Transcript
0:00 Hydration. It shouldn't be controversial, but oh boy was I wrong. I found that it is like politics or diet, never bring up whether a runner carries a water bottle or wears a water vest or not. Let me tell you, this week I got in the middle of a internet controversy. I posted, "Hey, guess what? For shorter runs, you don't need to carry water. You're going to be okay. If you want to, go for it, but you don't have to."
0:31 And the internet exploded on me. So, today I figured I'm going to go through the myths. Let's bust them all. Let's do it on video form. Hydration, electrolytes, fueling, carb loading, we're going to talk about it all because that's what we do on this channel, on this program. We use science and practice and history to teach us what actually works. So, let's go into hydration. Everybody knows you got to hydrate, right? Well, true to to a degree, as is everything.
1:02 So, first let's start with a little bit of history. When it comes to hydration, way back in the day, scientists, sports scientists, the early version of it, actually thought like, "Hey, hey, wait a minute. Let's not drink anything during that marathon." Literally, they told people not to drink things. Why in the world did they do this? Well, they did some experiments. They found that the guys who were winning the marathon were the most dehydrated.
1:33 Now, if you stop and you pause and you think about it for a second, you might see some selection bias here that's forming, but they didn't see that at this time. They just said, "You know what? They're the most dehydrated. Everybody, don't drink anything. More dehydration, better performance. Let's go." And that held for a while until runners eventually started experimenting and saying like, "Hey, wait a minute. We find that we perform a little bit better if we drink something or drink something like flat Coke like was introduced in the '60s and '70s in the marathon." And the running boom really changed things.
2:11 So, when the running boom occurred in the '70s, there was a bit of a pushback. It didn't happen in a wave all at once. It happened over time. But, what we got is that pendulum swung from never drink anything essentially all the way over towards "Oh my gosh, if we lose any weight during the thing, even a little bit, we're going to be in trouble." The mantra became essentially replace what you lost. So, the advice would be go out for your run, see how much weight you lose, and then make sure that's replaced by drinking during the run or race or what have you.
2:53 The guidelines came up with this kind of 2% rule, which said we don't want to lose more than 2% of our body weight, which isn't a ton when you think about it and you consider the mechanisms. So, we swung the other way. And we swung a little too far. >> >> More recent research has told us this, that if you still measure elite athletes, guess what? Even with all the hydration and the fueling and stuff that we do now, they still often lose 4 to 8% of body weight. There was a wonderful study on Haile Gebrselassie, the world record at at the holder at the time, one of the greats in history in endurance running, that found he had 8 to 10% body weight loss at the end of his world record-setting marathon.
3:45 What happened is we found a little happy medium. Researchers realized that in those early studies, what had happened is that the way they were dehydrating people in the studies kind of sucked. Sometimes they used diuretics, sometimes they used sitting in a heat chamber. But you couldn't blind them to it. They realized what they were getting essentially and that they were becoming dehydrated. And because everything in the world was telling them dehydration was bad at that time, their performance suffered even under a little bit.
4:19 Better studies looked at it and said, "Hey, it's not exactly 2%. Sometimes performance starts to decline at 3, 4, 5%. It varies by lab and test and all that stuff, but we realized there's a lot more wiggle room." And one of the reasons is this. And this explains why those studies, early studies where people knew they were getting dehydrated, backfired. Is what we've learned since the '70s and '80s is that fatigue essentially works as a kind of predictive mechanism. It's not that we hit catastrophic failure when we run out of glycogen or we have some fueling running low or something happening that's bad and then we hit the eject button. Our brain is essentially saying like running a calculation and saying, "Here's all the feedback I'm getting in.
5:10 You know, I have this much glycogen left or my blood glucose is at this or my blood volume is at this." All sorts of different things. "My core temperature is at this. Can I keep going given the model of this race, which is a marathon at X pace or intensity or what have you have in our our brain?" No, there's not some black box that's doing this. The exact mechanism mechanism is still debated. We'll leave that for another time. But essentially what we have is we have this kind of predictive calculus where we're saying, "Hey, can we kind of make it given the fuel utilization utilization right now or the utilization of other things? Okay?
5:54 So, that predictive mechanism matters a lot because if you think that dehydration is going to affect you and you see you're getting dehydrated, your predictive body goes into kind of like a hyper reactive alarm. And it says, "We're getting dehydrated. Slow down." A couple of the best ways to see this is actually the research on on on swishing and spitting carbs or sugar. What researchers found is that when they had individuals during long efforts like marathons swish and spit some carb drink swish it around, spit it out so they didn't actually ingest it they still got a performance boost.
6:36 Why? Because there you have these sugar sensors in your mouth that send the message to the brain, "Hey, don't worry, sugar's on the way. We're going to be okay." And it sends that message even if it doesn't go all the way down to the stomach. So, even if you don't get more fuel on the way, your brain says, "Hey, we're getting some more. Let's loosen the reins, turn down the alarm and we can push a little bit further." It's that calculation that really matters.
7:02 So, what? What does this mean? When it comes to hydration, it's this. We've moved towards a happy medium that essentially says like when it comes to water consumption or fluid consumption during a race, not talking carbs or sugar, we'll get to that. Basically, go by thirst. If you're thirsty, drink. If you're not, you're going to be okay. Now, the key here is while our thirst mechanism is good it's also subject to kind of the psychology and brain and a nuance, right?
7:37 We have this idea that's called interoception which basically means how well can you read your internal signals? If you're an advanced runner who's been doing this for years, you can probably read them pretty good. If you're a novice, that alarm can be hyper reactive. If you've been told over and over again by everybody everywhere to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, that signal of thirst might be hypersensitive. So, step one is learning how to tune in that kind of thirst mechanism, of listening to your body, seeing if you really need water, if it's just that the fear that's created by other people around you.
8:18 That's what it is. So, train that up. The other part that I like to say if we're talking about specifics, and this is what got me into a lot of trouble, is that on short runs, you probably don't need it. You don't need the water bottle. You don't need the, you know, CamelBak or what have you. If you're going on trails or somewhere where you might get lost or it's a billion percent humidity, you know, maybe take all those factors into account. You do you. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you what the physiology and the science said, but 30, 45 minutes, that 5K run, even up to an hour, probably not a big deal.
8:55 Okay? Probably not a big deal. You're going to be fine with water as long as you're relatively hydrated going into the thing. Okay? Don't be not drinking water then go out on an hour run and say, "Oh, Steve said I'm I'm good." Use common sense here. Yes, even in hot and humid environments, it shifts it somewhat, but generally my rule of thumb is, I mean, growing up in Houston, Texas, like I seldom I actually have never taken water.
9:25 Sometimes I'll stop at a water fountain or have a planned route or circle back to my car. If I was training for a marathon, which we'll get to in a minute, I carry something sometimes, but generally anything a hour or under, don't sweat it. Hydrate going into it. Once you get into longer runs, 90 minutes, 2 hours, depending on the conditions, probably want to have some just for comfort and help a little bit, but it's not a not a huge deal. Long runs matters more.
9:56 Don't dehydrate ate yourself in crazy hot humid conditions. That's not what I'm saying. Medical disclaimer here. Okay. So, the other thing while we're talking about hydration is one of the things that we saw during this push to, you know, always hydrate as we saw a rise in hyponatremia, which is essentially being waterlogged. You get so waterlogged by drinking so much because you think you need it that you get a severe drop in blow it blood sodium and it can be a deadly thing. We saw this especially in the 2000s and late '90s, but even into the current times, where people are just inundated, they were running really, generally not being offensive, slower marathons where they were out there for many hours, and they were told to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, and unfortunately, we had some bad situations. This is why we pulled back to drink to thirst.
10:52 Speaking of that, sodium, let's get into the other thing, electrolytes. They're all over the place. Now, I'm not here to hate on electrolytes. They serve an important a an important process, okay? And we're going to get to that in a second. First, I want to talk about what they don't do. For a long time, there was this theory that cramps, muscle cramps, were a result from decreased electrolytes. And if you just took your electrolytes, you wouldn't cramp. This is why, you know, football teams were giving people packets of salt on the on the sideline, essentially, saying, "Oh, we got to get this so we don't cramp. We don't cramp."
11:30 It's old theory, basically bunk, doesn't doesn't test out. Researchers have looked at it in in extreme situations such as ultra runners, and it just doesn't hold. Instead, what we've come to realize is that cramps, muscle cramps, are often caused by neuromuscular fatigue. It's the neuromuscular fatigue hypothesis that can simplify fine what generally happens here is we have extreme fatigue that could be caused by racing, heat stress, environmental stress, pre-fatigue going in and doing something hard, whatever it is, where your muscle essentially goes a little bit haywire. And we have these apparatuses, muscle spindles and Golgi tendon units, that kind of keep everything working in the in the in the muscle itself. They measure stretch and strain.
12:28 And essentially they get like hyper-responsive or hyper-reactive and freak out when we have high levels of fatigue, and that neural signal gets all sorts of messed up. That's the technical term there. All sorts of messed up. So, what do we do about it? There's been some research that shows that pickle juice, because of the acidity and some neuromuscular thing which I'll link to some articles or put them in the show notes so you can see this, helps.
12:58 There's some research on this. But overall, the best thing that you can do is prepare for the demands that you're going to face. So, if you're going to face a hot environment, do some heat training to prepare. Get in your long runs. Get in your work that prepares you for the fatigue you're going to encounter in the race. If you're going to experience lots of downhills or rapid stops and eccentric, you know, contractions, we've got to prepare for that because if we don't, that fatigue puts us in a state where we're more likely to cramp.
13:32 Now, electrolytes aren't all bad. They're good, actually. We need them. Okay, and they do some really important things. They first maintain blood plasma volume, which is important because think of it like our blood plasma, we need it to be a free-flowing fluid instead of sludge that moves really slow and becomes like a backed-up highway. Sodium helps do that and helps it keeps it in its right place. It also helps us facilitate transport of glucose, which we'll talk about. So, glucose into the cells. So, in a marathon, really freaking important if you going to fuel.
14:13 Sodium's important there. Electrolyte's important there. It also helps maintain the sodium-potassium pump, which complicated, but essentially helps us with muscle contraction itself. So, it's vital. Now, the key here is that you don't need to be drinking electrolytes all day, every day if you're doing like a 2-mi jog here and there. Where they really come into play is during longer races or longer hard performances, especially in hot conditions where heat stress affects things, okay?
14:51 The general rule of thumb is that once you get up to hour and a half, 2 hours, if you want to be safe, hour plus, doesn't matter, is that it's something like 300 to 600 milligrams of sodium per hour will keep you in a pretty good state where you don't have to worry about this. So, when you're looking at marathons, yes, electrolytes come into play. Not for cramping, but for all of those other benefits. All right.
15:20 So, what does this all means? Don't go crazy on electrolytes, but use them when you go longer. When it comes to hydration during the thing, drink to thirst. And often novice runners are inundated with hydration stuff. They always buy the Camelbaks. No offense to that. I get their purpose on long runs or trail runs. They serve a great great purpose there. But, like you don't need that for your 2-mile or 5K jaunt in the afternoon. My rule of thumb, as I said, an hour. Yours might be a little bit different. You might have different thirst mechanisms or requirements than me. That's fine. But, don't think you have to take the water bottle all the time.
16:05 You don't. Just kind of just the science. Don't yell at me. So, let's jump into We've talked about hydration, electrolytes. Let's jump into fueling for performance. So, I've done other things on fueling, but I I want to touch on this a little bit here. Is that often another myth is that okay, we're going to run out of glycogen. We got to fuel all the time even for a short runs. That's not reality. Okay? Glycogen depletion fueling really starts to benefit us for 2-hour plus events or races or performances. That's when it really comes into play.
16:44 Can it come into play at a little over an hour? Yeah, but it tends to do so by that predictive mechanism I told you earlier, the swish and spit or taking some in and just getting decreasing that perception of effort a little bit because your brain goes, "Okay, we got fuel here. We're on our way." This is why often, not all the times, but often you see elite half marathoners, which takes a little bit over an hour or a little under for men and women, like they don't emphasize fueling during that.
17:17 Okay? It's going to differ, but think of it in terms of 2 hours plus requirement hour and change, probably not anything less, not really. Okay? Why? Because anything less, we're going to get some glycogen depletion local, but it's not the limiting factor. Okay? You can quickly replenish that, no problem. When it comes to fueling during the race, we have we used to think that you were limited to about 60 g an hour of fuel. That's gone out the window for two reasons. First off is we realized that there are two pathways to essentially get that that sugar digested and utilized. One is the sodium glucose-linked transporter system. It can handle about 60 g an hour.
18:14 And it generally uses, you know, simple sugars like glucose. But what researchers realized in the early in the early mid-2000s is that there's another way to get into the gut and be utilized into our system. And that was the GLUT5, you know, system or pathway. So, think of it as two different pathways. GLUT5 is primarily used by fructose or blends that include fructose. Okay? So, what we realized is that when we combine sugars, we get a better effect, and you can push that up to 90, 100, 110, 120 g an hour.
18:57 Is mega-dosing better or worse? We don't have a clear definition right there right now. Studies are being undertaken, but generally what we've seen in the last couple years is a push for higher and higher both in running. you can saw it in Kipchoge's two-hour attempts, ultra running, and cycling Tour de France style as we've pushed higher and higher. There is a limit, okay? There's going to be a a limit. The The pathways the bottlenecks change, right? Even though we have two highways now, the bottlenecks change. The Morton gels hydrogels has helped with this, especially with GI distress around this as well. It's helped too, but there's always a bottleneck and that bottleneck has shifted. As intrepid nutritionists are discovering, they're trying to figure out, okay, what's the mechanism now? What's the limit?
19:49 And also there's efficiency. As we've consumed 120 g, you don't process all of that. That efficiency, some data shows it drops a little bit as you get higher, some say says it varies a lot. So, you might get 80% 75% out of that processed, you know, when you need it. So, anyways, the the thing to realize mixed sugars, you know, go both hot highways. The hydrogel for more Morton works well.
20:21 And then the last thing I'll say on fueling during it is your gut is trainable. So, your gut gets better at utilizing this and not having GI distress if you train at. So, this is where it comes into, especially during those long runs where you might want to carry a gel or a water with some drink mixture in there, sugar drink mixture, so you get accustomed and you used to it. The more you kind of get used to it, the better your body says, okay, we can handle this as well.
20:53 The other thing, we just talked about fueling during this, I want to talk about carb loading. It still has a place in the marathon. We used to think that you needed a big depletion state and then, you know, kind of be miserable and depleted and not have carbs and then ramp that up. That's the old protocol. You don't need that. What research tends to show is that when you're training for a marathon, you're training enough to get somewhat depleted, maybe not fully, but that's fine. And if you just eat some high-carb meals or foods beforehand, it's going to benefit you and put you in a place where you have enough carbohydrate and your glycogen stores are topped off. You don't have to go crazy here. And often if you go crazy with the long wrong fuels or meals and eat a super heavy meal like the night before your marathon and with maybe some stuff that isn't easily digestible like some fiber and some other nutrients like that, maybe heavy dairy, like that can often put you in a place where you might have some GI distress or increased risk of GI distress. So, keep it simple. The other thing to note on fueling is overnight, we have a little bit of fast. Our liver glycogen stores drop down.
22:10 This is why we call breakfast break fast. Just make sure you break fast, right? Fueling beforehand helps. In another video and maybe in the future I'll go over supplements like caffeine and bicarb and other things like that that help. But for now, we'll keep it at that at at here for hydration, electrolytes, fueling for performance, okay? So often novices get this wrong. Again, not their fault. They don't know any better. They have to learn just like the rest of us. Anyone who's coached novices or high school kids know you get a lot of questions where you're just like, "Hey, that's obvious to me because I've been doing it for a long time." The purpose of this video is to educate you so that you have that. If you still want to run with your water bottle all day and it gives you that security blanket, go for it. I'm not I'm not hating, but I'm just here to tell you what the requirements are and the physiology for electrolytes, hydration, and fueling for performance.
23:13 Dialed in, experiment the best you you can, and you're going to be in a good place. Thanks so much for listening. As always, like, subscribe, comment. I read all the comments. It gives me ideas for videos. This video came from someone requesting hydration. And then I got roasted on the internet for Not by all, by a couple people, for telling people that they didn't need to drink water on their run on their short run if they didn't want to. People love their water. Diet, politics, water bottles on runs.
23:48 Don't bring them up. Lesson learned. All right, everyone. Till next time.