A Diabetic’s Guide To Sports Beverages

As you begin exercising harder in order to improve your overall health and insulin sensitivity level, you may start to look at intra-workout supplementation. In other words, what should you have during your workout to help ensure maximum success?

You do need to be careful with these beverages. While they can be helpful at times, they can also cause a lot of issues.

Let’s look at a few different options to consider regarding how they will impact the diabetic.

Water

The first option is the obvious and most common: plain water. In most cases, you really can’t go wrong here. Drinking water during exercise is essential for keeping the body hydrated and enabling you to perform well.

Water should be the first choice for most people since it’s free of calories and sugar and is just exactly what your body need.

It’s only when you start exercising for longer periods of time or when you are working out at high intensity levels that you should begin considering alternative options.

For example, if you are doing an endurance run for two hours and sweating quite heavily, your body might start to become depleted in sodium and potassium. If these are not replaced, it can lead to a condition called hyponatremia, which is when the sodium levels in the blood are brought down to dangerously low levels.

It’s of utmost importance that you maintain proper electrolyte levels in the bloodstream. So, when you’re losing a significant amount, that’s when you need to rethink having just water.

Coconut Water

Which brings us to the next beverage you might consider: coconut water. Coconut water is Mother Nature’s sports drink – or so it’s often called – and does contain naturally occurring electrolytes.

It also contains some naturally occurring sugar, but because it’s not a lot of sugar, it’s still something that would be manageable for the diabetic, especially if you are exercising.

Sports Drinks

Sports drinks are the next and most commonly used beverage. When you think of having something to drink during the workout, your brain probably automatically goes to these beverages. It’s what you see athletes drinking all the time.

Sports drinks are specially formulated to be used during intense physical exercise to help provide the key elements a body requires. This often means electrolytes as well as carbohydrates to fuel your working muscles.

The problem with these is twofold.

In some cases, they may contain too many electrolytes. The sodium content in these beverages can be quite high, and if you aren’t sweating all that heavily, it may be more than your body actually needs.

Some people like to drink these just to quench their thirst when, in actuality, they will probably end up making you even thirstier. So, do limit your consumption to those times when you are exercising heavily and need that sodium.

Secondly, the sugar content can be on the higher end of things. If you are exercising vigorously and for a longer time period, you may need this sugar to maintain blood glucose levels. For the diabetic, though, it may actually be better for you to just stop and have a light snack or combine the sugar with some protein. Taking in too much sugar can be hard for your body to handle.

You’ll need to judge for yourself based on your own body weight, requirements, and what form of exercise you’re doing.

Sugar-Free Sports Drinks

This may then lead you to think about using some sugar-free sports drinks instead. Wouldn’t that be a wise, viable solution.

Yes and no. Again, you’re still going to have the issue of potentially too much sodium, and now you’re just replacing sugar for artificial sweeteners.

While, from a blood glucose standpoint, that is a better choice, these aren’t exactly natural and healthy for the body.

Plus, if you are exercising quite heavily and for a lengthy time period, you may need some carbs to prevent a blood glucose crash. So, getting no carbs is not ideal either.

It’s about getting smart carbs in a form that your body can handle.

For some diabetics, this simply means having a whole-food snack and dividing the workout into two periods so there can be time allowed for digestion.

BCAAs

Finally, the last intra-workout beverage you might consider is branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). These are specific amino acids that are needed by the muscles during times of high intensity exertion and can help provide energy while also preventing you from moving into a catabolic state.

These typically come in a flavored powder that you mix into water to help stay hydrated and deliver these nutrients at the same time. They may also contain sodium and potassium along with other vitamins and minerals to keep your exercise performance up depending on the specific formula the manufacturer used.

Overall, these can be a great choice. They typically don’t contain sugar and the BCAAs may even help to stabilize blood sugar levels to a slight degree. And keeping yourself out of a catabolic state is also always important. That’s an added benefit not to overlook.

As long as you don’t need the carbs, these can be an excellent way to promote optimal hydration. They taste good so they can encourage you to keep your fluid intake up. The sodium content is also typically not as high as what you’ll get in a lot of sports drinks, so while they will help replace some lost sodium, they won’t overdo it.

So, there you have the main beverages to consider as you go about your workout session. It’s important to match your selection to the workout you are doing and what your body actually needs at that time.