VEROFIT Hydration guidelines

A lot of sportsmen and women talk about rehydration.  Even our own Isotonic Electrolyte Drink says on the label “rehydrates”.  However, if we think about it, that´s a little bit inappropriate, because if we are talking about rehydration, we are already dehydrated.

And that’s bad! Have a look at the main effects of not drinking enough liquids

Now that we have seen what happens when we are dehydrated, we need to know when the risk of dehydration is higher.  And here 2 rules apply:

Other factors affecting dehydration are:

·         Duration:  For exercises longer than 1 hour it is crucial to pay attention to the liquid intake to avoid complications.

·         Intensity: The harder we will push our bodies the higher risk of dehydration

·         Airflow, evaporation and clothing are also related to dehydration. For example, high humidity will stop sweat evaporation, raising the body temperature and requiring cooling clothes.

So now that we know the dangers of dehydration and the main causes, lets look at ways to avoid it.

The advantage of carboloading is in the increasing of liquid storage in the body.  The disadvantage is an increased weight.  Therefore, it should only be used in very hot conditions when the extra water will give us an advantage.

And how to carboload? There are several approaches here and they are a little bit more complicated than just a pasta dinner.  The main idea is to decrease the carbohydrates a little bit, then increase them before the event. For eg, If an average person bases 60% of it nutrition on carbs, they should go down to 50% 6 days before the event and then go up to 70% or higher the 3 days before the event.  We need to take into account that the body can only store the above amounts of carbs (i.e a total of 425 gr glycogen) so it also pointless to overdo it as the extra amounts will be converted into different bits – including fat!

Dehydration

The human body is about two-thirds (approximately 70%) water. Water is essential to the normal working of your body. It lubricates the joints and eyes, aids digestion, flushes out waste and toxins and keeps skin healthy.

Dehydration occurs when the normal water content of your body is reduced. This leads to a change in the vital balance of chemical substances in your body, especially sodium (salt) and potassium. In order to function properly, many of the body’s cells depend on these substances being maintained at the correct levels.  That´s why water is not enough.
We also need to replenish the minerals lost through sweat or the danger of dehydration will still be present.

The amount of water in your body only has to decrease by a few per cent, for dehydration to occur. The effects of dehydration can be serious and, in extreme circumstances, they can be fatal.

Symptoms

Dehydration occurs when there is a 1% or greater reduction in body weight due to fluid loss. Depending on the percentage of body weight lost, dehydration can be described as mild, moderate or severe.

Mild dehydration - even if there is a relatively low level of fluid loss (causing a 1-2% loss of body weight) mild dehydration can cause the body to work less efficiently. However, mild dehydration carries few risks and can usually be easily treated by replacing lost fluids.

Moderate dehydration - is a 3-5% decrease in body weight due to fluid loss. This level of fluid loss can result in a substantial decrease in strength and endurance and is the primary cause of heat exhaustion.

If dehydration is chronic (ongoing) it can affect kidney function and may lead to the development of kidney stones. It can cause dry, wrinkled skin and be harmful to your liver, joints and muscles. It can also cause cholesterol problems, headaches, reduced blood pressure (hypotension), fatigue and constipation.

Severe dehydration - is a decrease of more than 5% of body weight due to fluid loss. A 10% or greater reduction in body weight is extremely serious. If not treated immediately, this level of dehydration can be life threatening. Hospitalisation and an intravenous drip may be necessary to restore the substantial loss of fluids.

It is important to remember that thirst is not a good indicator of dehydration. If you are thirsty, you are already likely to be suffering from the effects of dehydration.

The signs of dehydration in adults include:

• dry mouth
• chapped or dry lips,
• dry eyes,
• dry, loose skin with a lack of elasticity,
• sunken features, particularly the eyes clammy hands and feet,
• headaches,
• light-headedness,
• dizziness,
• tiredness,
• confusion and irritability,
• loss of appetite,
• burning sensation in your stomach,
• feeling of an ‘empty stomach’ or abdominal pain,
• low urine output, and
• concentrated, dark urine with a strong odour

Here you have an executive summary of a very interesting paper written by Dr G.L. Khanna & Dr I. Manna about the benefits of taking an Isotonic drink to improve sports performance.

Background & objectives: Carbohydrate-electrolyte drink has a significant role on energy balance
during exercise. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of oral carbohydrateelectrolyte
supplementation on sports performance and cardiovascular status of the national
level male athletes during exercise and recovery.

Results: Significant improvements were noted in total endurance time, heart rate responses and
blood lactate during exercise at 70 per cent VO2max after the supplementation of 5 g per cent
carbohydrate-electrolyte drink. However, no significant changes were noted in blood glucose
and peak lactate level irrespective of supplementation of carbohydrate-electrolyte drink.
Significant improvement in cardiovascular responses, blood glucose and lactate removal were
noted during recovery following a 12.5 g per cent carbohydrate-electrolyte drink.

Interpretation & conclusion: Carbohydrate-electrolyte drink can increase endurance performance
as well as enhance lactate removal and thereby delaying the onset of fatigue.

You can also download the full document here

Supplementary effect of carbohydrate-electrolyte drink on sports

Electrolyte drinks: the real facts

There are many electrolyte sports drinks currently on the market. It can become confusing amongst all the marketing and hype to know which sports drinks are the best, what you should be looking for when choosing the right sports drink, and when and why you should use one.Why use electrolyte drinks?
Electrolyte drinks assist with rapid replacement of fluid and electrolytes lost during exercise training or hard physical labour. They help with muscle recovery and soreness, preventing dehydration, and providing stamina and increased endurance during strenuous exercise.

Electrolyte drinks ingested during exercise aims at providing a source of carbohydrate fuel to supplement the body’s limited stores and supplying water and electrolytes to replace losses incurred through sweating.

Symptoms of dehydration
Symptoms of dehydration include muscle weakness, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, cramps, and thirst. Dehydration greatly affects athletic performance. As the body loses water its core temperature rises. This affects metabolic pathways, interferes with cardiovascular functioning, and reduces total exercise capacity. You should not rely solely on your thirst response as you can enter a state of dehydration and not feel the sensation of thirst for several hours.

Electrolyte drinks should be used during and after training for fluid and electrolyte replacement. The athlete must begin exercise fully hydrated and regular ingestion of fluids is beneficial where the exercise duration exceeds 40 minutes¹. Failure to properly rehydrate after a training session increases the likelihood of waking up the next morning still dehydrated. This will reduce your training potential during the subsequent day and leads to a cycle of accumulating dehydration.

What do electrolytes do?
Electrolytes important for the functioning of many vital processes in the body include magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium, chloride and phosphate. Electrolytes regulate the fluid balance between body compartments: they help to maintain an acid-alkaline balance required for normal cellular activities, and carry electrical currents which facilitate the control of hormone and neurotransmitter secretion necessary for nerve and muscle function. Electrolytes are also needed as cofactors for enzymes which influence a number of functions in the body including digestion.

Exercise is associated with increased magnesium excretion from the body through sweating. Magnesium is needed for oxygen delivery to working muscles during training². Magnesium depletion may reduce physical performance and reduce exercise capacity.

Sodium and potassium are necessary for correct functioning of nervous and muscle tissue and the flow of fluid in and out of cells. Besides contributing to hardness of bones and teeth, calcium plays an important role in blood clotting, neurotransmitter release, maintenance of muscle tone and excitability of nervous and muscle tissue.

Choosing the right electrolyte drink
Sports drinks must contain a balanced ratio of carbohydrates to provide rapid energy, fluid and temperature control. Carbohydrates and electrolytes enhance the body’s uptake of water. During exercise, the ingestion of water, in association with carbohydrate and minerals, is effective in attenuating both fatigue and illness due to dehydration³.

Choose an electrolyte drink not too high in sugar as this can cause gastrointestinal discomfort and dehydration. Many sports drinks on the market today contain extremely high levels of sugars equal to that of soft drinks. If you are not partaking in regular high intensity exercise, drinking these sugary sports drinks will promote weight gain. Electrolyte drinks are needed when you are exercising for more than 40 minutes, playing sport (football, soccer etc) or if your work involves hard physical labour. These drinks are also very useful when you are sick with diarrhoea (ie, to prevent dehydration).

Love a hard workout where you sweat buckets? It’s important to re-hydrate your body afterwards to replace the fluid you’ve lost and the longer that liquid stays in your body the better off you’ll be. The question is, how best to do that? Michael Slater gets active to find out the answer. The average human body is 60 to 70 percent water, that’s about 37 to 45 litres. As your body heats up, you start to sweat. “Generally males can lose about one to two-and-a-half litres of sweat per hour. For females it’s generally a little bit less than that,” says Cathryn Pruscino, a sports scientist from the Victorian Institute of Sport.

Studies have shown that one percent dehydration can cause major changes in body temperature, while two percent dehydration will drop your performance levels by a third! So to operate efficiently it’s crucial we keep our fluids up. But what is best for fluid replacement? Plain old water or sports drinks?

The test

Let’s see if sports drinks can help us retain more fluid than water.

Vaughn and Gerard are hard-core runners, both in their 20s and super-fit. Steve is a former English county cricketer now living in Australia and, like Michael, he’s left his 20s well and truly behind. All three men plus Michael weighed-in so they could work out how much fluid they lost after they exercised.

In order to test the difference between the drinks, Cathryn wanted them to lose two percent of their body weight during their exercise period. “Then we’ll get them to re-hydrate using either sports drinks or water. After the re-hydration period we’ll collect all of the urine they excrete and have a look at who’s retained the most amount of fluid,” says Cathryn.

Steve and Michael were put on the bikes, doing a medium-intensity workout as befits men of their age. Meanwhile the young blokes, Vaughan and Gerard, were on the treadmill doing a high-intensity workout.

Vaughn and Michael replaced what they sweated out with water while Gerard and Steve chugged back sports drinks to make good their liquid losses.

After exercising for 40 minutes, Michael and Steve continue for another 10 because they’re only doing moderate exercise, even though the sweat is dripping off them.

Sports dietitian Lisa Sutherland took all the men’s pre- and post-workout weights and calculated that they all sweated out two percent of their body weight. “It’s a great idea to weigh yourself before and after exercise because the weight you lose is the equivalent to the amount of fluid in litres that you lose. So if you lose a kilo of weight during exercise it means you’ve lost one litre of fluid,” says Lisa.

The boys re-hydrated with one-and-a-half times the fluid they lost:

• Michael drank 1.5 litres of water
• Steve drank two litres of sports drink
• Vaughn 1.7 litres of water
• Gerard 1.9 litres of sports drink

And as we all know, what goes in must come out. So it’s also time for a urine sample to help Cathryn determine the results.

The results

Now, we’re not looking for a big result here, in fact, the less urine the boys pass the better, because it means the fluid’s stayed in their bodies, where it’s needed most.

Steve was doing moderate exercise like Michael. After his sports drink he passed 240ml. Michael was on the water and he passed 255ml, so only slightly more than if he had also drunk a sports drink.

Which means that for a low intensity work out, water and sports drinks pretty much do the same job.

But if we look at the high intensity runners, Gerard, who was on sports drinks, produced 100ml. While Vaughn, who was on the water, passed 600mls! By drinking water he lost six times more body fluid than he would have had he chose the sports drink instead.

So for endurance or high intensity workouts, sports drinks are a winner. But why do sports drinks work so well? They contain important extras like carbohydrates and electrolytes to promote hydration because they’re specifically designed for athletes.

But here’s a warning — if you’re drinking them as part of your everyday routine you’ll end up putting on weight. “In the case of any sorts of drinks that have got carbohydrates or nutrients in them, if you’re having too much of any of those sorts of drinks and you’re not active then that can affect your weight and your body fat levels,” says Lisa.

Hydration tips

• Make sure you’re well-hydrated before you exercise — start drinking about two hours before.
• Top up your fluids during exercising
• Weigh yourself before and after. Losing a kilo is the equivalent of a litre of fluid, and you need to drink one-a-half times that to replace it.

If you’re exercising hard and looking for peak performance then sports drinks are the go for you. But if like most of us you’re into the moderate exercise, then water will hydrate you just fine and there’s a little bonus with that — it’s free!

Fast facts

• Can drinking water make you more resistant to a heart attack? A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that women who drink more than five glasses of water a day are 41 percent less likely to die from a heart attack. For men, that figure jumps to 55 percent.

Julie Moss is an American triathlete. Her claim to fame came during the 1982 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, in which she competed as part of her research for her exercise physiology thesis. At approximately two miles before the finish line, she became severely dehydrated. She staggered and crawled towards the end of the course, only to be passed moments before the finish line by competitor Kathleen McCartney. Her struggle to finish the Ironman was broadcast around the world, and provided inspiration to many to compete in Ironman events.

For the persons who would like to know a little bit more about the advantages of Sport Drinks over water, have a look at the following Video.

Sport Drinks

You will be able to see that once you are really training, you do need more than water.

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WATER AND OUR BODIES

Water provides many functions in your body, with the main ones being:

• Transports vitamins, minerals, amino acids, glucose, hormones, enzymes and other
  substances throughout your body
• Lubricates joints
• Maintains your body temperature - cools it by evaporation from the skin and lungs, throws off heat when blood is circulated near the body’s surface - helps retain warmth in winter

Sweating is the way in which the body maintains its core temperature at 37C.
This results in the loss of body fluid and electrolytes (minerals such as chloride, calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium) and if unchecked will lead to dehydration and eventually circulatory collapse and heat stroke.

• A 1% loss in water can affect a persons judgement by up to 20%.
• A 2-3% drop in your body weight through sweating can significantly limit your
  performance.
• A 12% dehydration can cause blurred vision
• If you are dehydrated your blood thickens, making it harder for your heart to pump glucose to your energy starved muscles.

WHY IS SWEAT SALTY?

A litre of sweat typically contains 0.02g Calcium, 0.05g Magnesium, 1.15g Sodium, 0.23g Potassium and 1.48g Chloride. This composition will vary from personto person.

Carbohydrate is stored as glucose in the liver and muscles and is the most efficient source of energy as it requires less oxygen to be burnt than eitherprotein or fat.

During exercise there is in an increased uptake of blood glucose by the muscles and to prevent blood glucose levels falling the liver produces glucose from the liver stores and lactate.

Water contains no carbohydrate or electrolytes. Drinking plain water causes bloating, suppresses thirst and thus further drinking. It stimulates urine output and therefore is inefficiently retained.

There are three types of Sports drink all of which contain various levels of fluid, electrolytes and carbohydrate.

WHAT IS VEROFIT?

The Verofit Isotonic drinks were developed in conjuction with the University of Zurich in 2002. Since then, the products have enjoyed a growing success among athletes in Europe. We are working very hard to a similar success here in Australia. It is interesting to see that the Verofit Drinks are considered Isotonic in Europe and must go some minor changes to be defined Isotonic in Australia. We are working to meet all Australian Food Standards and be considered Isotonic here too.

Because the Verofit Isotonic drinks come in in cans powder, the user can mix an isotonic or hypotonic drink according to his/her needs.

The composition of Verofit Sport Drink has some very unique strengths versus the average of other valid options in the market:

Average*: contents of the main brands in the international market according to Triathlete n 265/May 2006

The Verofit Sport Drink has a lower number of calories while being one of the few products in the market with calcium and magnesium. Our formula also supplies a complete range of vitamin B, C and E for improved body absortium of nutritients and performance.

Last but not least, the tastes are nice and appealing, motivating a higher liquid intake without being too sweet or “strong”.

Water vs Sports Drink