\Is it in you?""
The dramatic advertisements for Gatorade, Powerade, and other sports drinks can often have a psychological impact on athletes, making them believe that the key to success is found at the bottom of the bottle.
""You see the commercials and you just think you're going to be super-powerful,"" said Dustin Chernak, a UW-Madison freshman who runs up to 12 miles per day.
However, he notes the physical effects of these drinks, though much more subtle, are equally as important.
Over the past 10 years, sports drinks containing electrolytes and carbohydrates have considerably increased in popularity, becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. Their popularity is seen particularly among young athletes, who argue that the drinks replace needed nutrients as well as fluid lost via sweat. These drinks, however, are somewhat expensive and contain calories and other additives that may be unnecessary, making the correct use of them important.
The main goal of any sports drink is rehydration. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, if the body loses more than 1 to 2 percent of its total weight during exercise, not only performance but the athlete's health may be sacrificed. The organization recommends drinking two cups of fluid two hours before exercise as well as one cup of fluid for every 15 minutes of exercise. Because of this significant amount, ACSM cautions that thirst is an inadequate indicator of the body's hydration levels. To prevent dehydration, more fluids than what relieves thirst is often needed.
Taste is a key advantage to sports drinks in rehydration. As a general rule, people prefer the taste of a sports drink to water. This encourages athletes to drink more and replenish fluid lost by sweat, but it is still not necessary for the average athlete to consume sports drinks unless taste is a major factor in rehydration decisions and causes a considerable change in fluid consumption during and after activity.
Emily Stieber, a UW-Madison freshman who runs five times per week, recalls occasionally using sports drinks on longer runs during her high school cross-country practices. ""I felt it was the same [as water],"" Stieber said. ""It just tasted better. But water is cheaper.""
However, once exercise exceeds 60 minutes of continuous activity, the amount of body salt lost in sweat becomes significant enough to hinder performance and reduce the ability of the heart to function properly. At this point, sports drinks provide a significant health benefit in comparison to water because the electrolytes-namely sodium, potassium, and chloride-in the solution help to replenish lost salt quickly and keep performance and athlete health stable.
Peter Anderson, a UW-Madison lecturer in nutrition and kinesiology, comments that during lengthy exercise, sports drinks offer an advantage over water because of the carbohydrates they contain. These help to keep an athlete's energy up during a workout by feeding glucose into the blood stream, improving the athlete's performance. Some athletes prefer to consume simple sugars via foods such as candy, which have a similar effect on blood sugar but Anderson cautions against this due to the difficulty of balancing intake of sugars and fluids.
""What's nice about sports drinks is that they have [carbohydrates, electrolytes, and fluid] in the right amounts, all in one package,"" he said.
During activities that last less than an hour and during non-activity, the effects of sports drinks on performance and health decrease. While rehydration still occurs, the sugars and electrolytes being fed into the bloodstream by the drinks are not put to immediate use, meaning that eating regular meals after exercise has essentially the same effect on replacing nutrients as sports drinks. Chernak stated that sports drinks are only one of multiple factors that can improve performance, also naming adequate rest and a proper diet.
Maintaining a healthy diet even has an advantage over sports drinks outside of exercise if complex carbohydrates are consumed in meals. Glucose is the simplest carbohydrate, used in sports drinks along with other simple carbohydrates for faster absorption. When the body is not in immediate need of the carbohydrates though, its nutritional value becomes almost nothing beyond the calories, or energy, derived from it.
Anderson advises that consumption of more complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables outside of exercise. These are able to replenish lost carbohydrates as well as provide other needed nutrients to further enhance athletic performance.
Empty calories may not be the only disadvantage to consuming sports drinks outside of activity. Recent research at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has shown that the acidity of sports drinks combined with athlete dry mouth, makes sports drinks up to 30 times more erosive to teeth than water. This makes them as damaging as fruit juices and soft drinks and gives an advantage to water consumption during short-term exercise and non-activity.
Sports drinks are quite beneficial and even necessary at times during exercise in order to maintain athlete health. During less vigorous activity, the costs of sports drinks in relation to water can outweigh the benefits, providing the body with empty calories and excess acidic substances.
""[Sports drinks] don't have magical properties,"" Anderson summed up. ""They have very special properties during exercise because they have just the right amount of carbohydrate and electrolyte for rapid absorption.""
