Electrolytes and Sport Drinks
Do Sports Drinks Really Replenish Lost Electrolytes? ... Electrolytes are found in body, fluid, tissue, and blood. The major electrolytes in the body are sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium. Proper balance of these electrolytes is essential for muscle coordination, heart function, fluid absorption, fluid excretion, nerve function, and concentration. Electrolytes are lost through body fluid excretion, especially through sweating. Sports drinks are among the most widely used forms of electrolyte replenishers. It is said that sports drinks completely replenish an athletes lost electrolytes and give them energy to achieve their highest athletic potential. Still much controversy remains over sports drinks. Some experts claim that these drinks are unnecessary for most people and that even water may do the better job of replenishing lost fluids. ... Its still questionable as to what caused my magnesium deficiency, but I thought it would be interesting to investigate electrolytes in general. I Ive also been very curious about the advertising of sports drinks and whether or not they really replenish electrolytes in the body. ... As I began investigating this topic, I ran across valuable and vital information on electrolytes and sports drinks that should be known to all people. The history of the discovery of electrolytes is very vague. ... He felt that solutions and chemical compounds contained electrically charged atoms and he named the liquids electrolytes. ... Ever since the discovery early in the 19th century that solutions of salts and other electrolytes conduct electric current, there has been general agreement that the forces that hold atoms together must be electrical in nature. ... A scientist named Arrhenius in the late 1800s used the discovery of the dissociation of ionic substances in water to discover that electrolytes conduct electricity in aqueous solutions because they dissociate into ions which can act as charge carriers.