In article <
[email protected]>,
"Pete Biggs" <pLime{remove_fruit}@biggs.tc> wrote:
> Interesting article:
http://tinyurl.com/di9y
This topic had been beaten to death in misc.fitness.* groups a year ago.
(1) It's not too much water, it's too little sodium that's the issue. When people suffering from
sodium loss mistakenly keep drinking water instead, they add to the problem.
(2) Hyponatremia occurs in cases of _extreme_ duration activity. The few deaths that resulted
occured in ultramarathons/triathlons and a military boot camp where the victims had ingested
_gallons_ of water with no electrolyte replenishment. When they collapsed, they continued to be
given more water before the mistake was realized.
(3) The amount of sodium in a whole gallon of electrolyte-replenishing Gatorade is about the same as
in a ham-and-cheese sandwich. One can avoid hyponatremia simply by bringing a bag of peanuts or
saltine crackers to munch on.
(4) The "drink eight glasses of water a day" mantra is simplistic, naive, and parroted everywhere.
It appears to have come from a misquoted study where the body was shown to lose/hydrolyze 2
litres of water daily. However, what was overlooked was that the body ingests/ synthesizes 1 l
from food and metabolic processes, leaving a net deficit of just one litre. So it's not 8
glasses of drinking _water_, but rather 4 cups of fluid from various sources.
Additionally,
(5) The body can only absorb water at a rate of about 1 l/hr, so small frequent sips are better
than a huge guzzle near the start. Sometimes it's not so much too much water as too much water
at one time.
(6) While "drink all the water you can no matter what" is simplistic and naive, I've not heard it
really said anywhere, and I suspect it's a straw man argument, at the very least a gross
exaggeration.
(7) Tunstall-Pedoe's advice about "a quarter pint of fluid an hour" sounds like it's for
moderate-intensity activities like hiking or beach cruising, or for overweight New Years
Resolution pansies who are wiped out by a 45 min step aerobics class.
Not _bad_ advice per
se, just inadequate for more intense duration exercise.
Van
--
Van Bagnol / v a n at wco dot com / c r l at bagnol dot com ...enjoys - Theatre / Windsurfing /
Skydiving / Mountain Biking ...feels - "Parang lumalakad ako sa loob ng paniginip" ...thinks - "An
Error is Not a Mistake ... Unless You Refuse to Correct It"