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Are You Dehydrated? Is Water Enough or do you need a Sports Nutrition Supplement?

Are you drinking enough? Or do you need a Sports Nutritional Supplement with sports nutrition drinks. Weigh yourself before and after a workout, whatever weight you've lost during sports participation is all water. Sweat losses of as little as 2 percent of body weight, (or 3 pounds for an average 150 pound person) can dramatically hurt your sports performance. In fact, dehydration is far more likely to slow you down than energy loss, making fluid loading by drinking water and/or sports drinks more important than carbo-loading, not to mention easier.

Our brains are made up of roughly 80% water so doesn't it make sense that if they were lacking in water it's not going to function property. You bet, at the first sign of feeling thirsty, dehydration has already started. And by then, your mental performances have decreased, you are starting to feel sleepy and irritable, not to mention you are distracted with your feelings of thirst.

A study by Dr. Jack Wilmore, an sports physiologist at the University of Texas, concluded that for sport workouts of less than an hour, nothing beats water. But if you're working out for more than an hour, sports fluid replacement drinks with electrolytes (sports nutritional drinks such as Gatorade or Powerade) are absorbed into the bloodstream more quickly than water therefore enabling a quicker recovery.

Nutritional drinks are easy enough to find. Sporting drinks have made their way from health-food and sporting-goods stores to the corner grocery. I have chosen Gatorade as my sport nutritional drink for my runs. I prefer drinking Gatorade at half strength and I like how many flavors to choose from. I am prompted to drink more when I like the taste. By drinking Gatorade, I've noticed a marked improvement during the latter half of a two hour plus run.

Dehydration Facts:

• 75 percent of North Americans are chronically dehydrated - mainly because your body is low on water long before your thirst response alerts you to drink. In other words, if you are thirsty, you are probably already dehydrated, so drink before you are thirsty.
• The thirst mechanism is often mistaken for hunger.
• Mild dehydration will slow down your metabolism by as much as 3 percent. The less you drink the slower you will burn those calories.
• A mere 2 percent drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or a printed page.

Down a quart/litre? Here are five ways to make sure you're drinking enough:

• During sports, in particular running, you can sweat off 6 to 8 ounces of fluid every 15 minutes. At minimum take a healthy drink every 15 minutes.
• Want to be more precise? Weigh yourself before and after sports. Each pound lost is a pint (16 ounces) of water loss. Next time, drink that much from your water bottle.
• Pre-Hydrate. Drink a liter or more of water during the two hours before sports and drink 16 ounces immediately before.
• Drink before you're thirsty. The thirst response comes only after your body already needs water.
• Nutritional-replacement (sports nutritional drinks)? Not necessary during a 2 hour or less sports workout. But if you are pounding the pavement for a 2 hour plus workout bring the sporting nutritious drinks with you.

About the Author:

Jacquie Cattanach is a successful freelance writer and the publisher of http://www.online-running-gear.com. Jacquie has enjoyed running for the past 20 years and has successfully completed many marathons and triathlons including Ironman Canada.