Hydration is consuming a fluid to combat the negative effects of dehydration, which in turn minimises the impact on how our active muscles and brain performs.
The key to an effective hydration strategy is understanding what you are losing most of and how those losses impact on your performance. The main components of sweat loss are water and electrolytes. The water that ends up on your skin and evaporated to assist with cooling comes from the water component of your blood. Blood is approximately 80% water and as you lose sweat, it reduces the water component of your blood. This is turn reduces blood volume, which means you have less blood available. Your blood is the transporter for oxygen, glucose and nutrients to assist in muscle and brain function.
As this blood volume reduces it impacts on how efficiently oxygen, glucose and nutrients are being transported around the body. Obviously the greater the blood volume loss, the less efficient this delivery will be. Another factor when the water component of your blood is reduced, it changes your blood viscosity. Your blood becomes thicker and your heart needs to pump faster and harder to push this thickened blood around your body.
The other important component is the electrolytes lost in sweat. Sodium is by far the most abundant electrolyte lost in sweat and the reason that it requires the most attention when planning a hydration strategy. Sodium is extracellular, meaning that it is mostly present in the bloodstream and it is for this reason that you lose more sodium in your sweat than other electrolytes.
Potassium and magnesium are intracellular, meaning they are mostly present inside our cells and the amount of these electrolytes are at far lower levels in your sweat. The pie graph below shows the disparity between sodium, potassium and magnesium in sweat.
When we lose sodium in our sweat it impacts on how messages are sent from the brain down the central nervous system to our active muscles. To highlight how important sodium is. If the sodium concentration of your blood drops too low it can cause seizures, coma or even death. This is the extreme and it is rare, but it highlights how important sodium is. If the loss of sodium can cause this much damage, how much sodium do you need to lose for it to impact on muscle and brain function?
The fact is we all lose varying amounts of sodium in our sweat and our applied research suggests that athletes with a higher sodium concentration in their sweat are more likely to experience muscle cramping than those athletes with a lower sodium concentration in their sweat. For those athletes with a higher sodium concentration in their sweat by adding extra KODA Electrolyte Tablets to their water and addressing their needs better, they no longer experience muscle cramping that in the past didn’t allow them to realise their true potential.