Sports Medicine Direct

Sharon Bell asked:


One problem associated with sports drinks is that they contribute to tooth decay. Dr. Alex Milosevic of the University of Liverpool in England said most products contain high acid levels that can destroy teeth.

In the British Journal of Sports Medicine, he reported the case of a 23-year-old cross-country and marathon runner whose upper teeth had eroded from drinking sports drinks regularly for the past year. To avoid this problem, don’t sip or swish sports drinks. The longer they stay in your mouth, the more damage they can do to your teeth.

Of questionable value too are sports drinks laced with herbal extracts like ginseng, guarana and ephedra (known by its Chinese name ma huang). The US Food and Drug Administration classifies ephedra as a toxic herb and has warned consumers not to buy or take this drug.

Studies show that this herb stimulates the central nervous system and can increase heart rate and blood pressure, cause nerve damage and memory loss, muscle injury, and death in high doses. When combined with a caffeine-containing herb like guarana, ephedra’s side effects become even more pronounced.

Knowing all this is there anything good about sports drinks? So far, the only people who need them are athletes who engage in strenuous exercise for more than an hour or those who work out moderately for two hours or more. In these situations, a sports drink may provide you with enough carbohydrates to fight off fatigue and enhance performance.

Before buying anything, read labels carefully. Avoid those that include additives or herbal extracts. Look for one that contains about six to eight percent of carbohydrates by weight. Getting more will slow absorption and may cause stomach cramps.

But if you ask the experts, they’ll skip all those energy drinks and go for diluted fruit juice instead. It costs less, they say, and offers the same benefits. For those who exercise and are concerned about fluid replacement, water is still your best choice. As Kurt Butler said in A Consumers’ Guide to Alternative Medicine:

“For intense exercise that lasts more than 90 minutes and calls for additional energy, dilute fruit juice, lemonade, or even Kool-Aid or soda should suffice. There is no reason to pay inflated prices for performance drinks. For those who prefer these drinks, there is no harm in using them, and they do efficiently replenish body fluids after a marathon or near-marathon. But they provide no competitive edge over those drinking less costly fluids.”

“Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the illusion that nutrient-enriched drinks help to create – an illusion that they can be a substitute for a balanced diet. Such drinks have a place, but a varied diet that emphasizes whole foods is the only way to get the array of complex nutrients necessary for healthy living,” concluded the editors of On Health.

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Edgar

Sharon Bell asked:


Manufacturers claim sports drinks effectively replace lost sweat. Perspiration, as you know, is the body’s way of cooling itself. In hot weather, you could lose as much as a quart or two of water in an hour.

As you sweat, the heart works harder, your body temperature drops, and your performance declines. Unless this fluid is replaced, you could end up dehydrated even before you’re thirsty and suffer from headaches and dizziness, lapse into a coma and die.

Since sports drinks contain sodium and glucose, they are said to replace fluids more effectively than water and are quickly absorbed from the small intestine into the bloodstream. That claim is trumpeted by Gatorade which supposedly “works 30 percent faster than water.” The basis for this catchy phrase is a study published in the American Journal of Physiology.

In that study, exercise physiologist Carl V. Gisolfi and his colleagues at the University of Iowa tested how well seven volunteers absorbed a six percent carbohydrate solution with electrolytes and distilled water. They found that the carbo solution (which was similar to Gatorade) was absorbed 30 percent faster.

That should have put everything in place except for one thing: the solution was infused directly into the small intestine of the volunteers. It never passed the stomach. Unless you happen to be a Martian, whatever you drink first passes through the stomach before going to the small intestine.

The stomach can greatly influence how quickly a fluid is absorbed and reaches the bloodstream. Unfortunately, none of the various manufacturers of sports drinks appear to be interested in knowing how well their products are absorbed by the stomach. And even if their products are quickly absorbed, there is no evidence that the rate of fluid absorption affects athletic performance.

What does this teaches us? Simply that “the best way to avoid dehydration is to drink enough fluids to offset your sweat loss – a pint for every pound loss during a workout. You should drink before, during, and after a workout. Several kinds of fluids will do the job. Plain water, which is easily absorbed by the body, is perfectly adequate – and is in fact the best beverage to drink before you exercise,” said the editors of Consumer Reports.

The sodium in sports drinks supposedly helps the body retain fluids after intense, prolonged exercise better than water. Promoters of performance drinks say this was shown in a study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine.

However, Edward F. Coyle, director of the Human Performance Laboratory of the University of Texas and co-author of the study, said the differences between the two fluids were minimal. And if you eat a meal within three hours, you can get enough sodium without wasting money on any sports drink.

Another selling point of sports drinks is that they effectively replace electrolytes that are lost when you sweat. Again, this is a triumph of hope over reason. While sports drinks do contain sodium and potassium that are lost when you perspire, there’s no need to consume them since experts say you can easily get these minerals from a good meal.

“The electrolytes in sports drinks have one benefit: manufacturers claim the electrolytes help keep you thirsty and encourage you to keep drinking until you get enough fluid. But if you follow the experts’ advice, that potential benefit is irrelevant. Sports physiologists recommend that you start drinking before you feel thirsty, and keep drinking even after your thirst is quenched,” said the editors of Consumers Reports. (Next: How sports drinks contribute to tooth decay).

To strengthen your body, take Immunitril – your first line of defense in maintaining a healthy immune system. For details, visit http://www.bodestore.com/immunitril.html.



Esther