Hydration Blog

The Ultimate Sport Drink? Possibly not.....

Tuesday, April 24, 2022

We were interested to read an announcement that someone in the US has created the "ultimate sports drink" with its own spin on the ideal electrolyte mix

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20120422/NEWS01/204220315.  

This time, the EX5 drink puts in a much higher level of potassium than seen in most sports drink - in fact 7x higher than Gatorade and almost 9x higher than Powerade.  It's an interesting concept because unlike appropriate sodium supplementation, nowhere in the scientific literature has it ever been demonstrated that potassium supplementation in sports hydration confers any benefit.

What's more, average sweat losses of potassium are 150 mmol/L so it would take around 16 litres of sweat to become potassium deficient and that's not likely to happen in a typical training session or race no matter how hot it is if you're eating a regular diet.  We're not really big believers in this one.......not with a potassium load that high and a sodium load of only 5 mmol/L.  The lowest sodium loss we've tested in over 300 tests done in house on athletes is 19 mmol/L so there is no way EX5 will replace losses of the lowest salt sweater....

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