Sports Drink Market
Sports Drink Market Packed with Performance Supporting Drinks
Anytime that you engage in a strenuous physical workout, whether it involves shoveling snow, competing in sports, or testing your limits during a training session, you most likely will sweat enough to develop a serious thirst. When you hit that stage, it is just not enough to drink water to try to quench that thirst and give your body what it is craving. And, as a result of that fact, the sports drink market is a growing industry that offers people lots of options for handling this kind of need.
Back in the day, old-timers who ranched across America used to brew up batches of what they called switchel. This might have been the original sport beverage and contained a mixture of molasses, vinegar and water, and was used during the intense physical exertion the ranchers experienced during haying season. For most people, their workouts have changed since that time, and fortunately so have the products on the market.
The various energy sports drinks and endurance drink bottles that are seen in the sports drink market no longer rely on vinegar and molasses, but the formulations still have some commonalities to those ingredients. Today, when you read the label on your favorite energy sports drink, you will primarily see the ingredients of sugar to supply carbohydrates, and minerals such as sodium and potassium which add electrolytes to the sports beverage.
This combination of carbohydrates and electrolytes found in endurance drink mixes essentially provides the same benefits to today's athletes that the ranchers got from the switchel. The bottom line is that these extra ingredients give the body what it needs to re-hydrate quickly in order to replace the rapid loss of moisture from the body due to the physical exertion.
Every manufacturer of a sports beverage knows how important it is to keep an athlete's body from becoming dehydrated. When dehydration occurs, performance is reduced. In addition, consuming the electrolyte sports drink formulations help to assure that the body does not become overheated which can cause problems and add stress to the cardiovascular system.
Even though many of the advertisements for sports beverage products put a lot of emphasis on the restoration and the balancing of electrolytes, many doctors say that the most important benefit in these recovery sports drinks comes from the carbohydrates. It is the carbs from the sugars that help to feed the muscles during the workout, help to replace energy stores, and help to delay fatigue, all of which improves endurance.
In the way of the ingredients, there is very little to distinguish the recovery sports drink formulations of the three major brands in the sports drink market. The big three names in energy sports drinks are Gatorade, All Sport and Powerade and all three of these brands have almost identical ingredients, although the actual amounts might vary slightly.
