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Guzzle It Down!


We talk a lot about the importance of nutrition to exercise.  But it’s time to address another all important aspect of health and fitness: HYDRATION.

Whenever you exercise vigorously, your body begins craving water.  After all, when you exercise (most especially when it’s hot out!) water tends to pour out of your sweat glands, depleting your body of up to four pounds of water in only an hour or so.  And you definitely feel the effects of this when your heart pounds too fast, your body heats up, and your legs are so numbed with fatigue that you feel like collapsing in a heap.  (And often you do collapse, which is when we see so many “sweat angels” left on the rubber floor of the gym!)  When this happens, you need relief, stat!

Of course, you’ll get that lost water back eventually, unless you’re a chronic under-drinker.  But why not do it quickly? If you do, you’ll be able to skip the annoying lethargy and pounding headaches which are associated with dehydration, not to mention cooling your body off more quickly, calming your heart rate, and overall feeling much better.  Plus, getting that water back into your system will restore your blood volume to normal, and that will mean that adequate amounts of oxygen and nutrients will flow to your muscles for recovery.  Therefore, prompt rehydration is essential.

But there’s an art and a science to rehydrating yourself.  Many athletes rehydrate themselves the wrong way.  After competitions and workouts, for example, you see lots of people guzzling down Gatorade, Isostar, plain water, or colas.  Except for the caffeinated variety of the latter, those beverages aren’t bad for rehydration… but they’re definitely not the best!

Why aren’t they so good?  For one thing, those choices are pretty low in salt.  The advantages of extra salt in a rehydration drink were detected several years ago by Dr. Hiroshi Nose and his colleagues at Yale University. They asked a group of volunteers to dehydrate themselves by exercising for 90 to 110 minutes under hot conditions.  The activity caused them to lose about 3.5 pounds of water weight through the sweat glands.

After their exertion, the athletes rehydrated by drinking as much plain water as they wanted in a 3-hour period.  However, for every 100 ml of water they swallowed, the athletes also had to gulp down a capsule containing .45 grams of salt.  The volunteers had no idea what was in the capsules, nor could they taste the salt as they drank.

Once more, the athletes exercised at the same intensity under similar conditions and drank as much water as they wanted for 3 hrs afterward.  Again, they were given one capsule for each 100 ml of water, containing small amounts of sugar this time.  Again, the subjects weren’t aware of what was in the pills. (‘Role of Osmolality and Plasma Volume during Rehydration in Humans,’ Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 65(1), pp. 325-331, 1988).

As it turned out, it wasn’t even a close race: salt was the winner by a landslide!  The salt stimulated greater amounts of drinking: when the athletes took the salt rather than sugar capsules, they drank about 1.22L of fluid during the 3 hrs post-exercise, versus only 1.1L of the sugary stuff.  Of course, getting more water into your body is a key component of the rehydration process, but the other part is keeping the water there once it’s returned.

Why does salt make you want to drink?  Perched under your brain is the hypothalamus which, among other things, checks the salt concentration of your blood. If your blood is too salty, the hypothalamus ‘tells’ your brain that you need to drink.  Once you’ve started drinking, the incoming flow of water makes the salt in the blood less concentrated, calms down the hypothalamus, and decreases your desire to keep drinking.

However, after dehydrating exercise, you actually have two problems: (1) your blood is too salty, and (2) your total blood volume is too low.  If you drink plain water to rehydrate, you address problem No.1; the water dilutes your blood so that salt concentrations come back to normal. Unfortunately, the hypothalamus then thinks that everything is okay and shuts down your desire to drink, even though your total blood volume is still too low.

In contrast, if you drink salty water, salt will be absorbed into your blood along with water, and your hypothalamus will encourage you to drink some more.  By drinking more, you address the No. 2 problem and bring your blood volume back up to normal.  Later on, any excess salt can be excreted through your urine, and everything will be great.  You’ve got enough water in your body and the right salt concentration in your blood, too.

And salty rehydration drinks are also helpful in another way. This may sound gross, but if you drink plain water and simply dilute your blood, you actually encourage urine production, causing you to lose body water as you are trying to build it back up again.  On the other hand, if you take in salty fluid, your kidneys become repelled by the thought of urinating, and you keep more of your precious water on board.

No, you don’t have to drink actual salt water.  You could ingest some salty or electrolyte rich food along with your other drinks as you rehydrate post-exercise.  Or, you can toss a couple of pinches of salt into your sports beverage and drink away!  But better yet, try drinking Nuun.  Just drop a Nuun electrolyte tablet into a water bottle, watch it fizz away, and drink it down!  Because Nuun doesn’t contain any carbohydrate, which slows the rate of stomach emptying, it is absorbed faster into the body than sports drinks with added carbohydrate.  Each tablet contains Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium,Vitamin C, and Vitamin B2.  Plus, they’re rather tasty!

As you rehydrate, remember that you can’t just drink what you sweated out and expect everything to be fine.  You actually continue to sweat, lose water from your respiratory system, and produce urine as you are rehydrating, all of which cancel out some of the water intake.  About an hour or so after your exertion, you should be producing light-colour urine of normal volume.  If in doubt – drink!

Bottoms up, everyone!

Today’s Workout

Buy-in:  dynamic warm-up (10min) – coach led

WOD:  “Classic”

This wod first appeared last year around this time (Feb. 4 2010 to be exact).  It consists of a relatively simple combo of running, thrusters, and knees to elbows but it’s sure to be a great lung and leg burner!  Check myfrantime.com for scores to beat!

Rx:  For time: 

  • 400m run 15 thrusters (65/95) 15 knees to elbows
  • 400m run 15 thrusters (65/95) 15 knees to elbows
  • 400m run 15 thrusters (65/95) 15 knees to elbows
  • 400m run

Zone 4:  scale thrusters to 55/75

Zone 3:  scale thrusters to 45/65

Zone 2:  scale thrusters to 35/45, substitute double crunch for kte

Zone 1:  scale as needed

Cash-Out:  Roll out legs (all round!)

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