What is the RDA for a person riding a bike for hours in the hot sun and humidity? The RDA on the label is for the general population, not endurance athletes. Until we know how much of the different electrolytes we lose with exercise, we will have no idea how much to replace, and relying on a baseline for people NOT exercising is a misleading figure at best.

Just think about it logically - Gatorade (and others) tells everyone that sweating a lot means that electrolytes need to be replaced (with their products, of course), but their products actually have very small amounts of those electrolytes. If their products are indeed effective for electrolyte replacement, it must mean that only small amounts of electrolytes are lost and need replacing. If that is the case, then a very small amount of regular food will do the same thing, which means the only benefit to Gatorade is the convenience. If, however, more than very small amounts of electrolytes need replacing, then their products must be ineffective.

Finally, regarding problems from having too much potassium via a supplement, eating a couple bananas would introduce a lot more potassium into one's system and we should have all heard the dangers from eating bananas while riding instead of how beneficial they are.

I should add here that it can be really dangerous to get too low on electrolytes! In 1994 hubby and I went for a bike ride and - for a bunch of reasons - hubby's electrolyte balance got all screwed up and it sent his heart into arrythmia. He lived with it for 8 days before collapsing and was put in the hospital (we were living in Ethiopia at the time). the Ethiopian doctors knew exactly what needed to be done, but they refused to treat him due to the risk of him dying and they had no backup, so we had to get an air ambulance to Israel - at a cost of $90,000!!!!!

So - if you are sweating profusely for extended periods of time you need to make sure you drink! Drink! Drink!

I wasn't the person who brought up the RDA!! People who are exercising are likely to be consuming more than the RDA anyway because they are likely to be eating more food!

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the RDA in this comment. I was talking about dosing.

I'm not claiming one is better than the other. I don't think it matters much for most people (especially people touring).

The electrolytes are only a part of why Gatorade is supposedly useful. (Yes, there certainly is a goal to sell people Gatorade. I would definitely suggest skepticism about manufacturer's claims.)

No one is making that claim.

We don't know which approach is better. I don't think it matters much.

(I don't think sports-drinks are typically necessary for people generally or people touring.)

===============

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/h...rHydration.htm
And...

http://www.brianmac.co.uk/drinks.htm

And...

http://www.brighamandwomens.org/heal...ubID=submenu10

wow... interesting how this thread has gone...

I go with the GA powder when touring. Do I really need it? Debatable for sure. I do like some flavoring though. I also find some tap water to be pretty nasty and the mix makes it drinkable to me. If for that reason alone the GA works. Anything to help me take in fluids can't be considered a bad thing.

Living in the Northwest.... Might have something to do with my water snobbery. Some of the best water in the country comes out of our faucets.. no britta needed. So when I get tap water that comes from a well and tastes like.. something other than water I lose interest.

The powder is cheap enough... The small containers make I think 2 gallons. Enough to last me for a few days or more in hot weather.

I still pound down the fruit as well. Love my fruit while touring or at home.

Many people can't abide the taste of even good water!

I carry this on tour, its a concentrated liquid electrolyte replacement:

http://www.herbalremedies.com/electr...ncentrate.html

One bottle lasted two people over two two-week tours, and I've taken it on several backpacking trips too. Typically I down a cap full, then chase it with some water. I've affectionately nicknamed it MONKEYSWEAT.

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/herbal-remed...2120_651872042

You said "8% is a lot for one serving." You are referring to the RDA when you do that. Anyway, I get the feeling that you are much more interested in arguing than anything else, so I'm done with you here.

You are the one all concerned about quantity and you brought up the RDA for a whole bunch of things.

You implied that Gatorade doesn't have enough potassium in it.

Why does it matter that Gatorade has less potassium per oz than other things?

As long as people get the amount of potassium (or whatever) they need (and they typically don't have to worry too much about it), the amount in particular random foods is not very important.

The fact that one random food happens has more than some other random food doesn't make it better.

I usually have a tube of Nuun tablets and a couple of gels for when I need something other than water and I'm not close to a place to buy something. Does that answer the O/T?

I've used individual powder packets a bit, but they kept getting beaten up in my bar bag and a couple times split open, leaving me with a bar-bag-bottom full of fruit punch powderdust. Add reaching into the bag with sweaty meathooks and just imagine the fun. Riding through/sleeping in bear country smelling like fruit punch is considered poor form in many circles.

I like the tablets because they fizz a little, too.

Like I said, you seem much more interested in arguing than anything else. I tried to explain why I made certain comments. If you don't understand, I guess that's just the way it is.

Wow, I didn't know Spock from Startrek was on this forum.

I guess that's the difference between experience and reading labels.

To the general poster or lurker - if you are reading this thread for information about electrolyte replacement, read the following link instead, or first, then come back and read the thread:
http://www.hammernutrition.com/knowl...wledge-section

which article should not be taken to mean that you have to use their products or you will suffer. But they are exactly correct about how it all works and that, in general, less is more. Remember, they fuel RAAM, Furnace Creek 508, and other LD racers. They get it.

Please notice Nancy_sv's post. My friends who also rode Alaska to Tierra del Fuego had the same experience. Yeah, you get thirsty sometimes. I once rode a century on a candy bar and one 17oz. bottle of water, in hot and sunny weather. That's not much - IIRC, the record for continuous riding without eating or drinking is 278 miles. So it's really all about conditioning.

Which all has little to do with the OP's question, except that it's even cheaper to not buy any of that stuff. I think my friends hold the coast-to-coast touring record of spending $.80 between them. They disagree about whether or not they spent an additional $5.00 on coffee.

"sodium from the beef jerky,"

I'm sure everyone is real careful, but now that I am on a low salt diet (virtually impossible), I am way sensitive to the amount of salt in stuff which ranges from lots to insane, for the most part. There are several levels of discussed intake. One is whatever the government of the day suggests, normally something around 3000 miligrams, but some places higher. Then there is what the average person gets, normally higher, then there is low salt which varies a lot, say around 1000 (three slices of normal bread), then there is what the body actually needs, which is about 250. So in a world were most of the name burgers or a cup of canned soup are 1000-1500, where a quarter sized piece of peparoni can be 20% of recomended, the problem for most people isn't getting enough salt.

Cheap shot, and a mistaken one at that. My interest in this subject comes from a long use of electrolyte replacement products and how they actually function.
That is a very informative link - thanks for posting it.

But, don't mistake the sponsoring of an event to mean that they get it or that they are necessarily more credible for such a sponsorship. Sponsoring is a business process, not a scientific one.

It has to come down to reading labels because there are so many product recommendations out there that you can't possibly try them all. Personally I like the Emergence C when I'm hiking and use it like OJ in the morning since I can't possibly carry a gallon of OJ. Throughout the day I just hope to get what I need from food. I may have another pack of mix at night.

My wife on the other hand likes Elete. Eye dropper size bottle that you put 10-15 drops per quart. Works well but make your water taste salty which I don't like. But she eats healthier than I do to.

The key is to find what you like and stick to it. I wouldn't experiment on a ride or a hike. Sucks to find out that the new drink doesn't agree with your stomach and you spend 1/2 your day squatting.

A big part of sports drinks are mental. MOst of the better known brands supply what you need and are a good supplement to a good diet. But if you have convinced yourself that Brand A will give you superhuman power, then use Brand A.

I fight fires in the summer time and have been dehydrated on numerous occasions. Mostly from poor diet, it is hot, your fully clothed and sweating like a pig and it seems like you can't get enough water or food. It is cases like that, that I started using drink supplements and have convinced myself to use them for all physical activity. I have had several Dr's tell me that 25% of total fluid intake is a good ratio for sports drinks. Like I said I don't like the sugar but if gatorade is all I have I will dilute it with a few quarts of water. Give's the water a little flavor and I don't get that sugar blast all at once.

Not a cheap shot. I just picked on you because you didn't seem to know how they function. Many of the riders posting on this thread seem to have very little experience using a variety of these products, or even understand how they work. One may comment on a product without me grousing about it when they have used same on a hot, mountainous 400k brevet or similar. Even a short ride like RAMROD can count. Or ridden a thousand miles on a single tour while using a product - takes longer to accumulate experience on a tour because the demands are so much less.

Comments on these forums are best when they are from personal experience, not from supposition. Disclaimer: I have only used Endurolytes, Gatorade, Cytomax, and HEED on brevets. Stoker uses Endurolytes, Cytomax, and Tums.

Hammer's sponsoring or not is uninteresting. The point is that they developed their products while working with racers and that these riders use their products while racing under the most difficult conditions imaginable. They wouldn't if they didn't work. Racers also use other products. If one is interested in this subject, one might try asking other LD racers what products they are using. Lots of useful information to be gained that way. NUUN and Ensure are common. However, as Nancy points out, for touring they are pretty much unnecessary. Wrong forum. LD racing is another story.

Hmm, how about doing an Ironman triathlon, and not just to finish, but to compete within one's age group? Go do a 112 mile time trial (after a 2.4 mile open water swim) under 5 and half hours and then run a 3:30 marathon and let me know how it compares to a brevet. Those speeds, if you're unfamiliar with them, were fast enough to qualify for the Hawaiian Ironman, which is a world championship event. Brevets and many of the long rides that people discuss around here certainly can be demanding, but the emphasis is not on head to head competition and pushing one's body to the limits during that competition in order to stay on the edge between speed and physical breakdown. I'm not trying to get into a pissing match over who has more experience, but I do get rather annoyed whenever questions are assumed to be coming from a total lack of inexperience. As such, perhaps you should try a tactic different from "picking on someone."

This doesn't mean anything. If it wasn't them, it was somebody else paying for their expenses. While they may have done their trip cheaply, it wasn't as cheap as "$.80" or "$5.80".

If you mean that they were occasionally guests in other people's houses and ate their food without paying for it, and occasionally stayed under someone's roof without paying for it, I guess technically that's true. But they're not remittance men. And mostly they camped. Those are their real expenditures, including bike stuff. I mentioned that to get people thinking, "well, how did they do that?" and to emphasize that tourers don't need specific products to ride their bikes, or even specific bikes.

Well then, please tell us what products you've used during your racing and training and what you found good and bad about them. Other than that you hate them all after! I think questions are great, and what these forums are all about, the precursor to sharing. Statements without experience, not so much.

So getting on with the program:

Cytomax: Used it for years, but it has to be full strength to even begin to keep up with energy expenditures. Full strength meant I couldn't back off when I got sloshy belly, which caused me to almost bonk a couple of times. Plus it paid for about 1/5 of my dentist's new Mercedes.

Gatorade: Tastes nasty to me, so I couldn't drink enough of it. Maybe because of that, or maybe because of its formulation, I seemed to go slowly downhill with it.

HEED: It's OK. Much better in the mouth than the first two. At a strength/flavor I can tolerate, it doesn't keep up with energy expenditures but it's good otherwise.

Endurolytes: With these, I use maltodextrin + whey protein: Great for energy, no electrolytes, hence the Endurolytes. Spiz, Accelerade, Sustained Energy, and Perpetuem fall into this category. When riding hard, I found I prefer to separate the three nutrients: water, food, electrolytes. This is maximum silly for touring, but you could use Ensure or Ensure Plus. Put half a dozen bottles in your bar bag and ride for 10 hours on them. Still pretty silly, but something to consider if you think you'll have to dry camp or have a desert to cross. Drink a bottle in the morning and you're off.

The problem is that we don't know what their trip cost (clearly, much more than $.80). We only know what they spent. There isn't enough detail for people to make any sense out of the "technically" fake "$.80" number.

If you give men $10,000 to fund my trip, I guarantee that I will spend even less than your friends!

From my personal experience of doing triathlons, I don't think there is much difference in the products. Some people, however, do seem to have trouble digesting certain types, but it never bothered me. I just drank whatever sports drink the race offered and ate whatever food was available, which was usually bananas and other fruits. Sometimes cookies and other "regular food" Longer races (i.e., Ironman distance) usually have a feed station on the bike (can't remember if they had one on the run) where you can pre-pack whatever 'special needs' you think you might need. Sometimes I put in some food that I wanted, but it really only served to break up the tedium of eating bananas all day.

Anyway, I didn't say I hated electrolyte supplements. I said I was going to rely on regular food for electrolyte replacement. I don't do any long distance racing anymore, so the only time I consume an electrolyte replacement is on a long bike ride, but I'm primarily drinking a gatorade for the energy. I also usually drink a Propel after cycling, mostly because I have a case of it that I am trying to use up. It seems to help, but I don't know if it's the electrolytes or the shot of B6. Not knowing what is happening, but feeling like there is a positive effect, is what has prompted my questions.

As far as saying any particular sports drink is bad, I never said that or intended that to be the point. My point is that sports drinks have for a long time marketed themselves as a value-added energy source for athletes, with the value-added component being electrolytes and vitamins. A quick look at the label shows that they actually offer very little in the form of electrolyte replacement and significantly less than eating a piece of fruit. As I said above, that doesn't mean I don't still use them. I just want to know what exactly is going on.

I have my own mix- 3 pkg's lemon kool-aid (30 cents), 1 cup maltodextrin (nearly free- I got 10 pounds for 3$, and a cup is about 100 grams), 2 cups sugar (50 cents), 1 tsp salt (a penny?), 1 tsp half-salt (5 cents?). Use about 1-1.5 tbsp of the mix in a bidon, depending on how much hydration to energy replacement needed. *Way* cheaper than even the powdered gatoraid, about 2 cents a bottle. Plus it tastes better and works better, IMO.

I've actually got the perfect solution to the electrolyte question. In Latin America (and presumably other parts of the world) they sell little packets of rehydration salts in the pharmacies - they are dirt cheap. We carry 15 or 20 packets with us (they're very small) so we can use them when we start feeling like we're really dragging due to dehydration. They taste AWFUL, but they work. cheap and effective!!

+1

Except I either leave out the regular sugar or just use a light sprinkling for a bit of flavour.

OK,
this thread is really stupid, but the biochemistry PhD in me feels the need to clarify a few things here.

Pure water (H20) does not conduct electricity. It must have dissolved ions (charged particles) to conduct electricity.
This is why the charged ions (usually dissociated ionic salts) are called electrolytes.

Any charged compound dissolved in water is therefore an electrolyte... For example, table salt (sodium chloride) when dissolved into H20 dissociates into Na+ (sodium) and Cl- (chloride)...
Low-sodium salt substitute (a mixture of potassium chloride and Sodium chloride) will produce Na+ and Cl-, as well as K+(potassium) and Cl- in solution...

When you sweat hard, you will lose mostly sodium and chloride, as well as a little bit of potassium. Obviously, this is in addition to the water in your sweat and exhaled breath.
Lick your sweaty arm- tastes salty right?

in theory, you want to replace some of these salts... but really this is only an issue if you are drinking only water all day, sweating very profusely and do not eat anything.

Glucose is not an electrolyte. it does not dissociate into charged (ionic) components when put into solution- it is only there to make the gatorade sweet and to give kids and lazy adults diabetes...

So, like I said upthread, add a bit of table salt and a bit of lemon juice to your water, and voila! electrolyte substitute. Doesnt taste sweet like gatorade, but the sugar is just simple calories anyway...

Alternatively, eat any processed food in America, and you will have more sodium than you need...

The people saying all you need to do is eat food during the day while drinking water are absolutely correct.

EDIT: to clarify, Maltodextrin is also NOT an electrolyte- just easily digested sugar. Again, cheap calories for people who cannot, will not or choose not to stop to eat (racers, randonneurs etc). However, this being the TOURING forum, these categories of competitors are clearly irrelevant.

/thread.

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/05...mythology.html

http://joefriel.typepad.com/blog/page/2/

================

http://joefriel.typepad.com/blog/page/3/

That you for that link! My experience also. My wife has frequent night cramps which may or may not be related to hard exercise. Tums fix them right up. Don't know why, but something similar to the pickle juice thing. We have been taking potassium caps (99mg) morning and night, hoping they would help to ward off the cramps. Sort of like a totem. Never worked. A few days ago, we discontinued the potassium. Cramps are mostly gone. But we discontinued some other stuff, too, so the jury is out. We'll keep experimenting.

I use Endurolytes not to ward off cramps, but to get my stomach to empty during a hard ride. Don't know why they work, but they do. Must be something to do with having similar stuff on both sides of the stomach wall.

If you haven't seen Mark Beaumont's world circumvention documentary, I think he only needed extra salt when he was in India. The rest of the way he ate normal food (mostly vegetarian even) and drank normal water without any electrolyte problems.