It's recent history... in 1965 the most famous (for better and for worse) sports drink was born, known as Gatorade; many others have come after it. It was invented in a context linking sport and research carried out at university level.
This too is why the success of these drinks is no accident.
Dehydration during hiking
During hiking or mountaineering, and during prolonged sporting effort, the body loses a large quantity of fluids and mineral salts through sweat.
The proof is that if you don't wash your face after a long hike you'll notice a thin layer of mineral salts on your skin. They're rough to the touch, salty to the taste. These mineral salts also settle on your clothes; you notice them particularly on dark garments, in the form of white rings.
Fluids and mineral salts are lost through the normal process of urination, which is set in motion by the greater flow of blood to the kidneys during effort.
Another way you (unknowingly) lose fluids in the mountains is breathing. Drier air tends to draw moisture from the surface of the lungs into the air we breathe out. To breathe properly, the epithelial surface of the lungs must stay moist, so it draws fluids from the blood, and the cycle repeats itself continuously, continuously taking fluids from the blood.
Fluid loss and a lack of mineral salts can clearly cause a sharp drop in sporting performance, muscle cramps, or even bring on heat stroke (hypovolaemic shock, or an acute drop in blood volume).
The most obvious symptoms of severe heat stroke can be nausea, vomiting, muscle stiffening or cramps and, finally, high fever.
The paradox is that, in trying to get rid of the excess heat, the body tries to dissipate it through increased sweating, with a consequent further loss of fluids from the body.
Why are hydrating drinks and electrolyte supplements important?
Staying well hydrated during a hike is essential if you want to:
maintain good sporting performance;maintain good muscle responsiveness;avoid the heat stroke already mentioned.
During the summer months, when in some medium-mountain areas the temperature still stays very high, walking for hours without drinking can quickly lead to dehydration.
Dehydration should not be underestimated during the winter months either, when you often run the risk of staying too wrapped up to keep out the cold wind.
It's therefore right, and there's no contraindication, to take drinks and electrolyte supplements, whatever brand they are, as long as their salt composition is “isotonic”, or, in plain words, has the same (or similar) salt concentration as the blood.
This will ensure that the fluids pass without difficulty from the intestine into the blood together with all the salts.
So it's ideal to drink isotonic and rehydrating drinks if these also contain a certain amount of maltodextrins.
Maltodextrins are polysaccharides made up of complex chains of carbohydrates. These substances are metabolised by the body at a steady rate, providing a regular supply of carbohydrates during physical effort.
Finally, remember that it's not the colour of the drink that quenches your thirst but its composition. Drinks in overly garish colours should be avoided completely, that is, artificial colourings should be avoided. It is by now well-established news that colourings are seriously harmful to the body.
So the things to assess when buying and drinking hydrating drinks are:
osmolarity (prefer isotonic drinks); maltodextrin content; no colourings; pleasantness and taste.
Important note:
Regarding salt concentration, an important clarification needs to be made about water. Many claim, in an excess of naturalistic purism, that drinking only water is enough.
In reality, drinking only water during physical effort could even be contraindicated.
Water is in fact usually hypotonic; inside the intestine this causes salts to move from the blood into the ingested liquid, worsening the state of fatigue due to the lack of salts in blood that is already poor in them.
If you like, you can buy sachets of powdered products containing sugars and salts, to be diluted in the amount of water needed for rehydration. It's a way of carrying all the mineral salts you need without the bulk of the bottle, which you can fill each time with the water you need from springs and fountains.