Dr. Mike

Hi all, I did my first 50 mile ride today ( I am a newbie). Drank lots of gatorade and am now suffering some moderate nausea that I am not sure is related to the ride( fairly strenuous for me but doable) or from all the sugar in that drink. Is it common to feel nausea after a fairly strenuous ride or should I be looking for other causes?

thanks, Dr. Mike

Maj.Taylor

Ahem...this is a doctor asking this question?

jthj

I would suggest drinking water. Gatorade isn't bad but I don't think it's good to drink it exclusively.

veloclothes

Hi Mike:
Did you do much training before doing the 50 miler? Your nausea could be from a variety of things, including, but not limited to:
- Temperature during the ride (were you perspiring a great deal?)
- The amount and type of food that you had in your stomach both before and during the ride
- The amount of Gatorade that you drank and how you paced yourself drinking it
- How quickly you ate after the ride, what you ate, and the quantity.

Gatorade is ok as a sports drink - pretty good for replacing sodium, but IMHO there are better drinks out there (Cytomax, Extran). Gatorade does not sit well in my stomach, but I have no problem with the others. The times that I have had nausea during and after a ride were

1) When I tried a new drink at a rest stop that I had never had before (I felt like I was going to get sick for the next 25 miles)

2) When I ate too much at a rest stop.

3) When I got dehydrated and overheated during a desert ride and took in too much fluid at a time (2 bottles).

Assuming that you have been using Gatorade with success, look to the other factors and do some testing. Over time, you will learn what you can and cannot eat and drink before, during, and after an event. My rule of thumb is to not change what you eat or drink, or anything on your bike just before an event.

Hope that this helps.

DJ

twahl

My wife and I have learned to cut Gatorade with water. I fill our bottles about 2/3 - 3/4 with water and freeze them, then top off with Gatorade. If it's a shorter ride, we skip the Gatorade. Even when we've ridden in hot weather, we keep the drinks short but as frequent as needed. I'm talking one pull on the bottle. Keep snacks light. We will usually split a banana and have a small handful of trail mix each at the halfway point. This is all for rides in the 40-50 mile range. Not long ago, when we did our first challenging 30+ mile ride, we made the mistake of eating ham & cheese subs at the half way point of a hilly 36 mile ride. It was a painful learning experience.

pearcem

gatorade makes me feel sick due to all the sugar. i reccomend mixing about half gatorade and half water with a pinch of salt. it obviuosly gets watered down so you take in a lower percentage of sugar per amount of fluid consumed and the little bit of extra salt helps your body abosorb the carbs a little better

jthj

I'll also add on my last ride I decided to try propel. It's made by gatorade and has signifigantly less sugar. Looking at the bottle there are 6 grams sugar total (3 servings at 2 grams per serving). Has the vitams antioxidents ect. It tasted pretty good and didn't cause any discomfort for me. You might want to give that a try.

Guest

It could just be overdoing it, seeing as though it was your longest ride yet. It can happen. But as you get used to doing the longer rides, continue to hydrate and eat well, those symptoms should go away. If you continue to feel nauseated, though, I would definitely advise seeing a doctor, since it may be something we don't know anything about.

Koffee

formulaben

Funny thing: I went on a fairly long ride. I stopped at the Quicky Mart and bought a couple bottles of Gatorade to supplement my water. As I'm passing a "strange" looking guy, he yells at me "you're get sick on that stuff!" as I chug away. I laughed at his outburst, but a mere 25 minutes later I had a stomach ache, and later I felt slightly nauseous. That evening talked to an experienced biker, and he said too much straight Gatorade can do that. He recommended a 50/50 mix, or 1 bottle of Gatorade for each 2 water bottles...looks like the kook was right!

Frank B

I've worked as a carpenter's helper in the southern USA heat for a couple of years.

In full sun, in a heat reflective area, in upper 90's for 11 hours a day can get to be a bit rough. There were a good number of days I drank 2+ gallons of water and was still dehydrated a bit.

Best thing I've found is just drink water, at a warm temperature, and drink it in small constant sips. Gatorade and what-not have never seemed to work as well as just plain water. Maybe a snack here and there.

oh, and if you fell crappy and you're drinking alot of water, stop drinking the water and find some shade. You can make yourself feel much worse by just drinking more.


I have a nice littel 2 liter camelback hydration pack that I pop on my back and it works absolutetly wonderfully. Especially for taking lots of small sips.

jthj

I'll second that. Camelbacks are the best thing since sliced bread!

Dave719

I would look at the many factors others have mentioned, to include that this was your first 50 miler and whether you've drank gatorade before during training. Gatorade works alsolutely great for me. But it is mostly sucrose (inexpensive) which breaks down into glucose (good, fast absorbed) and fructose (bad, slowly absorbed). The later may sit in your stomach and cause it to be upset, gas, etc. For me I think Accelerade (carb/protein mix) helps my performance but it makes my stomach upset so I alternate it w/bottles of gatorade. The other drinks mentioned, cytomax, etc., have a high percentage of glucose (maltodextrose, expensive) that is absorbed quicker and is less sweet tasting. For you during a ride of this length, I would not drink just water unless you are supplementing with gels or other easily digested food, you will need the carbs to sustain you for the duration of the ride. I would suggest searching the forum for drink/food/nutrition suggestions especially in the training and nutrition forum. Since you're a doctor, I'm sure a lot of the info will make much more sense to you than it does to me.

BTW congrats on your first 50 miler.

Dave

danch

I had a similar experience on one of my longish rides recently. I got nauseous during the last hour of a three hour ride, then didn't keep on on my fluid intake, which didn't help matters.

Since then, I'm careful to meter Gatoraide and straight water (always more water) and I've been trying fig newtons to give my stomache something solid to 'weigh it down.' This seems to help, as I did 50 yesterday hard enough to give my legs some serious ache at the end but had no stomache problems.

As far as the gatoraide/straight/diluted thing goes, from what I've seen and read, tolerance for sugar concentrations (and the fructose molecule of the sucrose disacharide) is a highly individual thing: some people need to dilute gatoraide, some can do it straight, some can do poweraide (which uses high fructose corn syrup rather than gatoraide's sucrose syrup majority). I'm afraid experimentation to determine what you can tolerate is called for. Of course, such experimentation has a critical flaw in the unavailability of controls: over time, you're body will learn to tolerate whatever you're doing to it.

ManBearPig

I got sick at my first mountain bike race (my racing "career" only lasted 2 races, and I flatted on the 2nd) with nothing but straight Gatorade in my Camelback. I realized that chugging a glass of Gatorade can be refreshing after a workout, but does not work well as the sole means of hydration during extended physical activity.

On my last ride I suffered my first "bonk" in a long while. It happened shortly after drinking Gatorade at the rest stop. I suspect the sugar spike caused a subsequent hypoglycemic effect.

Other things that could cause nausea --

- simply overexerting yourself. I felt like crap all day recently after pushing myself extra hard on a similar length ride.

- messing with your GI tract. My colon tends to get dehydrated on longer rides, if you catch my drift. suppresses my appetite even when I know I should be extra hungry.

Guest

Totally. I know the first century I ever did I overexerted myself. Turns out I did an extra 15 miles by accident, and I was almost dry heaving from the effort. I felt so bad after that.... the nausea was terrible. But now I can do the big mileage and not feel so bad, so I know my conditioning is much better than it was for the first century.

Koffee

Dr. Mike

Thanks for all of your advice and commentary .....funny how there is always a rotten apple in every bunch !

I had been mixing 2/3 gatorade with 1/3 OJ for the added potassium and was eating banannas befroe the race and at the first rest stop. Perhaps it was the PJ sandwich at the second stop? But I'lbe try various combos and see what works. I've only been riding 5 times ( this was the 6th time) previously after a 30+ year hiatus before doing this run.