Water VS Gatoraide VS Poweraide

[AdamKralic]

IYO what is the best fluid to drink during a strenuous, sweat drenched karate session? Why?

[Harkon72]

:Pure Water, that's all the body requires to flush out toxins and hydrate. Cheaper too.

[Wastelander]

Water should be sufficient, unless you are training for a long time (more than 1-2 hours) at a high level of intensity. At that point, eating about half a banana every half hour, or so, will replenish the electrolytes, sugars, and nutrients that you are losing. Natural is better than artificial, if you can manage it . If you have to have a sports drink instead of eating the banana, for some reason, I prefer SoBe Lifewater Zero to the "-aide" drinks.

[JusticeZero]

Water.

*ade is mainly just sugar water. Not good for you at all, I mostly only drink them if i've had a nasty flu and have been having trouble eating.

Worse yet are "energy drinks", because they have caffiene. That raises your heart rate for HOURS, far longer than you would expect. There have been a number of cases of high school athletes and other healthy people like that dropping dead in practice from heart attacks because they can handle the raised heartrate from training, but training + caffiene rush puts them over the top.

[Lupin1]

Powerade and Gatorade are PACKED with sugar. I'll admit I drink "Powerade Zero" (sugar free but still a lot of chemicals I don't need in my system) on hot days in the summer when I'm running back and forth outside all day, but I still limit myself to one bottle a day and then refill the empty bottle with water for the rest of the day. And on days it's over 90 the EMTs ride around in a golf cart with a cooler full of Gatorade and basically make us drink it. I try to limit my consumption of those things to extreme situations like that, though. In most situations, water will suffice.

When I'm home and feeling dehydrated I'll sometimes do water with lemon and a sprinkle of salt to replace lost electrolytes.

[DWx]

IMHO, I prefer to just drink water in normal training and then have one of these sugary sports drinks for a quick boost on long training days.

It's a 10 year old review but this study says:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10739268

Secondly, in studies where a practical protocol has been used along with a currently available sports beverage, there is evidence to suggest that consuming a sports drinks will improve performance compared with consuming a placebo beverage. Finally, there is little evidence that any one sports drink is superior to any of the other beverages on the market.

However this study suggests that you re-hydrate better on Gatorade than you do on just water or just fruit juice-water:

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/17693686/reload=0;jsessionid=rrjekDh6ZAboAomd89b1.2

Four hours after rehydration, the subjects were in a significantly lower hydration status than the pretrial situation on trials with Apfelschorle (-365 +/- 319 mL, P = 0.030), Evian (-529 +/- 319 mL, P < 0.0005), and San Benedetto (-401 +/- 353 mL, P = 0.016) but were in the same hydration status as before the dehydrating exercise on Gatorade (-201 +/- 388 mL, P = 0.549). Sodium balance was negative on all trials throughout the study; only with Apfelschorle did subjects remain in positive potassium balance. In this scenario, recovery of fluid balance can only be achieved when significant, albeit insufficient, quantities of sodium are ingested after exercise. There is a limited range of commercially available products that have a composition sufficient to achieve this, even though the public thinks that some of the traditional drinks are effective for this purpose.

This study also suggests you can maintain better when you re-hydrate with a sports drink:

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/H07-18

Pmax was similar among all trials. Gatorade® and Powerade® preserved MVC better than DEH (–3.1% ± 2% and –3.8% ± 2% vs. –11% ± 2%, p < 0.05), respectively, whereas WAT and Aquarius® did not (–6% ± 2%). Compared with DEH, rehydration with commercially available sports drinks during prolonged exercise in the heat preserves leg force, whereas rehydrating with water does not. However, low sodium concentration in a sports drink seems to preclude its ergogenic effects on force.

So maybe Gatorade/Powerade are better than water for re-hydration?

[Harkon72]

Please don't drink energy drinks to train, I know people do but if drinks contain caffeine or worse you could suffer heart failure as you heart rate is synthetically increased.

[sensei8]

Water.

[barrypardue]

Powerade Zero!!!!!!!

[allenhrogers]

Of course, my vote is on water. It is the safest thing to drink but we must make sure first it is clean and safe to drink. We should not rely on energy drinks, or we should avoid them.