Sports Drink Nutrition

Sports drinks are gaining popularity among people, especially youngsters, as they give a boost to the endurance level. Recommendation of sports drink is based on a number of factors like type of sport the person is engaged in, its intensity and duration, athlete's nutritional status and many more. Commercial sports drinks that are hitting the market primarily consist of water, carbohydrate, and electrolytes (sodium, chloride, and potassium. Read further to explore sports drink performance facts…

The need for sports drink nutrition also depends upon the athlete's dehydration status. There are sports that cause heavy loss of fluids and it is there where these sports drink come to play a major role, in preventing your body from getting dehydrated. Well, the performance level tends to get adversely affected, owing to the depletion of the body's carbohydrate stores and dehydration, which takes place while carrying out sporting activities.

When sweating takes place during performance of sports, it tends to cause loss of fluids and electrolytes (minerals such as chloride, calcium, phosphate, magnesium, sodium and potassium), thus making the body dehydrated. Dehydration if not taken care of, can take ugly shape by causing circulatory collapse and heat stroke. This is where the benefits of sports drink can be very well understood. When the fluid loss takes place in the body, it leads to impaired performance and the capacity for performing muscular work also declines. Thus, these sports drinks definitely aid in improving the performance level of an athlete, by acting as energy booster.