Additional salt Improve Sports Performance

When doing high-intensity exercise, usually of people rely on sports drinks to increase durability. However, for optimal benefit, you may also need additional salt.

This is shown in a new study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. Known, the Half Ironman athletes who were given capsules salt managed to reach the finish on average 26 minutes.

Half Ironman, is a sports competition that consists of 1.2 miles swimming, 56 kilometers of cycling and 13.1-mile run.

For this study, scientists from the Laboratory of Exercise Physiology at the University of Camilo José Cela, Spain studied 26 athletes competing in the Half Ironman competition. Half of the athletes mengasup drinks "sports drink" along with 12 capsules of salt, divided into three doses, while the rest drink "sports drink" along with 12 placebo capsules.

The result, which consumes additional salt successfully completed the race 26 minutes before the athlete of the group "sports drink".

Body lose sodium through sweat that comes out during long duration exercise. Salt supplementation was able to replace about 71 percent of sodium excreted through sweat, while the placebo group replaced only about 20 percent of the electrolyte.

Sodium, despite having a bad reputation as raising blood pressure, it is actually very important to maintain the performance of your body to stay healthy during exercise are a lot of sweat.

"When sodium levels are too low, the amount of body fluid and blood volume will decrease, causing fatigue and performance to be down," says sports dietitian Marie Spano.

"An athlete will be at risk of muscle cramps, decreased strength, and hyponatremia. Very low sodium levels can also lead to edema, headache, confusion and can cause brain swelling and even death," he said.

Spano added, athletes who mix double the amount of sodium in sports drinks, they feel much better when doing exercises.

Sports drinks have considered not enough to replace all the salts lost through sweat. "Because sweat contains two to three times higher concentration of salt contained in the electrolyte drinks" said del Coso Mrs. Garrigos

Most sports drinks contain 20 to 25 millimoles of sodium per liter, while the sweat contains between 20 to 60 millimoles per liter. Even if you feel you feel more salty sweat, then chances are you are losing up to 100 millimoles per liter of sodium in sweat.

Need more salt intake?

The point is how much salt you need depends on how much salt is lost. This is related to how much you sweat and how long the intensity of exercise you do, and how hot the environment around you.

Sports drinks can be taken while you exercise lasting less than two hours. Whereas if you're only doing physical exercise for 20 minutes, then you do not need to consume sports drinks, mineral water enough alone.

For those of you who like to do physical exercises with high intensity and in the long term, Spano recommend to add double the sodium in sports drinks. Add 100 milligrams of table salt for each

For those who have high blood pressure, may experience a slight increase in blood pressure after eating salt, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, says del Coso Mrs. Garrigos.

"When the blood pressure increases, you become thirsty, it will get you to drink more during exercise so that you will be well hydrated," he said. (Monica Erisanti)