IN OUR special report on the latest hydration guidelines (p60) this week, we look at how and when you should drink during training. But what about when you finish?
Fluid facts: milk out-performed other beverages in its ability to provide long-term hydration
In an intriguing new study by sports hydration experts from Loughborough University, Professor Ron Maughan and his team tracked how long 13 common drinks remain in the human body after being consumed, producing a “beverage hydration index” based on their findings.
According to the team, it is known that some fluids last longer in your body than others, providing more long-term hydration. For the trial, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they recruited 72 men in their mid-20s and asked them to drink a litre of water each as a baseline marker. The amount of water remaining in the men’s bodies after two hours — ie that they hadn’t excreted through urine — was assigned a score of 1.0. and other drinks were then measured and scored in comparison to the water.
Results showed that four drinks – oral rehydration solutions (the kind used to treat diarrhoea); skimmed milk; whole milk and orange juice – had a significantly higher hydration index than plain water. While the first three had high hydration index scores around 1.5, orange juice also performed slightly better than water with a score of 1.1.