Talking With Dr. Yang on Playing More "Safely and Healthily," Part 2
When playing, do you need sports drinks? Do they help?
Dr. Yang: First, functional drinks come in many kinds — those like Red Bull, taurine-based drinks. Of course, they also contain plenty of electrolytes, which can ease muscle fatigue and replenish stamina during intense exercise. For moderate-intensity exercise, the main issue is that with sweat, lots of electrolytes are lost. Then you should mainly replenish electrolytes, like Gatorade, Pocari Sweat, while minding water replenishment too. This is where electrolyte drinks come in. For instance, muscle twitching after intense exercise — thigh, calf cramps — is from electrolyte loss. Timely electrolyte replenishment can delay these symptoms. At the same time, do not forget sugar replenishment. Because once your body’s free glucose is used up, when you need sugar to supply energy, it consumes muscle glycogen, prioritized. Then muscle glycogen, through anaerobic metabolism, produces much lactic acid, causing lactic acid buildup in muscles and fairly obvious soreness. Also, intense exercise may cause massive lactic acid buildup, inducing rhabdomyolysis — a serious complication. So you should appropriately replenish glycogen too. Red Bull and some other functional drinks contain some sugar for this reason. I provide an extra good replenishment method. When we exercise intensely, we consume both glycogen and, through sweat, many electrolytes. Then you can eat half a banana, which timely replenishes sugar and electrolytes like potassium ions. This lowers the electrolyte imbalance’s effect on the heart, while extending exercise time and improving the experience. This method appears in many endurance sports, like tennis. In long-set tennis battles, many famous players use the sports-drink-plus-banana method to replenish.
Some players bring a pot of tea. Does drinking tea not accelerate sweating — is it unsuitable to drink during exercise?
Dr. Yang: Personally I think drinking tea has little effect on exercise. Conversely, drinking some tea can raise our excitement. But relying on tea to replenish electrolytes and water is basically far from enough. In this era, scientific exercise needs scientific fluid replenishment; in the old material-scarce era, just having water to drink was good. Now, if conditions allow, electrolyte-based sports drinks are the most suitable fluid replenishment.
So, during play, simply drinking plain water, purified water, is not enough, not advisable?
Dr. Yang: In fact, during intense exercise, drinking plain water directly is never advised, because it only further lowers your electrolyte concentration. In everyone’s body, electrolytes exist as a concentration. So when we speak of electrolyte imbalance and loss, what drops is the concentration, not simply how much amount is lost. To raise the concentration, you need to raise the proportion of its corresponding components. For example, when sweating, you may lose too many electrolytes. I both sweat and lose water, so the body’s electrolyte concentration is right. But if I drink pure water then, I add body fluid without adding electrolytes, so the concentration drops, causing harm. For example, now playing, sweating a lot, then drinking plain water and exercising a while more — sometimes you find: first, the chest is uncomfortable, possibly from low potassium; the heart rate cannot rise. Second, extreme muscle fatigue may appear, like cramps, with various lactic-acid-buildup situations quickly appearing. This is the body in emergency, self-rescuing — actually possibly caused by electrolyte disorder. If when replenishing water you also replenish both water and electrolytes, you keep your body’s sweating isotonic. The water I replenish is also isotonic, so my body stays isotonic — the osmotic pressure is the same. Then the body’s blood, salt, electrolytes all have a good balance, avoiding some blows and injuries to important organs.