dehydration, think i know the answer

[TomTurner]

Don't forget that if you are drinking loads you also need to put salt back into your body too.

[Michael R]

Don't forget that if you are drinking loads you also need to put salt back into your body too.

In the Grand Canyon area several hikers a year die because they drink loads of water and take no salt. This is where the anti-salt advice on health grounds is wrong.

Perhaps the most important thing is a slow build-up to long trips and to know your body.

If you come back from a ride/walk and your pee is yellow then you are on the way to dehydration.

[TomTurner]

Don't forget that if you are drinking loads you also need to put salt back into your body too.

In the Grand Canyon area several hikers a year die because they drink loads of water and take no salt. This is where the anti-salt advice on health grounds is wrong.

Perhaps the most important thing is a slow build-up to long trips and to know your body.

If you come back from a ride/walk and your pee is yellow then you are on the way to dehydration.

Absolutely! You should be drinking throughout your ride. I work on the bases of a sip every ten miles BUT drink when you feel you need to.

"Drink before you are trusty,
Eat before you are hungry,
Rest before you are tired,
Don't smoke or drink when on tour."

Can't go wrong

[Mattie]

I think running is much harder work than cycling. Is that why you were saying it's not relevant, or are you saying that cycling is a longer sweatier activity?

Horses for courses, is what I say.

I can ride for three or four hours non stop and not drink at all and probably not even be thirsty. If I were to run, I'd be far sweatier and quite thirsty, but when I did cross country running in my youth, I wasn't thirsty at all.

I am having difficulty here explaining what I mean.

Running a marathon just lasts a few hours, hard work granted, but after the few hours race you can go home and put your feet up. That is it you can recover at your leisure and be back at work the next day.

Cycle touring you may find you have done a 50 mile day in hot hilly country and taken 6 hours of hard sweat hauling a tourer over lumpy country in hot weather and be exhausted at the end of the day. But that is not the end of it because you may have to do the same the next day - and the day after that - and the day after that.

So you cannot carry dehydration into the next day because it may l get worse if still hot. My point about the 1 litre hour is that is the maximum safe amount to drink in order to recover your hydration - two litres in two hours not two litres in 4 minutes !

You might not need two litres to rehydrate - but if you do I suggest you take two hours to drink them and not 5 minutes !

[niggle]

I think this really needs demystifying, you do not need fancy sports drinks, you do not need some artificial calculation to work out how much you need to drink and drinking 'before' you need to carries the risk of drinking more than you need to if done to excess. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to regulate their hydration levels and other nutritional needs under the monitoring of our central nervous system (brain) which then communicates this information to our thoughts and behaviour, so when we need to restore our hydration we feel thirsty and go and drink something, simple as that.

So IMO we should drink when thirsty and we should stop worrying about it, just allow our natural inbuilt systems to do their job. For example I find that on winter runs a single 750ml water bottle often is still half full or more when I get home, but in summer on long, hot and hilly rides I want a lot more, so I drink a lot more, but I never drink just because I think I should be drinking, only in response to actual thirst. Also IMO a need for extra salt is unlikely for most people in anything other than the most extreme conditions, with the excess that is present in the western diet already, so I just drink plain water normally.

[Michael R]

The trouble is that bikes appeared long after we had evolved into humans and they are in a sense unnatural. We need to apply our evolved brains to dealing with any problem

[niggle]

The trouble is that bikes appeared long after we had evolved into humans and they are in a sense unnatural. We need to apply our evolved brains to dealing with any problem

But what is the difference between dehydrating when cycling to dehydrating when running and hunting on the savannah? A different kind of leg movement is not going to fool the autonomic systems that are monitoring our physiology constantly. We only need to use our 'evolved brains' (conscious mind and intellect) to plan ahead and make sure we have enough fluids available for when we need them.

[Mattie]

I think this really needs demystifying, you do not need fancy sports drinks, you do not need some artificial calculation to work out how much you need to drink and drinking 'before' you need to carries the risk of drinking more than you need to if done to excess. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to regulate their hydration levels and other nutritional needs under the monitoring of our central nervous system (brain) which then communicates this information to our thoughts and behaviour, so when we need to restore our hydration we feel thirsty and go and drink something, simple as that.

So IMO we should drink when thirsty and we should stop worrying about it, just allow our natural inbuilt systems to do their job. For example I find that on winter runs a single 750ml water bottle often is still half full or more when I get home, but in summer on long, hot and hilly rides I want a lot more, so I drink a lot more, but I never drink just because I think I should be drinking, only in response to actual thirst. Also IMO a need for extra salt is unlikely for most people in anything other than the most extreme conditions, with the excess that is present in the western diet already, so I just drink plain water normally.

I am sorry but I do not totally agree. I am very familiar with my own response to dehydration - what I call "loosing it" is one of them. On one occasion in Castile I had to search for something in a pannier and I had to stop myself from hurling the contents in all directions because I could not find it - this is what three days of cycling through Spain in August can do to you ! Dehydration may cause you to loose your reasoning - I know that and can recognise it.

I also cannot do my basic mental arithmetic of converting kms to miles (divide by 8 multiply by five). I also get a headache and may develop an unquenchable thirst that cannot be sated no matter how much you drink. The last two are cured with salt. Add some salt to a drink and it kills your headache and stops the unquenchable thirst. Dehydration, from my experience affects your reasoning and trusting to thirst, in some cases could be dangerous.

Some may have cycled round the home counties and think this is all rubbish - having cycled with nothing more than a couple of Jam Sandwiches and a bottle of Tizer and been perfectly OK without any of this. Well Ok !

Disclaimer: This is my own experience and does not constitute advice.

[ANTONISH]

[quote="MattieSo

IMO we should drink when thirsty and we should stop worrying about it, just allow our natural inbuilt systems to do their job. For example I find that on winter runs a single 750ml water bottle often is still half full or more when I get home, but in summer on long, hot and hilly rides I want a lot more, so I drink a lot more, but I never drink just because I think I should be drinking, only in response to actual thirst. Also IMO a need for extra salt is unlikely for most people in anything other than the most extreme conditions, with the excess that is present in the western diet already, so I just drink plain water normally.[/quote

]

I also cannot do my basic mental arithmetic of converting kms to miles (divide by 8 multiply by five).

You could use the simpler calculation of divide by two and add a quarter of the answer to itself.

I also get a headache and may develop an unquenchable thirst that cannot be sated no matter how much you drink. The last two are cured with salt. Add some salt to a drink and it kills your headache and stops the unquenchable thirst. Dehydration, from my experience affects your reasoning and trusting to thirst, in some cases could be dangerous.

][/quote]

I have to agree with what you say but I understand that as we age our inbuilt thirst response is weaker and we need to be aware of this. Secondly salt defficiency can result in dizziness and fainting - particularly in the older person. Drinking a lot of pure water in hot conditions may exacerbate this - as I'm in the "elderly" category I have to make sure of a steady intake of an electrolyte drink such as made up with Nuun tablets. IMO energy can be obtained easily from solid food without resorting to energy drinks.

[kwackers]

The basic problem is that we've become conditioned to think you must drink lots of water. It's just not true.
If you drink lots of water then you change your bodies chemistry with potentially dangerous results. It's actually better to be dehydrated than over hydrated.

The other issue is that energy drinks don't help, they simply don't contain enough salt - not even close. So if you drink lots of them you're simply over hydrating again.

For most people cycling around in this country there's nothing wrong with the sensible sipping approach, if you get to the sloshing stomach and still feel thirsty then you're well on your way to being in trouble.

[byegad]

We're all different in this. I find a little and often works for me even on a long hot day. BUT I've ridden with people who must have a camel in their recent ancestry and they drink a lot less than me.

Replacing salt is essential, my Grandad was a smelter and working in front of a blast furnace for eight hours will seat the salt out of you, so he ate salt tablets the size of Trebor Mints as if they were sweets and coated his meals in salt. My Father was a steelworker too and always carried salt tablets in his work jacket pocket, although as a foreman fitter maintaining a rolling mill he was far less exposed to the heat.

In no way can cycling in the UK replicate that sort of heat. The test my Dad used was to nibble a salt tablet, if it didn't taste too salty it was time to eat the tablet.

[Mick F]

I'm with Niggle on this.

I ride a bike for enjoyment and transport. That's what the vast majority of cyclists do, they don't ride across the desert or up hot mountains and down chasms. If the average cyclists drinks when thirsty, eats well and rests well, that's all he has to worry about.

Some years ago, I was coming back to LE from JOG and the weather was blisteringly hot. I drank gallons and for the most part ate well too. My water was laced with fruit-juice and salt and I never passed up the opportunity for a refill of water.

[wearwell]

I'm undertaking a charity ride of the full trans pennine trail over three days with 12 others at the end of the month, we have been putting loads of training in since January ranging from 26miles with hilss up to our mazimum daily milleage on the actual challenge , reading up on nutrition and swapping our training runs to include hill's short and long runs speed and endurance and recently been using zero training drink with electrolyte's to replace salts when training as I say I think our training and prep is well on the mark but I have just one question:
As a pretty big guy of 16 stone I take on fluid almost constantly during our rides , for instance we put in a good fast 50 miles at the weekend taking in some decent hills of the cheshire countryside during this time I drained my camelpack of 1 litre of the electrolyte mix and also about half a litre of water.
Granted it was very hot and the sweating never stopped but when I returned home and for the following few hours my urine was dark, I'm told signifying dehydration.
I have to be honest I dont think I could drink much more liquid if I tried, any tips advise please would be a help.

Basically I wouldn't worry about it. It's possible to do a fast 50 miles without any water at all, unless it's very hot and as long as you weren't a bit parched to start with. Couple of pints of beer will go down well at the end though!
Dehydration as revealed by pee colour is just the normal cycle and will vary through the day according to how much you work/drink, and the external temperature.

[Mick F]

+1

[Deckie]

On one of my Tall Ship voyages a member of the crew was drinking sports type electrolyte drinks non-stop, complaining of thirst a lot of the time. After four days she collapsed.

The doctor on board told her straight - she was dehydrated. The salts in the electrolyte drink were too concentrated and were actively dehydrating her. She was advised to alter the balance - drink more water than electrolyte, not the other way round. Treat the sports drink like a chaser shot to your pint of water and you may find you don't need as much fluid overall and your urine won't be so dark.