Guest Post by Allen Lim, PhD.

Why Sports Drinks are Important

A Little Primer on the Logic Behind Sports Drinks:

1) You sweat whenever you are doing something that makes you really hot like working out or mowing the lawn in oppressive heat.

2) Sweat has fluid and electrolytes like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and chloride.

3) While all electrolytes are important to your body’s function and performance, sodium is by far the most important electrolyte, because a decrease in your body’s sodium concentration – something called hyponatremia – can have some extremely negative consequences that range the gamut from just not feeling well to seizures, excessive urination, incontinence (that’s when you soil yourself), and even death.

4) There is anywhere from 200 mg to 1000 mg of sodium in a liter of sweat (Our Exercise Hydration Mix contains 620 mg of sodium per liter).

5) Since sweat has both fluid and electrolytes in it, drinking water alone to replace the fluid you lose when you’re sweating can be really dangerous since this is the quickest way to decrease or dilute your body’s sodium concentration. So if you’re exercising and you find yourself peeing a lot and feeling really sick, you may be hyponatremic and you’ll need to rehydrate with something with a lot of salt in it or just eat salty foods with whatever your drinking.

6) In theory, the best thing to drink when you’re sweating is your own sweat. But drinking sweat tastes gross. This is just my personal opinion cause I’ve tried it. Also, I’m pretty sure that if I gave someone a glass of sweat to drink that they’d be pissed and throw the glass at me. Finally, it’s hard to capture all the sweat you lose when you’re sweating unless you have one of those cool suits from the movie Dune that recycles your sweat and urine.

7) Sweat does not contain artificial colors, artificial flavors (or any flavoring agents for that matter), sugar, artificial sweeteners, preservatives or other strange ingredients that you need to take an organic chemistry class to figure out.

8) Most sports drinks contain water, electrolytes, and some form of sugar to provide a small source of energy to help maintain blood sugar and fuel working muscle. Unfortunately, most sports drinks also contain artificial colors, flavoring agents, artificial sweeteners, preservatives as well as other strange ingredients that you need to take an organic chemistry class to figure out.

9) My experience is that most sports drinks don’t contain enough electrolytes, have too much sugar, and that all of the excess ingredients make people sick when they drink too much of it.

10) Without the fruit, citric acid (i.e., lime), and sugar our Exercise Hydration Mix tastes just like sweat (Again, I’ve tried our mix without any fruit and it is nasty). But with a little bit of fruit, citric acid, and sugar our Exercise Hydration Mix tastes clean and light. So here’s the plug – if you are sweating a lot and need something to rehydrate with that replaces what you lose in your sweat but you don’t want a bunch of excessive ingredients and you don’t want to drink your own sweat, give our Exercise Hydration Mix a try. And if you don’t think it’s better than your own sweat or the sports drink you get at the gas station, let us know and we’ll make it up to you.

For more information about exercise science, nutrition and other fun facts to know and tell, visit Skratch Labs online at www.skratchlabs.com.

This post originally appeared on February 15, 2012 on www.skratchlabs.com