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Saturday, November 4, 2017

Sweat and Sports Drinks

Electrolytes are important to feeling well and to keeping a regular heart rate.  

The advertising says the sports drinks replace the electrolytes in sweat, so I looked that up. The concentration of Powerade and Gatorade seem to be about half that of sweat. That is not a problem for me since I believe people need to replace their water at a faster rate than they sweat it out. Meaning that water also leaves by respiration and by urination.

Composition of Sweat

Na       0.9g/L
K         0.2 g/L
Ca       0.15 g/L
Mg      0.0013 g/L

Powerade zero has

Na    0.41g/L
K      0.0907 g/L


The chart at right gives numbers from First Endurance, who makes a sports drink give similar numbers for sweat, and argues for a salt heavy beverage.




Sweat has many other ingredients like ascorbic acid (vitamin C, chloride ion, lactate, urea, creatine and uric acid). Link

Lactate was