Anybody make their own? What's your recipe?
Apple juice to water 1/3 - 2/3. In a litre add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon or two of table sugar.
Comes out isotonic or just hypotonic ( IMO better than hypertonic). contains a mix of sugars and salts and tastes nice. Looks like urine tho.
It's hard to get long chain carbs in a home made drink.
can someone explain why water isn't the fastest absorbed drink? Surely the osmotic potential is greatest with pure water?
My recipie is (drumroll please)...........................
plain water!
Then much on real food, and drink pints of milk (bring milkshake powder for added sugar) as often as possible, far more satisfying, with the bonus of milk being designed over millions of years of evolution to provide the right ballance of stuff for energy/recovery/growth.
Leggyblonde - what bought drinks have long chain carbs?
I was getting my knickers in a twist....
I meant complex carbs (i think!). Stuff that doesn't give you a quick hit then fade
Still hard to find in an energy drink IIRC. Some contain maltodextrin - but there is much dispute over how low GI maltodextrin is as it is a mix of things and unregulated as to what proportion the mix is.
milk being designed over millions of years of evolution to provide the right ballance of stuff for energy/recovery/growth.
yeah. for baby cows.
unless you take human breast milk with you on rides?
@ thisisnotaspoon.
Essentially the gut has transporters that actively move sugar and salt out of the fluid in your gut and into the cells - ultimately blood. It is this sugar and ions that is pumped into the cells which creates the osmotic gradient - as you say helping to absorb the water quickly.
With straight water, there isn't any sugar or ions to pump into the cells and create the osmotic gradient, so water moves a lot more slowly by just dissipating through the cells.
Even adding a bit of squash to a drink makes a pretty big difference to how quickly you absorb it.
Hope that helps.
Also, to help Mr Sparkle, there is understanding that for during-exercise drinks, there is little benefit of being isotonic as the body has a pretty big store of salts - though it is important to replenish these between exercise. Maltodextrin is generally used by most sports drinks (SIS Energy etc) for its low GI and not being too sweet. Also it's largely absorbed by the stomach so it's pretty quick to get into the system. It's been suggested also that fructose is key to mobilising energy from the liver by various complex metabolic pathways..though i don't know how much truth there is in this.
The 1:4 ratio of protein to carbohydrate has been shown to offer the best balance between gut/stomach activity and digestion so this is something to add to the mix - though adding a scoop of protein shake powder to an energy drink doesn't really entice me. Maybe it works?!
If i were making my own, i'd go with a heap of maltodextrin (which you can buy as a tub of powder from various places), a teaspoon or two of normal sugar (sucrose, contains glucose and fructose) and something nice to flavour it - though if you use squash, this will likely contain some good fructose anyway so i wouldn't bother with adding sugar. Then have a protein shake when you get back and make sure you have enough salt in your diet instead of getting it from your drink.
I did think about making my own drinks a while back, but i just buy the SIS Energy stuff now as i can't be arsed to faff around with buckets of powder and my flatmates thinking i'm a weirdo!
I mix my own. Maltodextrine and fructose, on a 2:1 basis. Then I pop in a Nuun tablet for the electroyltes.
Far more palatable than SIS, and so far seems to do the trick.
We'll see come the Étape whether something so simple is suitable for hauling myself up French mountains for a day.
Used to make my own, but now use the SIS Go stuff, as I can't be arsed messing about. Also the Lemon and Lime flavoured one tastes like those Lemonade Lollies you used to be able to get.
Yep I use SIS Go (and ReGo for after long rides) I too shall see on the Étape whether it helps haul me up the mountains
i made my own a few times, not sure it made much differnce but then not sure if the bought ones do.
I mixed the table salt with 'Lo salt' to achieve a mix of sidium and potassium. Lo salt has both but I added table salt to get the sodium up...can't remember what ratio I wanted to achieve though, maybr 50/50?
I also added some fructose to the sucrose as it is longer chain and easy to buy in sainsbury's. Its more expensive though and working on hte basis that I'm sipping regularly and topping up constantly with sugar sucrose isn't too bad I reckon.
Ptesam - have you not got your osmosis stuff muddled? Osmosis moves the solvent acrross a semi permeable membrane from low concentration of solute (ie high solvent - water) to the area of high concentration of solute (ie low solvent - water) so the water moves from the low concentration of salt to the high?????
There is both active transport and osmosis in different parts of the gut IIRC - but its a long time ago I did Higher Biology !
TandemJeremy - you're quite right. The essence is that transport of water is passive (via osmosis from dilute to concentrated), whereas transport of ions/molecules is active - the processes are separate.
Proteins pump the solute into the cell actively (regardless of how much water there is or what the osmotic gradient), which forms the high concentration within the cells and resultant osmotic potential - the water follows via osmosis.
With plain water and no solute to pump into the cells, the concentration is lower in the cells, osmotic potential is lower, and water moves more slowly.
Ah - so active transport/ protein pump moves the salt across into the cells then that sooooks the water in by osmosis?
Makes sense now
The Torq unflavoured is pretty cheap in bulk.. hardly seems worth mucking about with, but this doesn't contain electrolytes. A banana covers this reasonably well, but I stick to the Torq electrolyte stuff if it's actually hot.
Just found this:
To make the perfect isotonic drink, mix 500ml of fruit juice with 500ml of water and 0.5g (one eighth of a teaspoon) of salt, or 200ml of squash (organic or without artificial sweeteners and additives) with 800ml of water and 0.5g (one eighth of a teaspoon) of salt. Both these options make one litre of isotonic drink, and contain around 6g of carbohydrate per 100ml - the ideal concentration for rapid fluid absorption. Adding a little salt (sodium) encourages you to drink more during a run and helps your body to retain, rather than excrete, fluid when you stop exercising.
Mr sparkle - not enough salt surely. Isotonic is (weight by volume) 0.9% salt or 0.18% salt with 4% sugar
So for the sugar / salt mix thats 1.8g salt and 40 g sugar per litre.
Just re read my orginal post - it should be half a teaspoonful of salt or a bit under doh.