Whether you are into sports and fitness or not, summers are usually quite exhausting. You constantly need to ensure that your body is hydrated every time to continue doing your tasks efficiently. The role of hydration becomes even more critical for gym-goers and fitness enthusiasts as they lose fluids and nutrients through sweating during an intense workout.
To overcome the fluids lost during the workout, your body needs electrolytes, such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. While most drinks, including tap water, contains a certain amount of electrolytes, the concentration of electrolytes may not be enough to meet your body's requirements of these nutrients, especially if you are into rigorous training.
Many professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts no more rely on water and drinks but have incorporated hydration supplements to stay hydrated and maximize their performance. This article refers to the importance of staying hydrated and the role of hydration supplements in this regard.
Why Is Staying Hydrated Important?
Hydration plays a critical role in optimizing different body functions. Adequate hydration helps regulate your body temperature. Moreover, it keeps your joints lubricated and ensures that all essential nutrients are properly transported to your cells.
Keeping yourself hydrated ensures better sleep, enhanced mood, and improved cognitive functions. Hydration also facilitates your body in fighting infections and preventing discomfort.
On the other hand, when your body is dehydrated, it could cause dry mouth, weakness, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps, and lightheadedness. When your body does not receive enough water, it can impair the functions of cells, tissues, and organs.
Studies suggest that even mild dehydration can impair certain brain functions. For instance, according to a study conducted on young women, the fluid loss of 1.4% after working out resulted in reduced concentration, bad mood, and increased frequency of headaches.
Another study of a similar nature, including male participants, suggests that a fluid loss of 1.6% negatively impacted the working memory and increased fatigue and anxiety among the participants.
On the other hand, hydration helps improve health conditions. A study reveals that men who drank more water reported improvement in their headache conditions.
In short, staying hydrated is the key to ensuring improved body functions and healthy life.
The Role of Hydration Supplements
Hydration supplements, also known as electrolyte tablets, contain key electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium that your body needs to stay hydrated. These electrolytes are also commonly present in workout energy drinks or sports drinks, but these drinks also contain carbs and sugar to fuel your workout.
The hydration supplements have electrolytes and no additional carbs or sugars as they are purely for hydration.
Your body needs electrolytes, but most of the time, you can consume them through your diet. However, during and after intense exercise, especially during summers, you lose a huge amount of electrolytes through sweating. Replenishing them is something you need to focus on.
If you only rely on water, you can end up diluting the electrolytes in your body, and it can even lead to hyponatremia that is low blood sodium. To ensure proper hydration, you need to ensure that your body gets the electrolytes, and the role of hydration supplements comes into play here.
The hydration supplements consist of electrolytes that your body needs to control your fluid balance, regulate your blood pressure, maintain the correct PH levels, and ensure proper muscle contraction.
One liter (34 ounces) of tap water contains about 2 to 3% of RDI (reference daily intake) for sodium, calcium, and magnesium. It contains no potassium. The same amount of hydration supplements provides 18% of the RDI for sodium and 3% of the RDI for potassium.
The benefits of hydration supplements are covered in more detail in the next section.
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Benefits of Hydration Supplements
The supplements for hydration helps enhance your workout efficiency by ensuring the following benefits:
1. Improves Exercise Performance
The supercharge supplements help replenish water, energy, and the electrolytes lost during an intense workout session. It provides athletes and fitness enthusiasts with the additional fluids to replace the water lost by sweating.
According to a study, a water loss of about 1% to 2% can result in decreased strength, focus, and speed. Sweat consists of a crucial amount of sodium and little amounts of potassium, magnesium, and calcium. With every liter of sweat, you may lose about 1 gram of sodium.
If you sweat a lot, you need to replace water with rehydrating supplements as it can help you train longer and improve your athletic performance, especially during extreme summers.
2. Prevent Heat Stroke
When working out in hot weather, you are more at risk of heat-related illnesses, such as mild heat rash or heat stroke. Normally your body manages heat by sweating. However, the body's temperature management mechanism struggles during hot weather, causing a rise in your body temperature.
While limiting your time in heat is the key to avoiding heat-related health issues, you may not be able to avoid the heat as a fitness enthusiast. To stay cool, you need to take plenty of fluid and electrolytes.
The vitamins for hydration are the best way to meet your body's electrolytes requirements.
3. Support Healthy Nervous System Functions
Research suggests that even mild dehydration can negatively affect brain performance, memory and impair mood.
Fluid loss is dangerous to working memory and reduces concentration levels. The hydrate supplement can play a crucial role in ensuring a healthy nervous system by providing all the essential nutrients and fluids to your body.
4. Improves Overall Health and Wellbeing
The muscle hydration supplements work wonders by improving your exercise performance, speeding up the post-workout recovery process, and ensuring the overall health and general wellbeing.
It provides multiple benefits to your body, including improved mood and sleep, better body composition, and promoting a general sense of wellbeing and happiness.
5. Helps Build More Muscles
The energy drink for workouts taken before, during, and after exercise can help maintain a positive protein balance by promoting protein synthesis. The protein balance allows you to recover quickly and build more muscles within a shorter time.
Related Article: Gain Lean Muscles: Workout, Nutrition Plan & More
6. Improves Your Skin
The supplements for hydration provide your body with the essential nutrients that keep your skin fresh and healthy. The essential amino acids used in the hydration supplement play a significant role in muscle-supporting connective tissues and keeping your appearance youthful.
If you are convinced of incorporating hydration supplements into your daily routine, you should also learn to choose the supplement that provides you with these benefits.
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Which Hydration Supplements Should I Choose?
If you work out regularly or perform strength-building exercises, hydration supplements containing the essential amino acids are all you need.
DMoose Essential Amino Acids (EAAs) + Hydration is the best hydration supplement that you can invest in. It consists of the key electrolytes that can ensure multiple benefits, including more lean muscle mass, preserving your muscle tissues, improving your strength and performance during a workout, and enhancing your workout frequency and performance.
The high-quality EAA supplements contain 8 g vegan essential amino acids that increase protein synthesis, delays fatigue and enhance your endurance levels. A full dose of 8 g anabolic EAAs, including 6 g fermented branched-chained amino acids (BCAAs), is all you need to get through your intense training session.
Related Article: Why You Should Take Dietary Supplements & How They Can Help You
The supplement with EAA and BCAA features a 500 mg dose of key electrolytes, including sodium, potassium, and magnesium, supporting hydration and replacing the electrolytes you lose during training. The combination of ingredients is specifically designed to help you reach your peak performance levels and support muscle health.
The EAA supplement without caffeine contains the branched-chained amino acids that have been shown to play a crucial role in promoting fat loss and reducing your body's fat percentage.
Takeaway
Keeping yourself hydrated is the key to optimizing your performance levels, especially during intense summer. Your body needs to replenish the fluids you have lost through sweating while working out during intense weather. It needs to recover the electrolytes that keep you going and enhance your workout performance.
The supplements for hydration help your body recover the lost electrolytes and provide multiple benefits by doing so. It helps enhance your athletic performance, supports cognitive functions, boosts recovery, promotes muscle gain, and ensures overall health and wellbeing.
If you want to gain the most out of your intense training session, you must keep yourself hydrated by ensuring proper fluid intake and incorporating the best hydration supplements into your daily routine.
Article Sources
- American College of Sports Medicine, et al. “American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand. Exercise and Fluid Replacement.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 39, no. 2, Feb. 2007, pp. 377–90. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e31802ca597.
- Armstrong, Lawrence E., et al. “Mild Dehydration Affects Mood in Healthy Young Women.” The Journal of Nutrition, vol. 142, no. 2, Feb. 2012, pp. 382–88. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.111.142000.
- Benefit, Martin D., et al. "Water Intake and Post-Exercise Cognitive Performance: An Observational Study of Long-Distance Walkers and Runners." European Journal of Nutrition, vol. 52, no. 2, Mar. 2013, pp. 617–24. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-012-0364-y.
- Ganio, Matthew S., et al. “Mild Dehydration Impairs Cognitive Performance and Mood of Men.” British Journal of Nutrition, vol. 106, no. 10, Nov. 2011, pp. 1535–43. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114511002005.
- Glazer, James L. “Management of Heatstroke and Heat Exhaustion.” American Family Physician, vol. 71, no. 11, June 2005, pp. 2133–40.
- Patterson, Kristine Y., et al. “The Mineral Content of Tap Water in United States Households.” Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, vol. 31, no. 1, Aug. 2013, pp. 46–50. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2013.03.004.
- Spigt, Mark, et al. “A Randomized Trial on the Effects of Regular Water Intake in Patients with Recurrent Headaches.” Family Practice, vol. 29, no. 4, Aug. 2012, pp. 370–75. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/cmr112.
- Thomas, D. Travis, et al. “Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and Athletic Performance.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, vol. 116, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 501–28. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2015.12.006.
