[y498yates]

Have any of you found any quality electrolyte replacement drinks?  The Gatorade/Powerade stuff is too high in sodium and complex sugars.

I did some research and came up with Gookinaid [Hydralyte].  This is supposedly a TRUE isotonic sports drink.  I was just wondering if any of you have tried this stuff yet?  Supposedly, it recharges your system faster than a glucose IV!  My fire department does a huge amount of firefighter rehabilitation at fire scenes.  Currently, when we come out of a fire, we sit down in front of a fan and have bottled water [if we are lucky – hose water if we are not] thrown in our faces.  It sits in your gut like a lead weight and never really quenches your thirst.  Obviously, you don’t get any electrolyte replacement in that manner either. 

We tried Gatorade powder once.  It wasn’t pretty.  One firefighter was so dehydrated that within two minutes of finishing his Gatorade, the sodium in his belly drew just about all of the water that he had left out of his muscles.  He ended up dropping to the ground with massive muscular cramping.  We tried cutting the powder in half, but you would still have a lot of people throwing it back up.

Here’s some info from Hydralyte’s site: http://www.gookinaid.com/health/not-another-sports-drink.htm

[ratlaf]

YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!  Hydralite, in my humble opinion is the best sports drink money can buy.  It has an appropriate balance of sodium to potassium, which Gatorade does NOT have, Hydralyte also uses glucose as the energy/sweetener instead of sucrose like Gatorade, glucose is used directly by the body, and it takes energy to break down sucrose into glucose…

I'm an endurance athlete and i've used hydralyte for years and it does wonders to help rehydrate and recover from a hard workout.  It feels like it gets absorbed directly through the stomach, as opposed to water wich sloshes around until it can be absorbed by the small intestines…

Highly Reccomended!!!

You can order five gallon tubs at the REI.com website.

[Anonymous]

I drink about a gallon of water a day, so I don't have a problem with dehydration…well, when I wake up, I'm really dehydrated, I don't know why.

Anyway, what about electrolytes? I only drank Gatorade when I was dehydrated (I learned to do so when I got sick in Mexico), and it works within an hour. But I don't drink it all the time. I drink water. So…what about my electrolytes…am I good just eating or should I drink this to supplement it…or do you only drink this if you are dehydrated?

[ratlaf]

Your nervous system and your skeletal system need sodium (Na+) and Potassium (K-) in a two to three balance in order to function properly.  Na and K are the main electrolytes, there are others but i can't remember them, but without a proper balance of Na and K, no amount of water will help you stay hydrated, your muscles will shut down, then your nervous system and eventually death.  Gatorade has way too much Na with hardly any K, and since you need more K than Na it actually increases your imbalance of electrolytes.

[y498yates]

Exactly.  [BTW – Chloride was your missing electrolyte]

Additionally, Gatorade contains sugars that need to be broken down into glucose.  This is a process that can cause stomach cramping and general gastrointestinal discomfort.

Berry – for what you are trying to accomplish, Gatorade is fine.  You aren’t blowing through your electrolytes and hydration.  You are also pre-hydrating, which is extremely beneficial.  With firefighters, you are actually treating a medical condition when we come in with massive fluid losses.  It is also much more difficult for a firefighter to pre-hydrate because we never know when there is going to be a call.  Even when there is a call, you don’t know if it’s going to be a false alarm [a high percentage of them are], food burning on a stove, or a five alarm fire requiring high angle rescue.

I just received 2 packets of each Hydralyte flavor for testing.  We’ll be doing a live burn on Wednesday with a search and rescue skills evaluation.  We’ll be wearing full gear in a high heat blaze and heavy smoke condition.  We will be required to search the second and third floors and will need to lug our attack lines up with us – charged [water weighs nearly 9lbs per gallon].  We will then need to find a 150lb dummy and pull them to safety.  This presents an excellent opportunity to put this stuff to the test.

I’ll keep you posted!

[Anonymous]

That’s right. Okay, so since I get enough vitamins and minerals and drink a lot of water, then there shouldn’t be a problem. All I was worried about was if there was some super cool bodybuilding secret where I was supposed to ingest extra electrolytes to supercharge my workouts or something 🙂

[y498yates]

Hydralyte passes the test!  This stuff is absolutely amazing…  For anyone who participates in endurance sports [marathons, biking, ironman, etc] I would HIGHLY encourage you to try this stuff out.  The orange tasted the best to me – kind of like a weak Tang – but didn't have an overpowering flavor.  You could really see a difference in the recovery time between our hydralyte test cases [the FAST team] and our control group.

I also used a couple of packets before and after a wedding with an open bar.  I'll be darned but it really DID help prevent a hangover! [It does not, unfortunately, cure the lethargy following an 8am Tee-time preceded by a 4am lights out!]

Anyway, this is a great product and my department is purchasing a couple of cases for a broader trial.  The fact that it performed well enough to convince our tight-fisted commissioners to actually spend money is a testament in its own right!

[gracilis]

That’s right. Okay, so since I get enough vitamins and minerals and drink a lot of water, then there shouldn’t be a problem. All I was worried about was if there was some super cool bodybuilding secret where I was supposed to ingest extra electrolytes to supercharge my workouts or something 🙂

I recently read The Performance Zone (Ivy and Portman, ISBN 1591201489), and it basically reads like an advertisement for sports drinks but it claims to be well supported by a number of studies.  The basic idea is that if you supply your body with water and the right nutrients during your workout (and immediately before and after), you'll have more stamina, damage your cells less, and recover faster.  Performance Zone is targeted at athletes where endurance is more of a concern than strength, but the authors have another book called Nutrient Timing which I suspect is mostly the same material but packaged for strength athletes.

The other thing they push in this book is including protien in your sports drink.  They have a number of charts graphing different things, but they all say "hydrating with water: good.  hydrating with electrolyte + carb drink: better.  hydrating with electrolyte + carb + protien: more better."

[y498yates]

The other thing they push in this book is including protien in your sports drink.

Interesting.  This is extremely counterintuitive.  You would think that the digestive process required to break down the protein would detract from recuperative efforts.  Isn’t that why we can’t swim in the pool after eating?  😉

I’ll have to look into this.  Thanks for the heads up.

[Axel3.14]

Maybe a banana drink would equilibrate the potassium/sodium equation.

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