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The New Rules of Hydration...

Saturday, 04 February 2017 23:10

By AC Shilton (outsideonline.com)

Robert Sallis has seen it all. As a medical director for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, he’s spent 20 years watching athletes in every manner of distress get wheeled into the medical tent. He’s seen hyponatremia, or overhydration, a handful of times. He’s seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of dehydration cases. Sallis has even seen athletes show symptoms of both at the same time: they’ve dropped weight over the course of the race, signaling dehydration, but their blood sodium levels are dangerously low, a sign of hyponatremia....

What most surprises Sallis, a former president of the American College of Sports Medicine, is the heap of misinformation on hydration that he hears swirling among athletes. He partially blames the media that picks up stories like this Cycling News article from December 2016, in which Roger Palfreeman, Team Sky’s top doctor, touted “functional dehydration” as a strategy for making his athletes lighter and thus faster. “It’s stupid,” says Sallis, adding that mental and physical performance plunges when you’re 2 percent dehydrated—any advantage from a reduction in weight would likely be offset by a reduction in power and mental resolve.  READ MORE