Time to revisit ‘sports drinks’: are they really the best for your performance?

Up until now, we haven’t really looked at the role of alkaline ionized water in the process of hydration in the body. Sports scientists agree that in any competitive endeavour, prehydration is as important as post-hydration. The American College of Sports Medicine has a term for it. They say that prehydration allows us to begin our exercise in what they call an euhydrated state.

Euhydration means that your body is perfectly hydrated and electrolyte levels in the blood are perfectly balanced, geared for performance at a minute’s notice.

They say that prehydration should begin hours before an event. This optimizes absorption and also allows us to enter the event carrying the ideal volume or weight in urine. Like a jockey, we don’t want to begin a race carrying excess weight in the form of urine!

But why do we drink water before an event? So we don’t lose excessive amounts through sweat while the event occurs. As dehydration occurs, our system begins to adjust and shutdown certain normal operational functions - just what we do not need fifty yards from the finish line! Scientists determine dehydration simply; they measure body weight before and after the event. A kilo reduction in body weight equates roughly to 1200mls of water loss. Try drinking 1.2 litres in one shot and you’ll understand the magnitude of such a loss! The general rule arrived at by sports scientists is a maximum 2%of body weight loss. After this, you are officially dehydrated.

Dehydration awareness isn’t new. Studies were completed as early as 1940, but recent studies have proven that once we lose that 2% body weight, performance wanes. Down goes our aerobic endurance, up goes our core temperature, our perception of effort even some studies even say we begin to rely on carbs even more than usual.

One October 2007 study says that showed that If you go the the gym you’ll receive far less benefit from a workout if you are dehydrated. This may seem obvious, but do we have a drinking problem or a drinking advantage when we attend gym? Of course we have seen many enhanced waters enter the marketplace with ‘power’ names like ‘Boost’, ‘Gator’ and more. These drinks are usually salt enriched. However modern thought is that the vast majority of westerners have excess salt in their system anyway as a result of a salt laden diet.

So perhaps it is time for a new look at the very best rehydration drink, targeting the true culprits of exercise; free radicals, lactic acid and general increased acidosis and inflammation. Our experience over the last ten years has, unfortunately, not been centred on athletic results of alkaline water, but we do get letters and emails from people who have experienced greatly improved recovery times, less after-exercise pain, and a more even energy. Although we have not done the research, it makes sense that a water with the following qualities would offer far more than simple salty, sugary electrolyte bottles of drink;

· Microclustered; Alkaline ionized water has a far smaller molecular cluster size, resulting in enhanced hydrative ability. Imagine swallowing a grapefruit and a cherry tomato. That’s indicative of the difference between ordinary water and alkaline ionized water in molecular cluster size. It logically follows that this form of water will penetrate cells more effectively and possibly explains why so many people begin detoxifying when they begin drinking alkaline ionized water.
· Ionized; The ionization process reconfigures the molecular structure of the water and provides an abundance of negatively charged ions, which have the capability of uniting with, and therefore neutralizing, free radicals created as a result of exercise. · Oxygen-supporting: It’s pseudoscience to believe that water can hold more oxygen in special forms. However in this form, the abundance of hydroxyl ions may support the correct pH balance of our bloodstream. Few people realise that the bloodstream is our oxygen storehouse. Oxygen is essential for all energy production in the body, and acidic blood has far less ability to hold maximum oxygen levels. The best alkaline blood level means the highest ability to supply oxygen from the blood to the body.
· Alkaline: There are always alkaline minerals in our tap water but they are always mixed with acid minerals. This means that drinking alkaline enriched ordinary water still gives you the bad acid minerals along with the good alkalis.
Alkaline Ionized water has acid minerals separated out, thus concentrating the natural alkaline minerals like magnesium, calcium, and potassium in the end product.

I suppose you have heard that we should drink 8 glasses of water per day. On research, this has no scientific basis. But drinking alkaline ionized water really upsets the beliefs about how much water to drink for maximum hydration, because of its vastly improved hydration ability.

When asked what is the ideal, I simply answer ‘Let your body tell you. As you alkalise and move out of the health-threatening acidic life, your body will begin to ‘talk’ to you again, and my own ‘measure’ of hydration is based on how much I urinate. My body is telling me what I need.

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