Dear Alex,
Can this sodium alginate be a cause of making my guts ‘work’ or is it more to find in the composition of Maurten.
I have had many full distance races go bas due to stomach problems.
In 2019 i did a ironman distance race on about 70 grams of plain dextrose powder, salt and a electrolyte tablet in a 750 ml bottle and drank 1 bottle an hour.
That worked although i came a bit short on fuel in the 2nd half of the marathon, but no stomach issues.
At some point i came to the conclusion fructose might be the cause.
Started with Maurten this year and can drink about 110-120 grams of Maurten in the bike but after a 5hr bike ride as soon as i get hime i have to take a stop ar the toilet for a code brown. Long runs, the same at about around 90-110 min in long runs when i use Maurten i have to get out of the pants.
No further stomach issues, so that’s good, but the shitty part is….wel pretty shitty. As so i had to get out of my run pants twice during my last ld race in september.
Any idea what could be the cause this gut ‘thing’? It just happens with Maurten, but most other sports drinks give my stomach issues.
Would it be an idea to get back to my dextrose mix and just try to add fructose by 10 grams portions and see at what level it might give me stomach problems?
Thanks
Jeroen
The thing that makes maurten work: more fructose than most other beverages. It’s 1:0.8 malto:fructose which is the same/better as 1:0.8 dextrose:fructose. Both achieve delivering 1:0.8 ratio (almost 1:1) of glucose:fructose. Maurten was the first product to do this. And it’s why it works for so many people. The fact they use alginate might be *slightly *better than chloride, but the hydrogel thing is pure marketing. If alginate is better than chloride it’s purely because you don’t end up getting an overload of chloride in the gut. Sodium citrate manages this better, or can use a mix of mostly sodium citrate with a bit of table salt and achieve the same thing.