thus it passes the blood brain barrier and deteriorates the neurons of the brain, causing in diabetics (as well as in patients not suffering from diabetes) various kinds of brain damage, seizures, depression, manic depression, panic attacks, rage, violence (The Aspartame in thousands of pallets of diet Coke and diet Pepsi consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf War, may be partially to blame for the well-known Gulf War Syndrome.
Dr. Roberts warns that it can cause birth defects i.e. mental retardation if
taken at the time of conception and early pregnancy. Children are especially at risk for neurological disorders and should NOT be given NutraSweet. I can relate different case histories of children having mal seizures and other
disturbances being on NutraSweet.
Unfortunately it is not always easy to convince a mother that aspartame is
to blame for her child's illness. Only by trial and success will she be able to warn other mothers to take their children's health in their own hands.
Stevia, a sweet herb, NOT A MANUFACTURED ADDITIVE, which helps in the metabolism of sugar (which would be ideal for diabetics) has now been approved as a dietary supplement by the FDA. For years the FDA has outlawed this sweet food because of their loyalty to MONSANTO.
I assure you, MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame knows how deadly it is They fund among others, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association, the Conference of the American College of Physicians This has been exposed in the New York Times - to no avail. These Associations cannot Criticize any additives or convey their link to MONSANTO beca use they take money from the food industry and have to endorse their products. Senator Howard Hetzenbaum wrote a bill that would have warned all infants, pregnant mothers and children of the dangers of aspartame. The bill would have also instituted independent studies on the problems existing in the population (seizures, changes in brain chemistry, changes neurological and behavioral; symptoms). It was killed by the powerful drug and chemical lobbies, letting loose the hounds of disease and death on an unsuspecting public
