I quite often seem to be quite badly dehydrated after a ride (ie bad headache, which I’m pretty sure I can attribute to dehydration) no matter how much I drink – I tend to have a good gulp before setting off, then drink 2-3l on a ride of 4 or so hours.

Thinking about getting some hydration tabs to stick in my bladder – do they work? Which ones are good?

How come you can be quite badly dehydrated no matter how much you drink ?

Are you leaking ? 🙂

EDIT : Perhaps overhydration is the problem ?

IME they do work. I use the Nuun ones (although I’ve used some Wiggle freebies from another brand also).

I wouldn’t worry about which brand, just get the cheapest ones you can.

Use High 5 Zero and Nuun, both great.
Also used to suffer with post ride dehydration despite taking plenty of water but using tabs to replace salts etc has totally cured it.

I do pee a lot… I did wonder about overhydration, but 500ml for an hour of exertion doesn’t seem like *that* much.

Will just give some a go and see.

Won’t using tabs to replace salts etc help to deal with the symptoms of overhydration ?

On a 4hr ride i drink about 250-500ml max and i don’t hang about, on a 2-3hr ride unless it’s in the heat of mid day i don’t take a drink.
I would guess it’s bike setup that’s to blame.

You’re not drinking enough 🙂

flyingmonkey – if you pee a lot you are not dehydrated.

Drinking that much might make you over hydrated, and cause you to have low salt levels. The hydration tablets should help with avoiding low salt levels. But also, dont drink so much.

But whether that is causing your headache is a different matter.

Nun and SIS work for me.

Not sure either are better than squash plus a dab of salt though (my standard for both tennis and riding)

Actually I say I pee a lot… Not so much when I’m riding. So ignore that.

But whether that is causing your headache is a different matter.

Aren’t you likely to get a headache as your brain swells up due to overhydration ?

Just drink when you’re thirsty.

do they work?

Hmmmm they encourage you to drink by being salty and triggering a thirst reflex so in that sense they work but if you can get into the habit of drinking a little and often you don’t need them unless you are exercising really hard.

They key to staying hydrated is to keep yourself topped up. 500ml sloshing around in the stomach will simply find its way out without doing anything.

http://www.hydration.net.au/page/shop/info_page/a/infopage_id/e/44/a/infopage_parent_id/e/43

http://www.adventure-journal.com/2011/09/almost-everything-you-know-about-hydrating-is-wrong/

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/07/13/athletes-drinking-too-much-water.aspx

I do tend to drink little and often… Regular little sips from the camelbak rather than 500ml in one go.

Maybe you’re over hydrating?

Have tried it meself. Sometimes it’s too much trouble to take a reservoir and although I kind of feel thirsty now and then during the ride I don’t think I’m dehydrated.

Could be worth a shot see how you feel on a shorter ride

Thinking about getting some hydration tabs to stick in my bladder – do they work? Which ones are good?

For your particular application I would suggest a very slim shaped type

I am a big fan of nuun tablets. I find if I take just water with me I don’t drink until I feel dry and by then it is too late. With nuun I find I sip regularly instead.

I think they work if its really hot and you are losing lots of salts and water. Some are more agreeable than other though. The high 5 ones are a bit sickly imo. Nuun – not so bad.

Nuun work for me – and mrs kcal since she started at gym and out on the bike, difference was startling. Find I don’t need /that/ much anyway.

Nuun are the only ones that stop me getting bad headaches, though the others are better than nowt. At the end of a long tough ride in the summer you can see what needs replacing when you’ve got salt all over your helmet straps and clothes – just drinking water ain’t going to put that right!

Using electrolyte tablets to maintain the body’s water / salt concentration doesn’t work. If you want to do that you’d need a ridiculously high concentration – about the same as seawater.

Tim Noakes reckons the reason salt is on your clothing after heavy excercise is because your diet is likely too high in salt and sweating is an easy way for your body to get rid of the excess. I have no idea if this is true but he’s done a lot of testing on excercise in the heat, so he probably has a better idea than most.

I use Nuun tablets because they’re a convenient way of flavouring water or home made sports drink. From everything I’ve read they make no difference to salt balance or cramps. However, in my own experience, a pint of water with a Nuun tab does feel like it fixes that thirsty feeling faster than pure water alone, so who knows…

I use nuun or those zero ones and they do stop me cramping in long days out, I don’t bother with them on short 2-3 hour rides, just drink water. I’m one of the sweatiest people I know and sweat runs in a constant stream/drip from my helmet on hot rides. On a day-long xc ride in the Alps in summer I can drink 5 litres of water and be covered in salt crystals at the end of the day.

Is there a link to a peer reviewed scientific paper for the links above? those sites are a bit ‘alternative’ but would be interested to see if there is any science behind it or if its just misquotation/bs.

BigJim: If you look at Joe Friel’s blog (link below) he has a lot of info on this and usually quotes and links to relevant scientific studies in his footnotes at the bottom.

I’ll just paste direct from one of his posts because it’s a pretty good explanation (http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2008/09/hydration-and-exercise-part-2.html )

During exercise, as fluid is lost through sweating and in other ways, the concentration of sodium in the body actually increases. The reason is because much more fluid is lost than sodium. One might lose around a liter of water during exercise but only lose a small amount of sodium in sweat. Normal body sodium levels are about 140 millimoles per liter (mmol/l) of water while sweat is about 20 to 60mmol/l.

So let’s say an average-sized human body contains 40 liters of water when at rest and normally hydrated. That means it has stored away something like 5600mmol of sodium (40 x 140 = 5600). If one liter of fluid is lost during exercise and with that 60mm of sodium are excreted (the high end, or “salty” sweater) then the new sodium concentration is about 142mmol/l (5600 – 60 = 5540 / 39 = 142.05). The concentration of sodium has risen, not declined. Guess what happens next after a sufficiently large rise in sodium concentration occurs – your thirst mechanism kicks in and you drink water to dilute the sodium bringing it back down to something closer to 140mmol/l. One study found that a rise of about 2-3% of plasma sodium concentration evoked a strong desire to drink [7].

So your sodium becomes more concentrated during exercise as you sweat, not less as we’ve been led to believe. In other words, you don’t need to replace lost sodium during exercise because the loss is inconsequential while the volume of water lost is significant. But even if you did, the sodium content of most sports drinks is 10-25mmol/l, not enough to replace the loss (unless you overhydrate which raises the specter of hyponatremia – more on that shortly). More than about 25mmol/L of sodium makes the drink unpalatable. The extracellular fluid in your body, where much of the sodium is stored, is about the concentration of sea water. If you’ve ever swallowed sea water you know how bad that would be to drink.

That is interesting. So that would suggest that I am overhydrating, and I should cut back on the water intake. Interesting; I might try that.

Don’t use the zeros for any period of time, they turned me inside out after about three weeks, using one per day (4/5days per week)

I used nuun tablets permanently through my 2 days of the Welsh Ride Thing in one of my 2 water bottles

Don’t know if it made a massive difference but it made a nice change to plain water. They’re easy to take and make the water a nice combination of salty/fizzy/flavoured

And they’re not messy in the slightest or leave beheind any stickyness or mess in the bottle

http://www.actiononsalt.org.uk/less/Health/

That is interesting. So that would suggest that I am overhydrating, and I should cut back on the water intake. Interesting; I might try that.

Or just drink if you’re thirsty, and don’t if you’re not.

So that would suggest that I am overhydrating, and I should cut back on the water intake.

As long as you have water available it’s very hard to seriously dehydrate yourself**, as those countless films depicting the man struggling through the desert willing to give anything for a glass of water testify. It’s very hard to fight thirst when you are seriously dehydrated. In contrast it is relatively easy to overhydrate and make yourself ill, even seriously ill.

** However I believe that babies who are ill with vomiting and diarrhea can quite easily dehydrate to dangerous levels.

I agree with Ernie.
There is a lot written about dehydration and drinking relatively large amounts of fluid during exercise and I think a lot of it is to sell gear and magazines. Of course it is important but Ernie hits the nail on the head.

Me and my club mates would think nothing of running 15+ miles on a Sunday morning (at pace) with sometimes a very quick last few miles. If it was hot we would get a mouthful of water from one of these taps in the cemetery. If the pace had picked up by then it was every man for himself so you didn’t always get the chance till you were back at the club house. Some of those guys ran 62 minutes for the HM but it would appear you need a litre of fluid per mile now 🙄

http://www.outsideonline.com/blog/outdoor-adventure/tim-noakes-on-the-serious-problem-of-overhydration-in-endurance-sports.html

Anything by Tim Noakes is worth a read.

He was never the same after Shep died.