Hack Your Sports Drink: It’s Got Electrolytes!
Aug 30th, 2008 by Rocky
You know you need to replace fluids you sweat out during high intensity exercise but have you heard of hyponatremia? Hyponatremia is a condition, occasionally fatal, which can occur when you replace the fluids exclusively with water and don’t replanish electrolytes needed for the functioning of critical organs? Sodium is the most critical electrolyte, but potassium, chloride, calcium and phosphate are also important.
I’ve been drinking lots of Gatorade when I exercise, so now that I’m on a low-carb diet I got to thinking about how I could cut back on some of those carbs. A quick search turned up lots of homemade Gatorade recipes. This recipe had the calculations, so I used it as the starting point for my hack. Here’s my recipe:
2 quarts mountain spring water
1x 0.14oz unsweetened Kool-Aid packet; your choice of flavor
12 packets Splenda (equivalent to 1/2 cup sugar)
1/4 tsp salt (natural sea salt is best)
1/4 tsp Morton Lite salt
The taste is similar to Gatorade although you can tell that you’re using Splenda rather than sugar. If you do want the carbs, I would suggest 1/2 cup of dextrose / maltodextrin instead of sugar which is 50% fructose (which is harder for your body to digest). I always buy the powdered version of Gatorade because it is made with maltodextrin instead of the sucrose (corn syrup) that they use in bottled drinks.
Calculations for the recipe above:
1/4 tsp Morton Iodized salt = 590 mg sodium
1/4 tsp Morton Lite salt = 290 mg sodium, 350mg potassium
=>880 mg sodium, 350 mg potassium total
=>110 mg sodium, 44 mg potassium per 8oz serving (compare with Gatorade 100 and 30 mg respectively)
The correct electrolyte balance is 3 sodium : 1 potassium; the Gatorade recipe is a little higher in sodium; the recipe above is a little higher in potassium. You can adjust the ratio of lite to regular salt to get a different proportion; I’m OK with the proportion as is because like most of us, I get plenty of sodium in my diet. Perhaps some nutritionist or chemist can post with info on how much, if any, of the other electrolytes are in this recipe.
This recipe is ideal for intense workouts of about an hour or so. If you plan to exercise for more than an hour or two you will want to increase your sodium intake (through salty snacks such as pretzels or chips or pre-measured pinches of salt at regular intervals) to compensate for the 1,300 mg sodium / hour you could be losing.
