How to make a homemade sports drink and what to understand about hydration in sports?
In the ranking of importance for sports health and performance, hydration is bidding for the top positions, and is largely forgotten. Therefore, here I present a recipe for homemade sports drink, but before a brief explanation of the physiology of hydration-dehydration.
Understanding hydration in sportsThe recommendations on how the athlete should hydrate has been greatly modified. Since the 1970 New York Marathon, where scientists discussed the role of hydration in sport and recommended consuming as little as possible, until today that "if you lose X amount of body weight, the race ends in the hospital", there is a pretty big jump. The recommendations of the amount of liquid to eat in the athlete's diet will continue to change, so we must base ourselves on what is proven and not be guided by the head of marketing.
The human body has a certain percentage of water, which will depend on the type of tissue and the age of the person. Always, the body will react to the different changes in hydration to maintain it as long as possible through different systems such as Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone, which will stimulate or not the reabsorption of water and sodium at the renal level, which produces the feeling thirsty The balanced state of hydration that the body tries to reach is known as euhydration.
Today, there are different recommendations to find out how much liquid a person should consume while active. The simplest and most effective way is to know the rate / hour of lost liquid:
- You must weigh yourself before the training or event,
- Carry out the training and count how many minutes were
- Go back to weigh yourself.
- Calculate the difference in weights and divide it by the number of minutes
- Using a simple rule of 3, calculate the rate at one hour.
- In this way we are knowing for your body, for that activity, at that temperature and relative humidity of the environment, how much liquid it loses. This can (and should) be done in different conditions, activities, and climates to estimate what your rate of sweat and lost fluid is. Do not forget that if you drank some liquid during the activity, this should be added to the final equation, in exactly the same way, weight before and after and by difference, it is what was taken.
It is easy, but if you get bad with the numbers or want to do these calculations automatically, in the Basic Kit there is a spreadsheet to calculate dehydration as a free tool.
For the large mass of people, this calculation is sufficient, doing it repeatedly and in different conditions will give us a good parameter of how you should hydrate. But if you are one of those who like to have everything exactly calculated, this calculation has some errors that can easily be eliminated. For example, as we know what your exact weight is, being that if you train in the morning you will have one weight, and if you train in the afternoon you will have another; one hot day you will have a weight, one cold day you will have another.
To eliminate this error and be able to know your exact weight (as much as possible), we must evaluate the weight periodically when you get up, after at least 7 measurements we can average weight, and thus we would be getting a little closer to your exact weight.
There are more precise options that can be done before training. With a urine specific gravity meter, you can assess how you feel before or after training.
Normal levels: 1002 - 1028> 1028 there is already talk of a dehydrated person.
In addition to the state of euhydration when starting with a training or competition and the weight lost due to perspiration, there are other variables in an activity weight loss equation that are less important but should be taken into account if possible. I am not going to extend beyond naming them, because each variable deserves an entire post, and this one is about drinks.
Loss due to breathing Height, weight, Acclimatization or number of days in the heat (important for athletes who travel to places with different climates) Wind, radiation, relative humidity. Clothing characteristics (thermal resistance, evaporation potential, etc.) Activity rate (metabolic heat production, external work)
For all the above, it is very difficult to make a general recommendation for all people, for all climates, for all levels of athletes regardless of height, weight, condition, adaptation to the heat, and several etc.
Sport drinks. Energy, the key point (?)Sports drinks ended up being (for many) an elixir that can be used under any condition, circumstance, it does not matter. However, these drinks have key points to understand. What is the importance of carbohydrates, what is the importance of electrolytes, what is isotonic, etc.
The optimization percentage of carbohydrates should be close to 6% (between 4% and 8%), in this way, we ensure that there is a rapid gastric emptying, obtaining energy quickly (when we need it). This is why when making a homemade drink, the inclusion of carbohydrates should not exceed 8 grams per liter of water.
Until very recently, it was thought that, physiologically, the human being was not able to digest more than one gram of glucose per minute, which put us at the mercy of 60 gr per hour, which meant 240 kcal per hour.
In a recent research carried out by Jeakendrup et al, indicates that the absorption and oxidation rate of carbohydrates can be increased using different sources, this is because the absorption rate of carbohydrates is limited to specific and different transporters. Therefore, the carbohydrate consumption limit has been increased to 90gr / h using two components; To be able to do it exactly, it must be added in a ratio of 3/1 of glucose and fructose respectively, and fructose should not exceed 33% of total sugars due to gastrointestinal complaints.
Also be very clear that this must be trained. If you are not used to training with carbohydrates, do not try to do it in a competition.
How to energize your drink?Now that we know how to think about our sports drink, let's see how we best fill the bottle according to opportunities and tastes.
Common sugar or table sugar: It is sucrose (glucose + fructose). It is the cheapest way. (It has as detractors those people who demonize sugar but do not know that sports drinks have it) Honey: It will depend on the type of honey, but the typical content is 38% fructose and 31% glucose (+ other sugars). Its use in drinks makes it very appetizing, but its use should not be abused due to the fructose content, as I explained above. Agave syrup: with its followers and detractors, to obtain this product it must undergo a process with a series of chemical reactions. Normally it has 70% fructose, although highly processed ones can become 100% fructose. HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup): Product generated to not be so dependent on cane sugar from tropical countries. Contains 55% fructose. Its use is also very controversial. Raspadura or panela: it presents glucose, fructose, proteins, minerals and vitamins. Cold panela water is a drink used as a natural moisturizer, well known and used especially in Colombia. Contains 80% sucrose.
What NOT to put in your drink? (if you want it to offer you energy and quick hydration)
As I explained before, if the idea is to obtain energy more quickly (depends on the sport and / or strategy), logically we will avoid everything that slows gastric emptying, but I insist that you have to know what you want and what the idea is, for this it is good to understand:
Proteins: Placing proteins in your bottle would be wrong if the goal is better hydration, since gastric emptying will be slower. It would be different if it is a drink for post-exercise recovery in which the inclusion of proteins can be beneficial. Fiber or seeds: Adding seeds such as chia, flax, and poppy give it a different texture and flavor to the drink, especially due to the gelatinous flavor, something that is really worth trying. In particular, I like it a lot and it feels very good, but it was necessary to evaluate well whether it is important to place them or not. With the fiber, gastric emptying will be considerably slower. Fats: Although it slows gastric emptying, it provides a large amount of kcal. Although in a very slow way (carbohydrates do it quickly). Also, trying to drink fatty substances while competing is something that can send you straight to the bathroom, believe me.
Why are they isotonic?
Short and short, explaining osmolarity can take a good number of words, so I try to summarize it.
An isotonic medium or solution is one in which the concentration of solute is the same inside and outside the cell, therefore they have the same osmotic pressure as blood. It is one of the main characteristics to take into account in the relationships of the liquids that make up the internal environment of living beings, since the plasma membrane of the cell regulates the entry and exit of solute into the extracellular environment that surrounds it, acting as a control barrier.
Osmosis is of great importance in living things. The cells of the organisms are surrounded by aqueous fluids, such as blood, lymph, or sap, which contain concentrations of different solutes. Cell membranes are permeable to water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other small organic molecules, such as glucose or amino acids, while they are impervious to polymeric molecules, such as proteins and polysaccharides. Instead, inorganic ions and disaccharides, like sucrose, pass very slowly through cell membranes.
For this the carbohydrates must be in the percentage described so that the drink does not become hypertonic and hinders absorption.
To make Crazy Juice, cheaper, richer and you make sure it has the best for your performance:
I must clarify that the name “Jugo Loco” was born as a joke with some friends in Barcelona, it is not much more than the homemade preparation of a drink that helps better sports performance, like any other of the big companies.
Glucose and fructose mix (you can also use maltodextrin instead of glucose): 50gr in each liter of water. Lime, lemon or orange juice: 150 cc. Baking soda: 1.5 gr (the tip of a tablespoon, or a blister of berriespirin)
In this way we get an isotonic homemade drink, 6-7% carbohydrates, with 0.6 grams of sodium per liter and the taste you want.
"The sodium in the drink I promise that I will dedicate a separate post."
Extra points:Our digestion of carbohydrates begins in the mouth (not the same for other macronutrients) through salivary amylase or ptyaline. Therefore, keeping a drink with carbohydrates in the mouth, or making mouthfuls with it, will already be giving us part of that energy, using this advantage can help us for some sports or situations where you do not want to fill your stomach with liquid due to discomfort, but harness some energy from carbohydrates. In some sports it has been done for a long time, in others such as soccer, it was only at the last World Cup in Russia 2018 that it was seen (or at least more attention was paid to how the players swirled) The temperature of the liquid influences the capacity absorption. Temperatures below 10 ° C will slow down absorption (Jeakendrup, 2011). If the temperature exceeds 20 ° they will not be appetizing. Rule: the greater the need for hydration, the lower the concentration of carbohydrates and the greater the concentration of mineral salts, thus avoiding hyponatremia. This type of drink becomes increasingly important as physical exercise moves away from the first hour. However, in training or minor competitions per hour, it is also useful to swish and not consume much more liquid than we spend.
Hint Fruit Infused Water, Variety Pack, Cherry, Watermelon, Pineapple, Blackberry, 16 oz (12 Pack)
