post-exercise refueling?

[John S.]

Alan, the American Heart Association does not agree with you about sea salt. Too much of it too can raise blood pressure just like table salt.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HighBloodPressure/PreventionTreatmentofHighBloodPressure/Sea-Salt-Vs-Table-Salt_UCM_430992_Article.jsp

"What’s the difference?
Sea salt is obtained directly through the evaporation of seawater. It is usually not processed, or undergoes minimal processing, and therefore retains trace levels of minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium and other nutrients.

Table salt, on the other hand, is mined from salt deposits and then processed to give it a fine texture so it’s easier to mix and use in recipes. Processing strips table salt of any minerals it may have contained, and additives are also usually incorporated to prevent clumping or caking.

While these attributes may make sea salt more attractive from a marketing standpoint, Johnson says there are no real health advantages of sea salt."

[Laurie Ann March]

Some of the best ultra runners in the world come for places where they don't have anything but water. The Tarahumara for example… they drink water and sometimes they drink water mixed with chia seeds and lime.

My doctor is currently in Central America doing a sports med thing. Sort of like a doctors without borders deal from what I understand. Like I said… I trust her and not just in my particular case. Running a marathon or ultra is not an easy thing.

If we are speaking about refueling after intense backpacking… good food should do that in combination with water. There should be enough nutrients in the diet you prepare for your trips to cover everything that your body needs both calorically and nutritionally. I steer clear of some of the UL food ideas that don't encompass a good variety of nutrition and I look for a decent ratio of carb to protein.

At home… well after last night's trail run (hill training), my recovery was water and a dish of yogurt with 2 tablespoons of chia seed mixed into it.

[John Jensen]

Thanks for the comments, Alan. They make sense to me, as a chemist ;-). Actually I like to say I have a rusty chemistry degree. Chem joke.

I do know that my body does not like Gatoraide during exercise. I prefer to just drink water, but for very long or hot hikes/bikes that starts to feel bad too. I'll try the Pediolyte.

On the 45min window, I've heard that forever and do try to hit it … but I kind of think my body isn't dumb. If follow with an off-day and good food, I think it will do the right thing.

[John Jensen]

BTW, my body does seem to like a can of V-8 when I get home.

[John S.]

The normal serum osmolality is between 285 and 319 mOsm/kg H2O. It may differ by laboratory performing the test.

[Nathan Hays]

Gatorade is pure sugar water. If the osmolarity is 900, your body will add water until it is ~300, then suck out the sugar and water together, replenishing the water to your body. Meanwhile, you are losing water to sweat and breath. If the lag time it takes to dilute the gatorade and then reabsorb is too long, you get dehydrated. Drinking more gatorade won't fix this because it only increases the delay. Drinking straight water would help since that both dilutes and adds water.

Pedialyte does NOT contain calcium or magnesium, both essential electrolytes that are depleted during exercise. It also contains SOME dextrose. Dextrose is a monosaccharide which is worse than sucrose for boosting your blood sugar because it only contains a single glucose molecule per "unit of osmolarity".

Immediately upon ceasing exercise, your muscles are trying to replenish glycogen and if your blood sugar is low, that is coming from fat and protein, neither of which is efficient. The result is within 45 minutes everything calms down, the fat and protein burn slows and your muscles settle in on the glycogen level they got.

If you want to increase your muscles' glycogen stores capability and prevent the burn up of your proteins (muscles), you need to dump a lot of glucose and some aminos in your blood asap.

The sweet spot (pun intended) for glucose absorption is with the mid-length glucose polymers found in malto-dextrin. Longer polymers (starches, more glucose/molecule) take too long to break down. Shorter polymers (dextrose-sucrose, one or two glucose/molecule) don't deliver enough per molecule. The important thing is the osmolarity, which is primarily the number of molecules per unit of water. For the same osmolarity, dextrose delivers one glucose while malto delivers about 10 glucose.

You also need a broader spectrum of electrolytes than just salt or lite salt (sodium-potassium). Take at least a calcium-magnesium supplement as well, or choose foods that boost them.

I must take issue with the "nature knows best" meme. If that were the case, then the plague and flu pandemics wouldn't have occurred, we wouldn't get gangrene from untreated wounds, and we wouldn't have famine. Nature doesn't "know" anything – it just is.

Eat natural and healthy, but know what is in what you are eating and why you are eating it. Your body is excellent at working with poor environmental choices such as diet and stress. That doesn't mean it is working optimally or even close to it. Get your vaccine shots, treat your wounds with anti-biotic ointments, and eat to maximize your body's capability.

Since I have switched from gorp and granola on trail (starch, fats, and sugars) to malto-amino sources, I've found an enormous difference in performance and consequently enjoyment of the hikes. Leisure hikes that used to have me huffing on the hills have become like a stroll in the park. Deep glycogen stores let me skip like a mountain goat up short, steep climbs where I used to slow to a plodding pace.

[John Jensen]

malto-dextrin … Guinness is good for you

[John Jensen]

I must take issue with the "nature knows best" meme. If that were the case, then the plague and flu pandemics wouldn't have occurred, we wouldn't get gangrene from untreated wounds, and we wouldn't have famine. Nature doesn't "know" anything – it just is.

Nature has strategies and counter-strategies. I don't think anyone is suggesting a counter-strategy (from our perspective, a strategy from the viral perspective) for health.

[John S.]

The two terms seem to be misused in some posts.

OsmolaRITY- defined as 1 osmol of a nonelectrolyte dissolved in 1 liter of distilled water.

OsmolaLITY- measure of the number of dissolved particles in solution.

[Laurie Ann March]

Thanks for that Nathan… it was interesting to learn a bit more about the science behind it.

[Anonymous]

" No one in the sports drink world has managed to get it right and you're not likely to either."

I've managed to get it right enough to backpack at a pretty decent level in metabolically stressful environments and run one of the tougher trail marathons around twice after having my life, as you put it, "on the line" in my first attempt. I did so by educating myself enough to understand what was going on and devising ways to deal with the stresses I was putting on my body. In my case, at least, off the shelf ingredients seemed to suffice, because I haven't had ny problems since then. I stand by my statement, "close enough for field work" as proven by my own experience. I would apply that statement to a couple of companies in the sports drink world as well, again based on my experience with their products. I strongly suspect they just might have a chemist or two on staff, and maybe even a few exercise physiologists. Several others in the community seem to be doing just fine by pursuing similar strategies. I think you are overstating your case.

[Danny Korn]

"OsmolaRITY- defined as 1 osmol of a nonelectrolyte dissolved in 1 liter of distilled water.

OsmolaLITY- measure of the number of dissolved particles in solution"

Osmolarity = osmoles of solute / liter of solution

Osmolality = osmoles of solute / kilogram of solvent

They both measure the number of disolved particles in a solution; the difference is that one is in terms of particles per mass of solvent, while the other is per volume of solution.

For our purposes, the difference isn't that important as long as you make sure all your units are the same when you compare things.

[Anonymous]

"The Tarahumara for example… they drink water and sometimes they drink water mixed with chia seeds and lime."

With all due respect, the Tarahumara run incredibly long distances in very hot climates. They will require electrolytes just like anybody else. They have to get them somewhere.

" I trust her and not just in my particular case. Running a marathon or ultra is not an easy thing."

Lots of people here have run marathons and ultras. Your doctor is not unique in this regard. Referring back to the article you posted earlier from The Mayo Clinic, and I paraphrase: If you are engaging in strenuous activity for more than an hour, an electrolyte replacement drink may be advisable. I think the experience of most would be that you need to replace electrolytes when engaging in these activities. Elite athletes are probably more efficient at conserving electrolytes long enough to drastically reduce their replacement needs for the duration of their chosen event, but the rest of us would do well to pay close attention to replacing them during the event, as the May Clinic article indicates.

"If we are speaking about refueling after intense backpacking… good food should do that in combination with water. There should be enough nutrients in the diet you prepare for your trips to cover everything that your body needs both calorically and nutritionally. I steer clear of some of the UL food ideas that don't encompass a good variety of nutrition and I look for a decent ratio of carb to protein."

This is fine for shorter backpacking trips and after you have returned from any backpacking trip, but it is impractical when going on longer, unresupplied trips, IME and in the experience of the Arctic1000 crew and likely a few others on this site as well. The name of the game becomes calories, calories, calories, with enough carbs and protein to at least partially repair muscle tissue and support the metabolism of fat.

[Alan henson]

Good explanation of sugars. It's actually osmolality they measure and not osmolarity. The funny thing is when you call most of these sports drink manufacturers, they don't even have a clue what you're talking about when you ask about the osmolality of their product.
As far as nature knows best I think we all know I wasn't talking about the plague. And really nature has a plan(not exactly a conscious one I know) for pandemics. The point is to reduce population to keep it sustainable. It may not be the best thing for us personally but it is the best for the system as a whole. And nature does know far more about the chemistry of life than man will ever know. "The simplest cell in our body is more complex than all the technology man has ever created in his entire history." Quoted from a NASA flight surgeon who's name escapes me. Really my point was you can try all these fancy drinks and types of goo and even pedialyte but you are likely not going to be able to do any better than the simple things mother nature already provides. Most of the sports drink industry is hype, junk and good marketing. It's kinda like watering your lawn with city water and it grows ok. As soon as it rains though your lawn explodes. There's obviously something better about that water.
If you don't mind me asking what Malto-amino sources are you talking about. I use specific amino acids with athletes for recovery in addition to the simple stuff.

[Nathan Hays]

@Alan, I don't think 'plan' is a good word for what happens in nature. Pandemics happen because conditions are right for them. Ascribing value judgements such as 'better' is purely human hindsight. Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that evolution is not progress, it is change that works and that sticks.

And on top of all the discussion of the man-nature dichotomy is the simple fact that man is natural. Thinking, planning, inventing, building, and even deforestation are all natural processes. When locusts lay waste vast fields, it is no more natural than man plowing up ancient grasslands to plant Monsanto wheat. The difference is that man is more self aware and also more aware of the long term consequences of his/her actions. We have the luxury and the responsibility to guide our completely natural actions toward a future we plan for.

In our consciousness Nature has achieved a remarkable ability to reflect on itself. This is nothing new, everything we consider living has an internal model of its environment and mechanisms that react accordingly. Even rocks have a 'consciousness' of sorts in that their internal state reflects the environment around them – an example is a heat gradient when one side is warmed by the sun. Our consciousness is capable of great abstraction – we get to play with our model of the universe in ways completely detached from the reality they started from. And that too is completely natural because man is completely born of and immersed in nature.

And I put it to you that whenever you decide what you want to eat, you are applying your knowledge, experience, and advice from others. You are acting intelligently, humanly, and naturally. If you salt your food you are altering the chemical proportions of your meal. If you eat a banana you are taking advantage of the petrochemical, the transportation, and the financial industries because you have concluded you need more potassium after a long hike. All natural, all organic, all part of a planet waking up and noticing there is radioactive crap in its food chain so it should probably figure out a better way.

The malto-dextrin is bulk, I think made from some starch. The aminos are usually whey, sometimes soy protein. Always searching for better sources, but these are the best so far.

And as for chia seeds, I have nightmares about waking up with a green lawn growing on my stomach. :)

[Mike M]

the school of hard knocks will teach you that w/ strenuous +1 hour activities you will be losing electrolytes to your detriment, the longer the activity the worse off your going to be- straight water isn't going to cut it on long runs

my post exercise drink (talking home not on the trail :)) is a homemade smoothy that contains a cup of nonfat yogurt, orange juice, a banana, an egg, a cup of frozen mixed fruits (buy it at Cosco) that has strawberry, mango, pineapple and papaya and scoop of whey protein

I take three endurolytes caps w/ the smoothy

the taste is good enough I could sell these at a booth :)

[Curry]

In addition to electrolytes, which you can get from an Emergency-C or similar instant electrolyte fizzy drink, you'll need protein. I recommend always carrying the post-endurance event recovery sports drink of your choice that has the right ratio of carbs, protein and fats.

Of course everybody is different so the exaact amount will vary with the size and fitness of the individuals as well as the environmental conditions. IMHO, that means arguing about it here as if one answer fits all is kinda silly and smacks of one-upmanship. And as far as nobody in the sports world getting it right, well I wouldn't tell anybody involved in the Tour de France that! Just because technology is continually changing, doesn't mean the current thinking and products are completely wrong.

Endurox and Hammer Gel make some good ones for average endurance athletes, but there are so many on the market, a trip to the local running, cycling or triathlon store may be in order.

My 2 cents – I'm still fscinated at how many avid hikers on this and otther forums have yet to discover that from nutrion, to shoes, to clothes, runners have been donning UL and SUL items for decades now. A lot of the materials introduced in hiking gear (and priced quite high) have originated from these other endurance sports communities. And better quality items are a lot cheaper in the running stores than from backpacking sources as a result.

So before plunking down several hundred dollars for the latest cuben fiber SUL wind shrirt or rain jacket, you'll be surprised to see what a similar quality SUL runner's jacket sells for – hint about 1/3 the price!

[John Jensen]

Reviewing the threads, I think maybe SUCCEED S Caps (or better, Salt Stick?) might be best for me. I can go with water, and add caps based on conditions or feel. They say if you feel your stomach slosh, you need electrolytes. I've felt that.

Interesting:

Succeed S Tab: 341 mg Sodium, 21 mg Potassium

Salt Stick Capsules: 215 mg Sodium, 63 mg Potassium, plus other presumably good stuff

12 oz. Original V-8: 600 mg Sodium, 670 mg Potassium, plus other known good stuff

Man, I am getting the potassium from V-8.

John

Update : fix copy paste error

[W I S N E R !]

Unless you're toeing the line against Patrick Makau, I really think the average person will get by just fine with a normal diet and simply remembering to drink a lot after a hard effort. I've done a good deal of research and reading on Kenyan distance runners and have always come away absolutely amazed and humbled by how casual they are about their diets, training regimens, etc. They eat regular whole food, not too much, and drink a lot of water. Supplements are alien to them.

I think we tend to SERIOUSLY overcomplicate things out here.

I speak from experience here. I went through Running Overcomplication Syndrome BIG TIME when training for my first marathon (Mind you, I completely failed on that first marathon attempt, didn't even make the starting line. I was so wracked with different forms of training anxiety and injury, my first marathon didn't happen until the following year, only after I learned to relax and start to run the way that felt natural to me). I was out slogging 12 minute miles with a heart rate monitor on, checking my splits, watching my "zone", listening to beeps on the watch, timing my calorie and fluid intake, obsessing over electrolytes, worrying about my footwear, strapping on Batman-like utility belts full of gels and fluorescent colored fluids…

I seriously started feeling like an absolute chump. Those days are over for me (well, I do often still feel like a chump, but for other reasons now). Since when did it become so complicated to simply go out and run or take a hike?

Kenyan schoolchildren would be chuckling at us.

[Hiking Malto]

"My 2 cents – I'm still fscinated at how many avid hikers on this and otther forums have yet to discover that from nutrion, to shoes, to clothes, runners have been donning UL and SUL items for decades now."

+1 I would also add long distance biking especially in regards to nutrition.

One reason that this area seems to have so much varying opinion is because there is a huge spectrum of "need" based on the trips and events that folks are doing. The 10 mile a day backpacker won't have to optimize nutrition at all whereas someone shooting for sustained 40+ mile days had better have all aspect of nutrition dialed in. I know as I have bumped up my level of intensity over the years I continue to find new weak points in my nutrition plan that I have to address. I'm sure that will continue for some time to come.

[Laurie Ann March]

Susan… I've noticed that price difference somewhat with gear/clothing and with items like Clif Bloks and GU.

[Mike M]

Craig out of curiosity, on our GC run were you taking any electrolyte supplements at all? I think my nausea bout at mile 26 was possibly due to lack of sodium (this gleaned from several ultra running articles) even though I was taking endurolytes regularly (1-2 every hour), many advocate a much higher dose- in the neighborhood of 350mg/hour (I was getting roughly a third of that)

next long run I'm going to try a higher dose of Sodium, clearly something was wrong w/ my "plan", I prefer not to suffer through three hours of nausea my next long run :)

Mike

[W I S N E R !]

No electrolytes for me, other than what would be found in gels or some Perpetuem.
I did eat about 2 oz. of Fritos, but that was already at ~30 miles.

I've actually been reading a few interesting articles about eating/drinking during exercise, all by elite distance runners, all arguing for actually training on fewer calories in order to teach the body to require less during an event. Makes a lot of sense, especially as an elite, to want to minimize how many calories you need during a race/hard effort. They argue essentially teaching the body to try to run on less food and water, and to pschologically get comfortable with that. I was experimenting with this during a lot of my longer runs. I really do believe now that you can teach yourself to be too reliant on too many calories or visa versa, within limits. I know I now carry half as much food and water during training than I did when I started. I think people get a lot of unnecessary anxiety over calories. But who am I? :)

On the post-exercise note, at the R2R2R, pizza and beer certainly seemed to be the post run fuel of choice for everyone…I didn't have anything else except a quart of water before bed. Breakfast for me was coffee followed by an IPA :) Recovered just fine.

[Alan henson]

I would have to disagree with your Dr also. I have a doctorate in Nutrition and have treated hi level athletes for many years and I always get a better response with the right portion of electrolytes with plain water. The real issue is how you get that balance. Salt, potassium and magnesium being the most important ones to replace immediately. Calcium is stored in the bones so there is a large supply available. Of course you want to replace it but it's not as important as the others during say a marathon. With the majority of Mg being stored in the muscles it's one of the first to be fully depleted along with salt and then Potassium. You can lose large amounts of salt during vigorous exercise. That's why pedialyte for infants tastes salty(unless you buy the fake sweetened one which I don't recommend). And gatorade has very little of any of this. It's just sugar water. The RDA for potassium is 3500mg and I checked 1 type of gatorade and it has 35mg. And the RDA is too low. Optimal daily allowance for this nutrient is much higher. So 35 is just a drop in the bucket. Sodium RDA is 2400. Gatorade is 110 for sodium.
During a hot race an athlete can lose 1 liter/hr of water and there is about 3000mg of salt/liter of sweat. To get enough salt from gatorade you would have to drink about 1.5 gallons/hr or something like that. You would be severely dehydrated though due to all the sugar.
They have tested the Ironman finishers and 40% of them are dehydrated and hyponatremic.

[Greg Mihalik]

Craig W. said –
"I've actually been reading a few interesting articles about eating/drinking during exercise, all by elite distance runners, all arguing for actually training on fewer calories in order to teach the body to require less during an event. Makes a lot of sense, especially as an elite, to want to minimize how many calories you need during a race/hard effort. They argue essentially teaching the body to try to run on less food and water, and to pschologically get comfortable with that."

Training can reduce your caloric Intake requirements. As you become more efficient your body is better able to metabolize fat at higher exertion levels. Elite women distance runners can approach 50% of their caloric requirements from metabolizing fat. The Total caloric requirements remain the same though.

I don't believe this extrapolates to fluid and electrolyte requirements. Calcium, yes as it can be sourced from bone. But sodium, potassium, etc. are not stored.

[Author]

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