Water at Port Tastings

[jdaw1]

Fascinating article on BBC health:

Well earlier this year sports scientists in Australia did an extraordinary experiment that had never been done before (British Journal of Sports Medicine, September 2013, Current hydration guidelines are erroneous: dehydration does not impair exercise performance in the heat, Wall BA).

This group wanted to find out what happened to performance after dehydration. So they took a group of cyclists and exercised them until they lost 3% of their total body weight in sweat.

Then their performance was assessed after rehydration with either 1) nothing, 2) enough water to bring them back to 2% dehydration or 3) after full rehydration.

So far nothing unusual, but the difference between this and almost every other study that's ever been done on hydration was that the cyclists were blind to how much water they got. The fluid was given intravenously without them knowing the volume.

This is vital because we all, and especially athletes, have such an intimate psychological relationship with water consumption.

Remarkably, there was no performance difference between those that were fully rehydrated and those that got nothing.

Hmm. This needs to be repeated, with a collection of over-weight middle-aged non-exercising males (that is, not exercising during the study), who are instead drinking Graham 1985. We sit in the research lab, glasses and steak in front of us, intravenous drips going in of a secret amount of water, and the following day somehow the hangover is scientifically measured.

[djewesbury]

Bagsy not the one doing the measuring.

[DRT]

Perhaps a control group could be fed Graham 1985 intravenously whilst drinking water?

[djewesbury]

Bagsy not in the control group.

[djewesbury]

RB suggests we watch people exercising. She just volunteered to run on the spot. I think this is a bad idea.

[Axel P]

Thanks for sharing Julian. Very interesting. DId you eliminate your water tickmark boxes on the tasting sheets as a logical consequence?

[jdaw1]

The authors tested cycling at high temperature, not port drinking at a sensible Autumn temperature.