Read Online Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Science by Karl Kruszelnicki - Free Book Online
Authors: Karl Kruszelnicki
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drank more of it and did not get so dehydrated. And water with added carbohydrates and salt prevented the dehydration altogether.
However, you don’t have to sweat huge amounts to benefit from a sports drink. There is mounting evidence that taking carbohydrates immediately before and during high-intensity events lasting an hour or more can enhance performance. If you are a swimmer training for two hours at a time in temperate water, you may not sweat a lot, but the extra fuel is helpful. The swimmer could, of course, eat a meal, but it’s quicker and easier to drink rather than eat when you are training hard. The sports drink also has the benefit of being optimised for quick emptying from the stomach.
Besides helping those engaged in one-hour sports with low to moderate sweat losses, sports drinks can also help those in long events in cooler weather (e.g. cross-country ski events).
You Might Not Need It…
Water drinks (with additives) are hot.
There are dozens of different brands in petrol stations, gyms, supermarkets and health food shops all waiting for you to buy them. But the majority are not proper sports drinks, with the appropriate amounts of sugars and salts. They are merely flavoured water with added caffeine or just plain flavoured water—all promoted with lots of advertising.
Good sports drinks that are well formulated (e.g. Gatorade and Powerade) do help athletes who regularly exercise for an hour or more. They can be very useful. But they do not do a lot for the person who goes for an occasional short jog. The discriminator for the beneficial use of sports drinks is your physiological need. For example, if you exercise at a moderate to high intensity for an hour or more, you need to consider whether you need to replace brain and muscle fuel, or fluids, or both.
So yes, rehydrate with sports drinks when you exercise for an hour or more in warm conditions, but not too little or too much, or else you will risk watering down all your hard work. And if you exercise only occasionally, and just for a short time, leave the pixie dust to the fairies…
Dehydrated = Mad
Our family has spent a lot of time in the Outback. We have, over the years, crossed 15 of the 17 deserts in Australia.
Way back in 1993, we were at the Three Ways Roadhouse near the Gulf of Carpentaria having a feed. I ran into a bloke called David, who had ridden in on a battered motorbike. We got talking and, after a bit,he told me how he and his mate Ken had ridden their bikes along the full length of the Canning Stock Route a few years earlier.
I was pretty surprised, because this stock route is hard going. It runs some 2,000 km between the top right-hand corner of Western Australia, and the lower left-hand corner, in a mainly north-south direction.
The reason they survived was because they had a rule that they wouldn’t go to sleep until they had a wee.
David (on a 600cc XT Yamaha Ténéré) and Ken (on a Honda XR 500) started at Halls Creek and headed south along the Canning Stock Route to Meekatharra. It took them two weeks.
They were well prepared. They timed it so that their trip centred around the full moon in October 1987. This was so that if things got bad, they could ride out at night to either the east or the west, to the nearest town. They rode in two shifts – from 3 am to 11 am, and from 4 pm to 6 pm. In the middle of the day, they rested.
Each bike had 25 litres of petrol in the tank, and carried two 20-litre jerry cans as well. They used 60 of their precious 65 litres getting to Well 35. (There are 51 wells, from Well 1 at the southern end to Well 51 at the northern end.) They had arranged for a 200-litre fuel drop at Well 35, and took on 120 litres, but had to leave 80 litres behind.
They didn’t carry an emergency radio – there’s not a lot of room on a motorbike.
They each carried a total of 20 litres of water, in various containers. It wasn’t a lot of water, but they filled up at the three or so wells that they
However, you don’t have to sweat huge amounts to benefit from a sports drink. There is mounting evidence that taking carbohydrates immediately before and during high-intensity events lasting an hour or more can enhance performance. If you are a swimmer training for two hours at a time in temperate water, you may not sweat a lot, but the extra fuel is helpful. The swimmer could, of course, eat a meal, but it’s quicker and easier to drink rather than eat when you are training hard. The sports drink also has the benefit of being optimised for quick emptying from the stomach.
Besides helping those engaged in one-hour sports with low to moderate sweat losses, sports drinks can also help those in long events in cooler weather (e.g. cross-country ski events).
You Might Not Need It…
Water drinks (with additives) are hot.
There are dozens of different brands in petrol stations, gyms, supermarkets and health food shops all waiting for you to buy them. But the majority are not proper sports drinks, with the appropriate amounts of sugars and salts. They are merely flavoured water with added caffeine or just plain flavoured water—all promoted with lots of advertising.
Good sports drinks that are well formulated (e.g. Gatorade and Powerade) do help athletes who regularly exercise for an hour or more. They can be very useful. But they do not do a lot for the person who goes for an occasional short jog. The discriminator for the beneficial use of sports drinks is your physiological need. For example, if you exercise at a moderate to high intensity for an hour or more, you need to consider whether you need to replace brain and muscle fuel, or fluids, or both.
So yes, rehydrate with sports drinks when you exercise for an hour or more in warm conditions, but not too little or too much, or else you will risk watering down all your hard work. And if you exercise only occasionally, and just for a short time, leave the pixie dust to the fairies…
Dehydrated = Mad
Our family has spent a lot of time in the Outback. We have, over the years, crossed 15 of the 17 deserts in Australia.
Way back in 1993, we were at the Three Ways Roadhouse near the Gulf of Carpentaria having a feed. I ran into a bloke called David, who had ridden in on a battered motorbike. We got talking and, after a bit,he told me how he and his mate Ken had ridden their bikes along the full length of the Canning Stock Route a few years earlier.
I was pretty surprised, because this stock route is hard going. It runs some 2,000 km between the top right-hand corner of Western Australia, and the lower left-hand corner, in a mainly north-south direction.
The reason they survived was because they had a rule that they wouldn’t go to sleep until they had a wee.
David (on a 600cc XT Yamaha Ténéré) and Ken (on a Honda XR 500) started at Halls Creek and headed south along the Canning Stock Route to Meekatharra. It took them two weeks.
They were well prepared. They timed it so that their trip centred around the full moon in October 1987. This was so that if things got bad, they could ride out at night to either the east or the west, to the nearest town. They rode in two shifts – from 3 am to 11 am, and from 4 pm to 6 pm. In the middle of the day, they rested.
Each bike had 25 litres of petrol in the tank, and carried two 20-litre jerry cans as well. They used 60 of their precious 65 litres getting to Well 35. (There are 51 wells, from Well 1 at the southern end to Well 51 at the northern end.) They had arranged for a 200-litre fuel drop at Well 35, and took on 120 litres, but had to leave 80 litres behind.
They didn’t carry an emergency radio – there’s not a lot of room on a motorbike.
They each carried a total of 20 litres of water, in various containers. It wasn’t a lot of water, but they filled up at the three or so wells that they
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