Supplements?

jed1978

Looking at SIS supplements.

Which ones do you guys use/like?

CrookedCucumber

None. They're a con. I prefer food.

Felix-da-house-mouse

i dont use sis either i find them sickly. i use maxim choc covered crunchy bars. they're even nice as a snack lol and i only drink water on the bike, i find the sport drinks make you too thirsty for water. although i sometimes carry water in one cage and sport stuff in another.

CrookedCucumber

Felix-da-house-mouse wrote:

i find the sport drinks make you too thirsty for water. although i sometimes carry water in one cage and sport stuff in another.

Most sports drinks contain a heap of sodium. If you don't sweat much, or your sweat isn't salty, then most drinks will make you thirsty, as well as tasting yucky.

If you really must have electrolyte drinks, you can make your own from

- A litre of water
- About a half gramme of salt
- About 1.5 gm of sodium bicarbonate (available from supermarkets)
- About 50 gm of dextrose sugar (aka glucose dextrose monohydrate, aka dextro-glucose (from sports shops, but cheaper from chemists. I get mine from eBay)
- About 100ml of Tesco-brand lo-cal squash.

It's not easy to measure a gram with domestic kitchen scales, so it's easier to mix up in bigger batches and up the weights appropriately.

The great advantage of doing things this way is that you can control the amount of salt in the mix.

It tastes pretty revolting, but then the proprietary ones taste revolting too, if they actually contain any ingredents that work.

Honestly, if you have even a rudimentary kitchen, a pan, and a weighing scale, and you buy proprietary sport drinks, you're a mug

PS. If anyone has any hard evidence that the exotic ingredients you find in expensive proprietary sports drinks, like, Chromium Polynicotinate, have any effect, I'd love to hear about it.

BUICK

After some discussion on the forum and advice from others about getting tired out quite suddenly on my longer rides I've bought Maximuscle Viper Energy and Recover to try. I wanted something without artificial sweeteners (I hate the taste of them and don't understand the point in an 'energy' drink) that ticked boxes from articles I'd read about such drinks. It contains carbohydrate in an easily absorbed form, electrolytes and branch chain amino acids. I'm no expert at all but from what I've read this is a good combination of features that you would have a great deal of trouble replicating at home! I got the fruit punch flavour and have been very pleasantly surprised by the taste, ease of mixing and (although it's early days) the boost to my performance - some of which may well be psychologically induced but I'm not going to knock it! Another good thing in light of comments in this thread is that you can experiment with how much of the powder you mix into your water. I'm using a little less than the recommended levels and I'm perfectly happy with that for now

gkerr4

i like the SIS stuff - I like the PSP22 for long day rides - which is their energy drink. It tastes good - especially the blackcurrant one.

The do an electrolyte drink too which I have used on hotter days - same sort of taste, less calories in the bottle, but good for fluid replacement.

I have used the gel's to - again on long rides - bit funny tasting, but genuine benefit and they'll get you through the last few hours.

I don't like the energy bars - they are too chewy for my liking - but one of the guys I did the coast2coast ride with last year swears by them.

redddraggon

How about Evening Primrose Oil? I've heard it does wonders......

I don't believe in the exotic mixtures either homemade or expensive manufactured products. I just use weakened sugar free juice in my water bottle with a couple of tea spoons of sugar - seems to do the job for me, I don't seem to get cramp etc. Perhaps when I come to up my mileage in the summer I'll think a bit more about it, but for the miles I do now it seems fine.

popette

gkerr4 wrote:

i like the SIS stuff - I like the PSP22 for long day rides - which is their energy drink. It tastes good - especially the blackcurrant one.

The do an electrolyte drink too which I have used on hotter days - same sort of taste, less calories in the bottle, but good for fluid replacement.

I have used the gel's to - again on long rides - bit funny tasting, but genuine benefit and they'll get you through the last few hours.

I don't like the energy bars - they are too chewy for my liking - but one of the guys I did the coast2coast ride with last year swears by them.

me too - I use SIS PSP22 plain and put a bit of squash in to flavour it. I've recently started taking two bottles of it plus a dry bottle with more powder for making up more drinks on my way. I can do many hours just on this stuff but I do take a bar and a gel just incase I need it. I find it so much easier to keep feeding by drinking the PSP than I did when I took a cheese sandwich out with me The SIS bars are ridiculous! I wonder how many fillings have been lost to those bars. Cliff bars are nice though - actually taste quite nice.

CrookedCucumber

BUICK wrote:

I wanted something without artificial sweeteners (I hate the taste of them and don't understand the point in an 'energy' drink)

Actually, it's quite simple. To get something that tastes palatable (i.e., sweet enough) using real sugars will give a greater calorie supply than most people need during exercise.

I concede that if you're really hammering it, over an extended period of time, then you may need more calories. But most people don't, most of the time.

It contains carbohydrate in an easily absorbed form, electrolytes and branch chain amino acids. I'm no expert at all but from what I've read this is a good combination of features that you would have a great deal of trouble replicating at home!

Not so. The home brew I described above will be sufficient for all proven electrolyte needs during exercise. I concede that you won't be able to synthesize BCAAs at home very easily; but (a) the evidence that these are beneficial (compared to ordinary protein consumption) is very sketchy and (b) they will not be absorbed into your bloodstream in any significant amount unless your period of training is very long indeed (probably > 4 hours for most folks).

PS. I'm not an expert on exercise nutrition either. But I did ten years in medical research, and for a long time I taught undergraduate classes in exercise physiology. So I'm not a complete numpty either

BUICK

Haha! Sounds like you have better grounds to talk about these things than most. The thing I notice about the Maximuscle product is that it isn't actually 'sweet' as such. Mildly fruity tasting and pleasant, but not sweet. I don't have a sweet tooth at all and that suits me down to the ground - I really do find artifcial sweeteners objectionable to my palate but that's going to be a very individual thing - as will be, I presume, how an individuals body chemistry responds to a particular product?

I've never done any medical research but have a background in biological anthropology so would like to hope I'm not a complete 'mug' either!

CrookedCucumber

BUICK wrote:

The thing I notice about the Maximuscle product is that it isn't actually 'sweet' as such. Mildly fruity tasting and pleasant, but not sweet.

Actually, per serving it has exactly the same amount of sugar as one litre of the formula I described above So lacking artificial sweetners I guess it wouldn't taste very sweet.

I suspect that they can get away with this because the sodium/potassium concentration isn't as high as in the mixture I proposed. If it doesn't taste as salty, it probably doesn't need to be sweetened so much to make it palatable.

If you find artificial sweetners unpalatable, and you don't need a lot of salt, you could probably make you own electrolyte drink from `hi-fruit' squash or similar, reducing the amount of dextrose by whatever the amount of sugar is in the squash.

...but that's going to be a very individual thing - as will be, I presume, how an individuals body chemistry responds to a particular product?

Indeed. The problem is that there isn't a huge amount of solid evidence that any electrolyte replacement is beneficial during sports. There's a huge amount of anecdotal evidence, but I'm sure you'll appreciate how subjective that is likely to be. If the whole subject of electrolyte replacement is contestable, obviously the comparison of one formula with another is going to be even more contestable.

My take on this is that sensibly-formulated electrolyte drink won't do you any harm, and they might, just possibly, do some good. But you'll note that all the proprietary products have roughly the same basic ingredients in roughly the same amounts -- water, sodium, chloride, sugar. These are the things that all physiologists agree are consumed or excreted during exercise.

Then there are things that many, but not all, formulations have -- bicarbonate (because of its presumed buffering properties), potassium, and calcium. I'm not sure that any of these are useful, but I would have bicarbonate in my formula for the simple reason that there's a dirt cheap source in baking soda. Potassium and calcium are a bit more tricky -- there are fewer cheap sources that are sufficiently soluble to use in a drink. There are good reasons for including potassium, if you can afford it -- potassium chloride is cheap and a good non-salt alternative to sodium chloride.

Then there are exotic things like protein fragments (like you Viper product has), B-vitamins (waste of bloody time), exotic minerals like selenium (give me a break!) and so on. That's where we get out of the domain of biology and into, well, snake oil. Actually, you do need all those things -- the problem is that none of them has an uptake rapid enough to be useful in the short term.

richardjallen

I remember going out on a long ride last year and taking only squash with me, ie no electrolyte. When I got home I had a incredible desire for chips covered in salt and vinegar. Now I use some isotonic mixture that I got on special offer and I no longer get the hunger for salt.

I try to keep away from Aspartame and Phenylalanine. Even if they are safe I don't need to risk it when if I want sweet I can have sugar which has the energy I need. There is also an isotonic drink at the supermarket called Taut which has no artificial sweeteners sometimes its on special as well.

EDIT - I've wanted to make some up myself but never found the quantities to use. When it comes to finding potassium chloride I just pick up a few sachets of low salt if I'm eating in the refectory near work.

fizz

I find the SIS stuff is very sweet almost sickly so and I cant drink a huge amount of it. I also find the blackcurrent stuff is the work of satan and IMHO it taste disgusting.

What I have found is these for an eletrolyte drink

http://www.nuun.com/nuunis/

Little tablets that you drop into 500ml of water, doesnt have the sickly sweet taste of SIS stuff and I really like the taste of it. So I use a mixture of the PSP and this, different stuff in different bottles.

For a recovery drink the SIS Rego is OK, but I dont like the chocolate flavour, however I find chocolate milkshake works just as well...

I find it works for me and I'm sure mostly its in my head, but hey it works !!

Not Another Hill

I prefer the Torq carb/electrolyte energy drink to the PSP22. It has a sharper taste; less sweet and sickly. I do use their SIS Rego recovery (chocolate) which I find works.

I used to ride with water and found I bonked on rides. When i started using energy drinks that no longer happened.

CrookedCucumber

richardjallen wrote:

EDIT - I've wanted to make some up myself but never found the quantities to use. When it comes to finding potassium chloride I just pick up a few sachets of low salt if I'm eating in the refectory near work.

The quantities are unlikely to be critical, provided they aren't absolutely mad, because the amount you consume will depend on the amount you drink during exercise. Unless you go to the extremes of analysing your sweat and urine, you're never going to get a perfect match to your specific needs anyway.

The recipe I gave earlier was worked out from the published compositions of a couple of proprietary drinks. Of course they all claim to have magical ingredients other than the basic electrolytes, etc. but, as I said, that's goolies.

The only tricky part of mixing your own recipe is weighing out the small quantities of salt, etc., required. My kitchen scale weighs down to a few grams, so if I want a gramme of something, I have to work out how many teaspoons gives me ten grammes, then divide that amount by ten.

Since I've been inspired by all the complaints about Aspartame, I'm going to try to work out a recipe based on something like Robinson's Barley Water. It's easy enough to work out the sugar concentration from the publish Calories figure, since I doubt there is any Calorie contribution other than from sugar. I guess the problem is that if there's too much sugar in a drink of normal tasting strength, you'll have to over-dilute it, which will taste funny.

Anyway, I will experiment and report my results in due course

By the way, I believe that proprietary `low salt' preparations are a mixture of sodium and potassium chlorides. You often can't easily work out the amount of potassium in a certain amount of LoSalt, or whatever. But if you assume it half-and-half by weight NaCl/KCl I doubt you'd go far wrong.