10 things you need to know about hydration

​Our Hydration Sponsor, Skratch Labs share a rapid fire lesson on sweat, hydration and how to manage it - useful for whether you're training inside or out, or on race day. Read the list and watch the video below.

1. You sweat whenever you are doing something that makes you really hot like working out or mowing the lawn in oppressive heat.
2. Sweat has fluid and electrolytes like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and chloride.
3. While all electrolytes are important to your body’s function and performance, sodium is by far the most important electrolyte, because a decrease in your body’s sodium concentration – something called hyponatremia – can have some extremely negative consequences that range the gamut from just not feeling well to seizures, excessive urination, incontinence (that’s when you soil yourself), and even death.
4. There is anywhere from 400 mg to 1200 mg of sodium in a liter of sweat (our Sport Hydration Drink Mix contains 800 mg of sodium per liter).
5. Since sweat has both fluid and electrolytes in it, drinking water alone to replace the fluid you lose when you’re sweating can be really dangerous since this is the quickest way to decrease or dilute your body’s sodium concentration. If you’re exercising and find yourself peeing a lot and feeling really sick, you may be hyponatremic and you’ll need to rehydrate with something with a lot of salt in it, or just eat salty foods with whatever you're drinking.
6. In theory, the best thing to drink when you’re sweating is your own sweat. But drinking sweat tastes gross (trust us, our Founder, Dr. Allen Lim, has tasted his own sweat and he does not recommend it). Finally, it’s hard to capture all the sweat you lose when you’re sweating unless you have one of those cool suits from the movie Dune that recycles your sweat and urine.
7. Sweat does not contain artificial colors, artificial flavors (or any flavoring agents for that matter), artificial sweeteners, preservatives or other strange ingredients.
8. Most sports drinks contain water, electrolytes, and some form of sugar to provide a small source of energy to help maintain blood sugar and fuel working muscle. Unfortunately, most sports drinks also contain artificial colors, flavoring agents, artificial sweeteners, preservatives as well as other strange ingredients that you need to take an organic chemistry class to figure out.
9. Our experience at Skratch Labs has been that most sports drinks don’t contain enough electrolytes and have too much sugar. We've also noticed that all of the excess ingredients make people sick when they drink too much of it. Our Sport Hydration Drink Mix has almost double the amount of key electrolytes per liter than national leading sports drinks.
10. Without fruit, citric acid and sugar, a sports drink would taste just like sweat. But our mix with fruit, citric acid, electrolytes and sugar tastes clean and light. So here’s the plug - if you are sweating a lot and need something to rehydrate with that replaces what you lose in your sweat and nothing extra, give our Sport Hydration Mix a try.