Ouch! i like the ingredients, but $90/30-pack?
The price has been around $9.00 for years....Alacer ran out of them about 3 months ago, along with the buy out by Phizer...
I think this $90 price is some company trying to exploit an unfortunate situation....Assuming they show up at all the Health food stores in early June as Alacer is saying on the phone...they will be back to around $9.00
---------- Post added May 18th, 2015 at 11:45 AM ----------
Back when I was coaching basketball, I took a course in nutrition for athletes at a local university. We covered sports drinks in class. We looked carefully at a study conducted by one of the world's leading sports physiologists. The purpose was to identify the best drink for athletes while they are competing. The study was sponsored by Gatorade, which back then had near monopoly status in this area. They obviously sponsored the study in anticipation that they would be pronounced the winner. That is not what happened, though.
According to the study, the concentration of salts in sweat is significantly less than the concentration of salts in the body. In other words, as salty as sweat is, when you perspire you are actually losing a much higher percentage of water than salts. As a result, the electrolyte concentration in your body has become tilted toward the salts--your problem is too much salt, not too little. The study concluded that the critical need at this point is to get more water into the body to restore the proper balance. Salts can be restored later. The study concluded that the best drink during athletic competition is water.
That was a while ago--a couple decades in fact. So what do people think today? I haven't read any recent studies, but our local television ran a public service ad for a while about a year ago on this topic. It said roughly the same thing. Drink water for short term athletic events, and use drinks containing electrolytes for long term activities (distance running, etc.). You can also read the link I posted above for recent thinking.
I have experimented with sports drinks with the competitive cycling I have been in since the 80's.
For a 25 mile time trial effort, one hour or less at anaerobic threshold....( most you can sustain for an hour)...Water works best.
For races at just under AT efforts, lasting up to 2 hours...I would say some minor benefit occurs if you have been using a very low concentration of electrolytes ( not sodium) with a small amount of protein and certain low sugar carbs....but in small quantity...this really only has an effect on the very final sprint in the race, after maybe 2500 calories have already been burned. Massive amounts of sweating have occurred, and 3 or 4 water bottles worth of water have been consumed, and the riders are still dehydrated at this point....This is so far beyond what divers could ever lose on a dive boat, it is silly.
In 100 mile rides, at paces of 23 mph to 25 or above with a group in a paceline....a good sports drink will make a large difference by the end...much less or zero cramping, and better explosive sprints at the end. Figure this is from huge exertions that last from 4 hours to 5 or more. Heart rates at 75 to 92% , though probably averaging closer 75 or 80% for the 4 or 5 hour duration--with some intervals where it can approach 90% for 4 to 10 minutes before the group slows down.
Hydra fuel by Twin lab was awsome for this....and not available for over 6 years now....H20 Overdrive was pretty good, but not widely available any more either....All of the main drinks are poor for racers...leading many to create their own mixes.
I once did a Cross florida tour ride with about 30 other racers.....this was in the 90's when we had Hydra fuel....I was averaging around 27 mph with a nice tail wind, and pulling most of the first 3 hours. My heart rate had been averaging at 165 to 170 bpm ( my Anaerobic threshold then was 192 and max HR was 205)....So with about an hour left, near Punta Gorda, I ran out of my own Hydra Fuel, and had to use Powerade at the sag stop.....Within 5 minutes, my Heart rate jumped up 20 beats to closer the 180's, and percieved exertion went through the roof--this was from the enormous insulin spike all the High fructose corn syrup in the Powerade caused....and the hypertonic mix of high sodium and other electrolytes, actually pulled water out of my muscle cells, and began making me cold...and less able to produce high power output.....This essentialy shut me down so that 20 mph was about the same effort as 27 had been before.
