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Hydration Guildelines and the relationship with Carbohydrate Loading by Verofit

9/07/2009 9:54:49 PM

Hydration, and more importantly preventing deyhdration, are some of the basic fundamentals you need to understand when participating in a sport such as triathlon. In addition, understanding the relation to carb loading is just as important. Alex Beneres of Verofit has put together some great info.

 

VEROFIT Hydration guidelines

A lot of sportsmen and women talk about rehydration.  Even our own Isotonic Electrolyte Drink says on the label “rehydrates”.  However, if we think about it, that´s a little bit inappropriate, because if we are talking about rehydration, we are already dehydrated. And that’s bad!

 

 

Have a look at the main effects of not drinking enough liquids

 

 

 

Now that we have seen what happens when we are dehydrated, we need to know when the risk of dehydration is higher.  And here 2 rules apply:

 

Other factors affecting dehydration are:

• Duration:  For exercises longer than 1 hour it is crucial to pay attention to the liquid intake to avoid complications.
• Intensity: The harder we will push our bodies the higher risk of dehydration
• Airflow, evaporation and clothing are also related to dehydration. For example, high humidity will stop sweat evaporation, raising the body temperature and requiring cooling clothes.

So now that we know the dangers of dehydration and the main causes, lets look at ways to avoid it.
 

 

 
The advantage of carboloading is in the increasing of liquid storage in the body.  The disadvantage is an increased weight.  Therefore, it should only be used in very hot conditions when the extra water will give us an advantage.

And how to carboload? There are several approaches here and they are a little bit more complicated than just a pasta dinner.  The main idea is to decrease the carbohydrates a little bit, then increase them before the event. For eg, If an average person bases 60% of it nutrition on carbs, they should go down to 50% 6 days before the event and then go up to 70% or higher the 3 days before the event.  We need to take into account that the body can only store the above amounts of carbs (i.e a total of 425 gr glycogen) so it also pointless to overdo it as the extra amounts will be converted into different bits – including fat!

 

 

For more information go to the VEROFIT website.

 

 

Alex Baneres

Health & Nutrition

Hydration Nutrition Sports Drink Verofit