Posts Tagged ‘Hydration’

Sweat can be a sloppy nuisance, a sign of hard work, a stinky indication of poor hygiene, and a body-cooling lifesaver. In fact, it’s likely that sweat has been and will continue to be all of those things for anyone who is physically active, especially during warm weather. Sweating helps us survive in jungles and deserts, on athletic fields and gymnasium courts, on farms and construction sites, and in fitness centers and saunas. Most people know very little about sweating, yet sweating is one of our body’s most indispensable responses to physical activity.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. So goes the old saying intended to convey the futility of trying to get people to do things they are unmotivated to do. As it turns out, there is a fair amount of unintended science behind that time-worn idiom.

Simply put, no prescription medication or dietary supplement is powerful enough to produce the myriad
benefits of regular physical activity. Whether you prefer to call it training, working out, exercising, being active, or just plain moving, almost anything you do beyond being a couch potato will benefit your health. Not surprisingly, when it comes to health benefits, more activity is better than less activity, but just how active is active enough?

This document provides a brief review of relevant scientific literature pertaining to the value of adequate fluid and nutrient intake before, during, and after vigorous physical activity in which sweat loss occurs.

These tips on hydrating and fueling will help you get the most out of your body during training and competition.

Staying well hydrated during exercise improves performance and safeguards health by defeating dehydration. Here is a list of hydration tips and facts that can benefit anyone who works up a sweat.

This handy chart lays out hydration options across the activity spectrum – from sedentary couch potatoes to ultra-endurance athletes.

Sweating doesn’t do much to remove toxins from the body, but it is the body’s most important avenue for heat loss during physical activity and heat exposure. But there is a price to be paid for sweating and that price is dehydration, unless enough fluid is consumed to offset sweat loss.