Tag: hydration

Posted on

How to drink during exercise: gulp, don’t sip

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

***

From an interesting interview with University of Pittsburgh sports nutritionist Leslie Bonci, the author of Sports Nutrition for Coaches, in the New York Times:

Q: Should we keep sipping fluids while we’re exercising?

A: How we drink can make a difference in how optimally we hydrate our body. A lot of people sip liquids, but gulping is better. Gulps of fluid leave the stomach more rapidly. It’s important to do this. It seems counterintuitive, it seems like gulping would cause a cramp. People are more likely to have stomach cramps sipping because fluid stays in their gut too long.

When you take more fluid in, gulps as opposed to sips, you have a greater volume of fluid in the stomach. That stimulates the activity of the stretch receptors in the stomach, which then increase intra-gastric pressure and promote faster emptying. This is why gulping is preferred.

Definitely news to me! The whole interview is worth a read, as a reminder of sports nutrition basics.

Posted on

Water, sugar, salt: the key ingredients in sports drinks

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

***

[UPDATE: See this post for a homebrew recipe]

New Jockology column posted here, on sports drinks:

If you’re an old-school type who thinks plain water is all you need, consider this puzzling fact: Rinsing your mouth with a drink containing carbohydrates will boost your athletic performance, even if you don’t swallow and can’t taste the carbs. [keep reading]

The column takes a look at which ingredients you need (and which you don’t) to keep you fuelled and hydrated during intense exercise. I’ve received a couple of e-mails already asking for recipes for “home-brewed” sports drinks. That’s an excellent question, and I’ll do a little research then post something in the next few days. In the meantime, if anyone has any recipes to suggest, please post them!

Posted on

Eating after exercise, and elite-only hydration

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

***

Check out this study on exercise and weight loss that appeared last month in the journal PLoS One. Sedentary, post-menopausal women exercised for either 72, 136 or 194 minutes per week. All groups lost weight, but the 194-minute group lost significantly less than expected — less than the 136-minute group, in fact. The researchers attribute this to “compensating” factors: in other words, the subjects ate more than their exercise merited.

I wrote about this problem, and some of research addressing it, in this Jockology column. It brings to mind an interesting conversation I had last summer with Lawrence Spriet, a top researcher at the University of Guelph, about the difficulties of providing advice that’s applicable both to hardcore athletes and to the general population. In that case, we were talking about companies like Gatorade, who have to formulate their products to meet the hydration needs of elite athletes working at unbelievable intensities for several hours a day — but who also know that overweight preteens are going to be chugging bottles after going for a brisk walk.

One way Gatorade addresses this is by marketing different levels of product for different needs — they have G2 with fewer calories for less rigorous exercise, for instance. But what I didn’t realize is that the real strong stuff isn’t even available to the public. For college and professional teams, they offer GatorLytes, which are sachets of electrolyte mix that look like the salt or sugar packs you get at a diner, specially formulated so that you can add them to regular Gatorade without messing up the flavour. Unfortunately, you can’t really take that approach with most exercise and nutrition advice: “What, you’re not a professional athlete? In that case, we can’t tell you about this fantastic new exercise.” So we have to be as careful as possible to ensure that the studies we read are really applicable to us, and not just to a tiny subset of the population.