What do you drink on your bike?

meanredspider

hypster wrote:

That was a one-off situation that I used to illustrate my point. My legs were cramping so I assumed that I was dehydrated and drank more causing me to pee more frequently than usual. It wasn't until I connected the two things that I realised that it wasn't dehydration that was causing the cramps but over-hydration. A natural enough mistake that a lot of people on this and other threads seem to be making. Hence my "obsession" with "Waterlogged" and why I was trying to help people consider other solutions for their problem rather than just blindly following erroneous suggestions like electrolyte deficiency.

Why do you say that electrolyte deficiency is erroneous? You have no more proof than those suggesting it works to suggest that it doesn't. In fact, there are plenty of people (me included) for whom it does work.

And don't believe that, because you clearly drank a lot very quickly, you were over hydrated. As I said before, drinking too much too fast is a very ineffective way of hydrating and that it passes straight through you.

I drink far too little - I always have - yet, without Zero tabs, I get cramp. According to your theory, I should never get cramp and the tabs would make no difference. It just doesn't wash as a "one size fits all" approach.

diy

Caffeine is a diuretic too - so you'll pee more than you should do. Noting that you can become tolerant to caffeine.

ai_1

hypster wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

hypster wrote:

I found also that I was having to stop every 10 miles or so to pee which seemed ridiculous.

It's no wonder you are obsessed with "Waterlogged" and Dr Noakes. God knows what you were doing but you certainly weren't drinking normally. If you drink too much too fast, it will go straight through you and won't hydrate you either. My experience is that, on a warm day, riders I know will only stop for a pee every 3 hours or so.

That was a one-off situation that I used to illustrate my point. My legs were cramping so I assumed that I was dehydrated and drank more causing me to pee more frequently than usual. It wasn't until I connected the two things that I realised that it wasn't dehydration that was causing the cramps but over-hydration. A natural enough mistake that a lot of people on this and other threads seem to be making. Hence my "obsession" with "Waterlogged" and why I was trying to help people consider other solutions for their problem rather than just blindly following erroneous suggestions like electrolyte deficiency.

I think you're drawing conclusions from anecdotes that are not strongly supported by evidence and passing them on as carefully examined fact. I don't pretend to be an expert in the area but there are elements of your rationale that seem very weak or flawed to me.
For example your proposition that the body can and does retain any minerals it requires such as salts regardless of how much you sweat and your suggestion that if you pee every 15 miles you can't have been/be de-hydrated. I don't know that either of these is correct. I'm virtually certain the first one is not. Also, I believe there are other reasons to add electrolytes to water other than because your body is deficient in these. If I'm not mistaken the rate of absorption of fluids is dependent not just on how quick you're drinking but also on the composition of the fluid. Indeed this ties into part of the reason I query your first suggestion regarding the body being capable of hanging onto whatever it needs. I don't believe the body is necessarily capable of sweating pure water just because it needs the salts, etc that are normally present in sweat. Do you have anything to support this or is it an opinion rather than a fact? I'm not trying to be adversarial. I'm interested in the points you're making but at the moment I'm not finding them convincing.

hypster

Ai_1 wrote:

I think you're drawing conclusions from anecdotes that are not strongly supported by evidence and passing them on as carefully examined fact. I don't pretend to be an expert in the area but there are elements of your rationale that seem very weak or flawed to me.
For example your proposition that the body can and does retain any minerals it requires such as salts regardless of how much you sweat and your suggestion that if you pee every 15 miles you can't have been/be de-hydrated. I don't know that either of these is correct. I'm virtually certain the first one is not. Also, I believe there are other reasons to add electrolytes to water other than because your body is deficient in these. If I'm not mistaken the rate of absorption of fluids is dependent not just on how quick you're drinking but also on the composition of the fluid. Indeed this ties into part of the reason I query your first suggestion regarding the body being capable of hanging onto whatever it needs. I don't believe the body is necessarily capable of sweating pure water just because it needs the salts, etc that are normally present in sweat. Do you have anything to support this or is it an opinion rather than a fact? I'm not trying to be adversarial. I'm interested in the points you're making but at the moment I'm not finding them convincing.

Extract from the following article:-

http://www.irunfar.com/2012/07/waterlog ... -book.html

Sodium Balance and Performance

Dogma: We need to supplement with sodium to complete long-distance endurance events.

Science: The body self-regulates blood sodium concentration via several mechanisms, including sodium sparing in sweat and urine. When one “drinks to thirst,” blood sodium concentration invariably rises during prolonged exercise; it never falls.

One of the most persistent beliefs in ultrarunning is that we must ingest sodium for optimal performance, if not survival. Not so, claims Noakes. He points out several studies, including sodium deprivation studies involving prolonged exercise over several days, that demonstrates that the body will maintain blood sodium levels in a deprivation state.

In explaining this phenomenon, Noakes points out our biological mechanisms to preserve sodium in both sweat and urine – pointing out that these studies measured sodium concentrations next to nothing during prolonged exercise and sodium deprivation. Moreover, blood sodium concentrations stayed within normal ranges – so long as athletes and subjects drank only to thirst.

Read the whole article if you are interested to learn more about this and related topics on hydration. This article that I came across recently is also intresting and covers similar ground.

http://www.adventure-journal.com/2011/0 ... -is-wrong/

It maybe be confirmation bias but to me the evidence which now seems to be growing from these doctors and researchers resonates with the sort of experiences I am having and from the posts I see on forums from other athletes suffering similar problems. Advice to the contrary that I have seen seems to come via vested interests like the energy supplement companies. If you (or anyone else for that matter) have any independant evidence to contradict the sort of thing that Tim Noakes and James Winger are advising I would love to see it (truly).

I hold my hand up and freely admit that for years I over hydrated based on the standard advice which still seems to be all-pervasive at the moment. Others may not have done but it seems to me that an awful lot will still be making that mistake to varying degrees with associated problems. The research that Dr James Winger (second article) has done seems to confirm that a significant proportion of those studied are also doing the same.

meanredspider

There's a bit of a theme to a couple of these threads. As with Manc33 and his hemp oil cure for all cancer, there's one or two doctors with a theory or an argument. They're fighting the "vested interests" of Big Pharma. The trouble is, this isn't how the world works - believe me, I've worked in it for over 10 years. It's compelling if you have an angle on a topic and a distrust of Big Business and enjoy conspiracy theories. The world is FAR more complex than this in science. These doctors are no different from anybody else. Dr Noakes is trying to make a name for himself. If his theory was that compelling, it would quickly gain support in the sports and academic worlds. The fact that it hasn't (apart from some notable evangelists) and tends to fly in the face of many people's experiences, suggests that it's not that compelling.

hypster

meanredspider wrote:

There's a bit of a theme to a couple of these threads. As with Manc33 and his hemp oil cure for all cancer, there's one or two doctors with a theory or an argument. They're fighting the "vested interests" of Big Pharma. The trouble is, this isn't how the world works - believe me, I've worked in it for over 10 years. It's compelling if you have an angle on a topic and a distrust of Big Business and enjoy conspiracy theories. The world is FAR more complex than this in science. These doctors are no different from anybody else. Dr Noakes is trying to make a name for himself. If his theory was that compelling, it would quickly gain support in the sports and academic worlds. The fact that it hasn't (apart from some notable evangelists) and tends to fly in the face of many people's experiences, suggests that it's not that compelling.

I understand what you are saying and do agree with it to a certain extent but it's not just Noakes now saying this is it? The research that I recently discovered from Dr James Winger confirms the same hypothesis and I have several other references that also point to the same conclusion.

There have been many well-documented cases over the years of the medical profession/big pharma getting it wrong and the individual flying in the face of perceived wisdom finally being proved right. Lorenzo's Oil is one such case that springs to mind. My father as well suffered with a stomach ulcer for many years and took Zantac for it (which GSK made a fortune out of I believe) Then, basically, I saw a Horizon program about an Australian doctor who was fighting against the medical profession for years because he said stomach ulcers were caused by a bacteria and was sucessfully treating patients with nothing more than antibiotics and bismuth. I told my dad and he went to the doctor and cutting a long story short it turned out to be true and his ulcer was cured in a relatively short space of time after suffering for many years. It is now considered to be a routine treatment for stomach ulcers. You can probably confirm that story on the internet somewhere if you wish.

It's a standard argument to dispute someone's opinion by claiming they have an alterior motive but as I said previously, if you have any independant resources which refute what Noakes and now Winger are proposing then I would genuinely like to read it. What they are saying seems entirely logical to me and in the face of anything other than anecdotal evidence and vested interest, seems the most likely explanation for what is going on to me.

meanredspider

But the cases of Big Pharma getting it wrong tend to be limited to specific drugs or treatments. It can happen because the results of clinical trials aren't always 100% accurate. And that's exactly why I'm sceptical about the finding of just one or two doctors who don't need to go to anything like the levels of proof that drugs need to go through. We can all point to exceptions whilst ignoring the overwhelming number of examples that show that the processes work (as I said in the Manc33 thread, less people than ever are dying of cancer despite more cases than ever being diagnosed). I can readily believe that the approach works for you (as your story points out, I think maybe you were an extreme in any case) - we are all far more different than I think we appreciate because we look roughly similar on the outside so there are bound to be cases to show most things. Don't fall into the trap of believing that, because it works for you, it'll work for everyone.

hypster

meanredspider wrote:

... I think maybe you were an extreme in any case) - we are all far more different than I think we appreciate because we look roughly similar on the outside so there are bound to be cases to show most things. Don't fall into the trap of believing that, because it works for you, it'll work for everyone.

I don't think I'm an extreme case by any means. Dr James Winger's study found that:-

"nearly half of Chicago-area recreational runners surveyed may be drinking too much fluid during races. Winger and colleagues found that, contrary to expert guidelines, 36.5 percent of runners drink according to a present schedule or to maintain a certain body weight and 8.9 percent drink as much as possible."

The conclusion being that nearly half of the runners in the study were over hydrating with possible deleterious effects on performance at the lower end and even risking death by Exercise Associated Hyponatremia in extreme cases.

No doubt you will just dismiss this once more as not being relevant to cyclists but I'm convinced that you could probably extrapolate similar figures to all endurance athletes including, runners, triathletes and cyclists because the "Keep hydrated or die" message is all pervasive.

And really at the end of the day all I am really advocating is what you seem to have been doing already when you asserted previously (on the cramp thread) that:-

And, yes, I'm sure marathon runners can go two hours without a drink. I take a bottle with me (never more than one) and will do two hours at +/-20mph and will have maybe drunk 200ml.

So how can you possibly claim that I shouldn't believe that what works for me will necessarily work for everyone? It works for you!

Really I think you are just being deliberately disingenuous citing examples of snake oil cancer treatments that have no relevance to the discussion. I see also that you have once more passed on my request for independant references to back up your position. For that reason I see no purpose in continuing this discussion with you because you just want to believe what you think works for you for instance which is exactly what you are accusing me of. I can't rationalise that level of logic and don't intend to try any longer.

I will continue to present the evidence to any others who might be interested and are prepared to keep an open mind. If you can come up with any hard evidence to refute those facts then please do so.

meanredspider

The point is that I don't need evidence to back up my position because it's the accepted norm. And, frankly, in our previous discussion on this point, you've yet to show a single example of a cyclist suffering from a hyponatremia incident let alone dying from it. I, on the other hand, have personal examples of cyclists being put of saline drips due to dehydration (my own team mate from AD6 being one of 6 on a drip at that moment) by medical doctors (which cured their symptoms).

Quoting my point on cramp is interesting. I say I get cramp. I say I don't drink enough. I say I can prevent my cramp by taking Zero tabs. All of that flies in the face of your theory that drinking too much causes cramp and that Zero tabs and the like are useless. I'll add, for the elimination of doubt, that post ride I need to drink like a fish because I'm so thirsty. I also suffer from other symptoms of dehydration (dry eyes, dry lips etc).

We can go round and round the same stuff - nothing changes. I can believe that there might be a problem in amateur running but I think it's a non-issue in cycling. It's hard to prove the absence of something so please start by showing me the data that there IS a problem in cycling. Pointing to running isn't an answer.