"Sports drinks"

[Sandie7]

Are they ok to drink before and after diving ? Are they better than water ?

 

[CT-Rich]

Sports drinks are pretty much universally unnecessary. They have way more electrolytes and sugar than the average person doing normal outdoor activity need. If you want to use one dilute it 10:1 with water. Manufacturers make them the way they do because if they made them in a way that really was good for you, they would barely have any taste, so they make the drinks more hypertonic (high concentrations of salt and sugar).

 

[Ulfhedinn]

I drink water and coconut water during my SI at least a 2 cups each. Simple.. No need for sports drinks.

 

[NWA395]

No issues before, on vacation dives I prefer ice cold beer after.

 

[dmaziuk]

I think the basic idea is you sweat out electrolytes (salts), you want to get some back in. Normally you'll get them from salts in your food, but if you sweat a lot you might want to add more. Usual reasons for sweating a lot are working out and hot weather.

I buy powdered gatorade and dilute it in mineral water, pref. with high magnesium content (got Appolinaris, anyone?) as the workout drink. That way I get no BVO (though if you're in EU that's a non-issue) and the amount of sugar I actually like: about 1/3rd of what's "normally" in. I also drink coconut water fairly often.

Not specifically when diving, though: when I dive the goal is to work (and sweat) as little as possible.

 

[knotical]

Before someone posts the old myth about sports drinks dehydrating you, read myth #2 here: Six Famous Myths of Scuba Diving - New Jersey Scuba Diving

takeaway: what do you enjoy? drink that.

I dilute my Gatorade 2:1 because I’m cheap.

 

[kelemvor]

Huh.. learn something every day, I guess. Thanks, knotical!

 

[RJP]

I'll frequently fill a cooler jug/bottle with ice, and then top that off with Gatorade or something similar. By the time the ice melts the drink is still cold and is watered down to a point that it less sweet (and cheaper) than the manufacturer intended.

 

[Laurie S.]

Water before and during, beer afterwards.

 

[Storker]

Sports drinks are pretty much universally unnecessary. They have way more electrolytes and sugar than the average person doing normal outdoor activity need.

Sugar, yes. Salt, au contraire.

Manufacturers make them the way they do because if they made them in a way that really was good for you, they would barely have any taste, so they make the drinks more hypertonic (high concentrations of salt and sugar).

Not quite. If you're excercising vigorously, you actually need more salt than they put in those sports drinks. But if the manufacturers put enough salt in the drink to really replace the salts you lose through heavy perspiration, it'd taste brackish and people wouldn't buy it because of the crappy taste.

Thin lemonade or diluted soft drinks are just as useful as those sports drinks. And since quite few of us excercise long and hard enough to really need those carbs to fill up depleted glycogen stores, we would be better off by cutting out the sugar as well and drink plain, old-fashioned water.

BTW, a big glass of plain chocolate milk is a great "restitution" drink after excercise and a lot cheaper than those powder formulas. It's got water, carbs and high-quality protein in pretty nice proprtions...



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