Sports drinks

The functional foods market continues to grow day by day. Avid exercisers are no strangers to functional products designed to help you go longer, get stronger and become leaner. These products are very cleverly designed, advertised and marketed to appeal to the ambitious person inside us all and some people feel ‘naked’ training without them. BUT throughout different blog posts I want to show you that these products are unnecessary, a waste of money, and contain additional ingredients that are damaging your health. I’m focusing on sports drinks as my example today.

Sports Drinks – The soda drink dressed up as ‘healthy’ and ‘functional’

We are a nation of sugar addicts. This addiction has been fuelled by the food industry steadily increasing the sugar content of foods to the point we’re at now where the nasty substance is hard to avoid. Fizzy drinks –or soda- have become a staple in many peoples diet as a way to satisfy this need for sugar.  Following this sugar addiction has become expanding waist lines that have led to an increased demand for ‘diet’ products containing calorie-free sugar replacements – the artificial sweeteners. So people swap the soda for a diet soda, healthy right? Wrong, these ‘diet sodas’ full of artificial sweeteners and flavourings can provide the same taste to satisfy the consumer and keep them coming back for more but the added chemicals breakdown in the body to their toxic counterparts and cause damage.

Many people consume one or more cans of soda each day. As a fit and healthy person you may be feeling smug that you don’t do this. But do you drink a sports drink to fuel your exercise? Just because the product has the word ‘sport’ it in, this does not mean it’s necessarily a healthy choice. Sports drinks make claims that they will help you perform better during athletic events, and I’m not disputing this. Of course a quick supply of glucose is going to keep you going for exercise lasting more than 1 hour, and of course the addition of electrolytes to water will help to hydrate you faster. But will the artificial sweeteners make you run faster, will the flavour enhancers make you reach that PB, or will they disrupt the finely tuned chemical balance within your body….I’m going with the later.

Sports drinks, naturally

Keeping well hydrated during exercise (and throughout life in general) is necessary to maintain peak optimal performance in all that you do. Water helps to regulate your body temperature, lubricate your joints and transport nutrients around your body. During exercise you lose water through sweat and increased respiration, and these losses need to be replaced. The longer and more intensely you train makes this even more important. If you fail to replace lost fluids your blood and plasma volume will decrease leading to muscle cramps, dizziness, fatigue, heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Research has shown that a loss of only 2% body weight from dehydration is enough to negatively affect athletic performance.

Your body also loses valuable electrolytes through sweat that are needed to carry electrical impulses throughout your body to help your cells communicate with each other. The need to replace these electrolytes will depend on the intensity and duration of your training and how much you sweat. I would advise electrolytes to be taken on board for strenuous exercise lasting more than an hour. This is also the case for carbohydrates as it will generally take about an hour for your glycogen stores to become depleted. About 0.7g of carbohydrate as glucose per kg body weight per hour (approx. 30-60g/hour) has been shown to extend endurance performance.

So, taking all of this into account; when you are exercising for longer than an hour swap your plain water for a sports drink containing a simple mixture of water, sodium (0.5-0.7g/L), potassium (0.8-2.0g/L) and glucose (6-8%). Make up your own and add a splash of lemon juice to taste. Next time you pick up a sports drink check the label. How many ingredients are on there? Keep things simple people.