BionicMan wrote:
Spoke wrote:
Noakes argues the sodium content of drinks makes little difference but that it is the amount you drink that matters. Drink too much and sodium levels drop. He advises drinking to thirst.
http://sweatscience.com/...-noakes-vs-gatorade/
First off, are you Noakes? I just want to understand since it's not clear and you have posted his information many times. Almost seems like a sales pitch.
Secondly, if you drink to thirst, it's too late, unless you are really slow at the event/effort. If I wait until I'm thirsty, I'm screwed. Period.
I have encountered the situation where I drank too much water leading to a 70.3 race without supplementing electrolytes. I got to into a hyponatremic state (or at least darn near it). Ended up in the med tent for over an hour. My caretakers even brought over the rookie caretakers to see what could happen to people when they were severely undernourished.
I received fantastic care (Racine 70.3) and 6 weeks later fixed my nutrition/hydration issues at IMKY when the temps were 92 during the run. I modified my full IM race based on what happened in Racine and I know it helped in IMKY.
Believe what you want but some of us have our own physical experiences to confirm the science.
Uhhh, I think you explained your own mistakes above.
You can slightly lead thirst, but it is a grave error to drink by plan only and ignore thirst.
If you drank enough to actually get hyponatremic, you clearly GROSSLY ignored your thirst. This cannot happen by accident. The only way you get hyponatremic with normal kidneys is to ingest free water wayyyy over what your thirst mechanism tells you. If it were so easy to do this, the human race would have died off eons ago, since sodium balance is so crucial for metabolic functions in cells.
The thirst mechanism is one of the most powerful, crucial evolutionary traits we have. It is so accurate that it rehydrates your fluid levels down to the 1cc level reliably (we've tested this in class - people who are hydrated will drink exactly enough, and once fully hydrated, will pee out EXACTLY the extra fluid they've taken in, down to the 1cc, It's amazing, actually.)
Doing hard effort endurance sports in hot weather may allow for slight leading of the thirst (drinking early), but you clearly missed the boat on that if you drank so much you were actually hyponatremic. (Make sure you know you actually WERE hyponatremic before saying you were - that typically requires a blood electrolyte check - it's definitely not the same as just saying 'based on how I felt I know I was hyponatremic', since there are so many other factors that can land you in the med tent for an hour that are NOT hyponatremia.)