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Sports Drinks - Should They Part of Your Diet and Exercise Program?

by: Jeff Smith

Sports Drinks - Should They Part of Your Diet and Exercise
Program?

You've seen the diet and exercise commercials featuring
buff, perfectly tanned, healthy and happy young people
doing extreme exercising replenishing themeselves with
the latest sports drink.

You can't watch a sporting event in North America without
seeing some sponsor reference to one of these power or
sports drinks.

But how healthy are these drinks really?

Starting with a formula of sugar, minerals and salt - the
idea was to replace critical components of your body lost
during prolonged, intense exercise programs.

Should these be a part of your diet and exercise program?

First thing you should know is that the minerals replenished
such as Potassium, are lost over a longer term of exercising -
say more than 1-hour of intensive exercise.

Second, you ingest a great deal of sugar, carbohydrates and
sodium in these drinks, which may not be beneficial to all
those except the most extreme diet and exercise programs.

For example, taking a look at Gatorade, the first in a long
line of sports drinks - we see that an average bottle contains
a whopping 107Mg of sodium and 15.5g of carbs.

Powerade is more moderate on sodium at 31mg, but is higher in
carbs at 22g

Reality is that for the average person who is doing no to
moderate diet and exercise program, water is all they need to
stay hydrated.

Sports drinks to those performing moderate diet and exercise
programs will be consuming valuable calories as pure sugar
resulting in more carbs.

Stick with water unless you are into high performance exercise
programs, and you will get the benefit of hydration without
the excess sodium, sugar and carbs.

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