What's In Your Bottle?
- Vida Bennett
- Jan 30, 2023
- 3 min read
Do you drink enough when you train? If you’ve been out lately, you’ll have noticed that it hasn’t been hot here in the UK. In fact, it’s been positively freezing. And wet. And not necessarily at the same time. You don’t really notice you’re sweating so much if you’ve got a hat on, or several layers. And this can make you think you don’t need hydration.
In summer, it’s easy to know when you’re sweating – it runs down your face and back. In winter, you might only notice when you get changed – your beanie is soaked and your base layer Is stuck to your skin. And if you’ve got a fringe like me, it’s stuck, in very attractive strings, to your forehead!
Whatever the weather though, if you sweat, you’re going to need to replenish fluid, salts and sugars to avoid dehydration. Plain water isn’t usually enough to hydrate you on its own. You won’t find plain water anywhere in the tissues of your body – fluids are always a mix of water, electrolytes and sugars. If you drink lots of plain water, you might miss out on effective hydration. Because if fluid isn’t being transported into your blood stream, you’re likely to find yourself drinking lots, but weeing more and still being dehydrated. Too much water and not enough sodium leads to hyponatraemia, which can then lead to seizures and eventually death (this is an extreme event, and you won't get hyponatraemia by drinking a litre of water, for example).
And while we’re here, beware the sports gels. These are designed to be taken with plenty of water, and if you just suck the sugar from them without adding enough water, you are likely to dehydrate further because your body needs to pull water from your blood and muscles in order to dilute the sugars in the gel – and this is often the cause of embarrassing incidents mid run. Your electrolyte drink should be around the same concentration (isotonic) as your blood to encourage absorption. Sports gels are massively more concentrated than blood, which is why you should always take with enough water to make them isotonic.
Ideally your sports drink should contain sodium, potassium and glucose or sucrose. It makes no sense to use sugar free products, because sodium likes to use glucose to get into the cells. Sweeteners like zylitol and sorbitol are more likely to pull fluid into the intestines, and are pretty notorious for causing stomach upsets and diarrhoea. Sucralose can fool your body into thinking sugar is on its way, releasing insulin and lowering blood sugar further. If possible, also avoid both fructose and maltodextrin as ingredients, as they also promote gut motility (pooping too quick to you and I).
It's relatively easy to make a homemade sports drink – water with a splash of orange juice and a pinch of salt. Yes, OJ does contain fructose, but packaged up in juice, it's bound with fibre and has none of the issues of commercially produced fructose in drinks. If you prefer off the shelf solutions, look at Precision Hydration, Elete electrolytes (needs to be added to a drink with a little sugar), and Nuun. And if you do want to add in carbohydrate, then Tailwind can be a good choice, and it also has 25g carbohydrate per scoop to help fuel you as well as hydrate you.
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