However, where sports drinks do have a strong scientific basis is carbohydrates. <\/p>\n
The body can only store enough carbohydrate for only around 70 to 90 minutes of hard exercise, so athletes training beyond that can benefit from drinks that top up energy stores. <\/p>\n
But, beyond that, Professor Close says there is little evidence that topping up other minerals like chloride, calcium or phosphorus provides any benefit, especially as the body is good at regulating these minerals.<\/p>\n
“All you need to focus on is that during exercise you have enough water, carbohydrates and sodium.” <\/p>\n
Ultimately, electrolytes have a place, but only for longer, harder or hotter workouts.<\/p>\n
He explains that for everyday exercise it’s not worth it, but for prolonged exercise in the heat or if you’re trying to encourage yourself to drink more, then it’s worth topping up your sodium intake with electrolyte products.<\/p>\n
He cautions that there’s no evidence they offer performance gains, no matter what the marketing claims.<\/p>\n
“If you see something promising a 10% improvement in your performance, you know it’s not true.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, where sports drinks do have a strong scientific basis is carbohydrates. The body can only store enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-347601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}