Gatorade and Upset Stomach
 

I've been just drinking plain water, but now that my rides are starting to get longer I decided that maybe I should try a sports drink with a little more than just h20. Today was the first day I drank gatorade instead of water and by the end of the ride my stomach was not feeling well and it continued for about the next hour.

Is this a common problem with a simple solution or should I be drinking something else? I was thinking about mixing half water and half gatorade, any ideas?

Thanks
James

I usually go half and half on my gatorade / powerade.

Try Smartwater.

Gatorade use to do that to me, so I gave up on drinking it.

switch to HEED - avoid drinks with high fructose corn syrup. HEED (Hammer Nutrition) works well for many.

+1 for HEED

gatorade is way too sweet for me. have to cut it to at least 50/50 or 60/40 water/gatorade.

Gatorade gives me an upset stomach too. I try to avoid drinking it. I just stick to water and fruit.

I'd suggest trying a different sports drink--sometimes it's just a matter of a certain type of drink not agreeing with you. Ditto to the person who said stay away from high fructose corn syrup, not necessarily because of the GI upset (although it may be that the HFCS is indeed what's causing problems for you) but because it seems to be an especially unhealthy form of sugar due to how the body processes it. You can find recipes online for making your own sports drinks, also.

Premixed gatorade has a lot of fructose in it, and because the absorption rate of fructose is limited, it can easily cause stomach distress. The powdered stuff is better, because it doesn't have the fructose, but it's too sweet for most people to tolerate.

The real sports drinks are pricier, but they work a lot better. I use accelerade, but most people need to try a few before they find one that they like and works for them.

I don't know one person that doesn't get an upset stomach drink full strength Gatorade.
What about making your own?
Use the search for homemade sports drinks.
Or google that.
Loads of them out there and you can try and find one that tastes good and doesn't upset the tummy.

Try HEED or Cytomax. Gatorade is junk.

With the exception of lemon-lime Gatorade, I gave up on magic sports drinks eons ago. And i've tried them all. But purely by accident i found my perfect ride elixer.

1/2 water
1/2 cranberry juice

There is always a bottle of the stuff in the fridge (along with vodka).

What i like about it is that it doenst taste awful after getting warm.

Heed works for me, with gatoraide I get stomach cramps after about 4 hours. With heed, never had a problem on long rides.

Once my ride intensity raised, I found that Gatorade gave me major GI troubles and switched to Gu2O (orange flavour) which has actually done me quite well no matter what the distance, but I don't use their recommended mix ratio. I keep it at about 1 scoop/16oz of water. I've also found that drinking it sparingly while ingesting mostly water helps to avoid the GI upset as well.

On my last half century, I tried the powdered PowerBar drink mix (not bad, but a little too sweet - probably need to do the same mix ratio as with the Gu2O) - in one bottle, with plain water in the 2nd. Blew through 3 bottles of the plain and only had half the PowerBar drink finished by the time I rolled over the finish line. No GI problems, no dehydration.