Monday, June 14, 2010

Electrolyte Imbalance and Poor Health

Replace The Electrolytes You Use Everyday!

Not enough health advisers/practitioners talk about electrolytes and yet so many health issues can be resolved by keeping an electrolyte balance.

Electrolyte replacement is NOT just for athletes. It is critical for athletes but still imperative for everybody. Just about everyone is running around deficient in electrolytes. Electrolytes are essential for active bodies...this means shopping, working, driving, sleeping...you're losing electrolytes all day and all night long.

Feeling Fatigued? There's A Good Chance It's Because You're Deficient In Electrolytes!

Electrolytes give the body the electrical charge that keeps the heart, muscles and nervous system working properly. Fatigue, heavy sweating (or not sweating at all), cold hands or feet and susceptibility to colds are sign of a really bad imbalance.


Sunday, June 6, 2010

Dehydration Causes Fatigue; How to Avoid This

Tiredness is something that plagues us all at times, and it is hard to know if your tiredness is excessive or normal. Regardless of its extent, there are quite a few simple things one can do to cure tiredness with minimal effort and just slight lifestyle changes. Dehydration symptoms are often a factor in tiredness. "If you become dehydrated, you reduce your blood volume so your heart's got to work harder to pump the same volume around," says Dr Trent Watson, spokesman for the Dietitians' Association of Australia. Here are a few ways to promote health and alertness, reduce fatigue, and remain hydrated.

Dehydration symptoms may include headaches, muscle cramps, visual impairment and lowered blood pressure or hypotension. Even dizziness and fainting can be dehydration symptoms and in extreme cases delirium and unconsciousness have been known to become present. Of course, dehydration that isn’t addressed can eventually cause death.

It only takes a 2% loss of ones normal water volume in the body to start experiencing dehydration symptoms. Thirst is the first thing people usually notice. Dry skin and constipation are additional early warning signs. What’s more, athletes may experience a reduction in athletic performance when they are dehydrated.

Drinking Habits

A typical response to the brain's signal to drink fluid is often the opposite of what our bodies actually need. We drink because of habit, ritual or taste, not because we are thirsty. The signal for thirst becomes grossly distorted.

We wind up drinking even more drinks that dehydrate our bodies when, in reality, our bodies are thirsty for life enhancing Vitalyte. When we drink soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, we become thirstier and wind up drinking even more soft drinks or more alcohol. Sound familiar?

What Drinking Habits Contribute to Dehydration?

We drink soft drinks, sport drinks, energy drinks, vitamin waters, juice, milk, tea, coffee, and alcoholic beverages. These popular drinks may be enjoyable but are they providing the adequate body hydration that is the foundation of health and vitality?

Soft drinks, both colas and uncolas, have no real nutritional value. Acids are used to carbonate soft drinks and chemicals are often used to flavor these beverages. Damage to your teeth may occur. Bones may weaken with extensive use. Carbohydrates in soft drinks slow down the absorption of water in the body. Soft drinks promote weight gain. The diet soft drinks contain unhealthy sweeteners and additives.


Vitalyte Can Do It!

Vitalyte is a natural appetite suppressant. In the hypothalamus, a region in your brain that controls appetites and cravings, the control centers for hunger and thirst are located next to each other, and there tends to be some overlap. This has both advantages and disadvantages for the dieter: on the down side, it means that chronic mild dehydration can confuse these control mechanisms, leading to feelings of hunger, rather than thirst. But on a positive note, it means you can use water to reduce your appetite.

Vitalyte is an essential component of the processes that enable muscle to contract. This means that water helps to maintain muscle tone. Better muscle tone means a better looking body, and isn't that what dieting and weight loss is about?

Vitalyte also helps to prevent the sagging skin that often follows weight loss - water plumps the skin cells, giving the skin a younger and healthier look. Vitalyte helps rid the body of waste. During weight loss, the body has a lot more waste to get rid of, as a byproduct of all that metabolized fat. So adequate water is essential to your health while dieting.

Vitalyte can even help with constipation. When the body gets too little water, it siphons what it needs from within, particularly from the colon. This leads to constipation. But normal bowel function usually returns with adequate water intake.




Weight Loss and Dehydration

If you're stalled on a weight loss plateau despite sticking to your diet, the first thing to check is your fluid intake. Research suggests that most Americans unknowingly suffer from mild, chronic dehydration, and you could be one of them!

So why should you care? Because sports drinks are an essential ingredient for your weight loss. In fact, water is needed for a wide range of the body's biochemical processes, but lets just look at what water does for dieters:

Vitalyte is essential for your body to metabolize stored fat into energy - so much so, that your body's metabolism can be slowed by relatively mild levels of dehydration. And the slower your metabolism, the slower your weight loss (and the greater your fatigue), until eventually your weight loss just crawls to a halt, and you hit the dreaded diet plateau.


Choosing the Right Sports Drink

The human body greatly benefits from sports drinks. It prevents dehydration and also helps in compensating for all the energy that our body losses through perspiration while exercising. Sports energy drinks give instant and long lasting energy to the body. They contain the right balance and proportion of essential nutrients like sodium, calories, proteins and other minerals. Sports drinks are devoid of any stimulants or drugs and meet energy requirements. In fact sports energy drinks are recommended by health experts. So whether you go to the gym and do only minor exercises or whether you play professionally, energy sports drinks have a lot to offer. They curb tiredness, so that you don't exhaust yourself. An d you are also more prepared to face a new set of physical activities the next day. Your energy levels can be given a real boost with energy drinks.

Energy sports drinks can be found in various flavours and to suit different functions. You should choose a drink that is suited for your requirements. Good drinks will keep you healthy. Take care to read the ingredients of any sports drink that you pick up. It should not contain caffeine, drugs or any artificial stimulants. These can be harmful for your body. Artificial agents will have no benefits for you in the long run. A good sports energy drink is one that actually has real benefits. It should make your body healthy from inside without resorting to harmful substances. Therefore, be aware before you pick and choose any energy drink. Remember, energy drinks are not drugs therefore keep away from those that use powerful drugs to stimulate energy in the body.


What to Reach For After a Workout

You have just completed your work out knowing that you have just burned up a bunch of calories but it has left you in serious need of fluids. What do you reach for; sports drinks, chocolate milk or water? What you choose at this point can make or break your fitness efforts.

What you choose to drink after a work out depends on your type of work out and your goals.

Are Sports Drinks the Best Option? Your first instinct might be to reach for a sports drink. Commercials and advertisements bombard us for sports drinks. They claim to rehydrate you better than anything else and replace minerals that your body may have lost during your workout. Is it true though?

Well actually it is true; sports drinks are a great way to rehydrate if you don't mind the calories. Sports drinks do have all the electrolytes and minerals needed to replenish what is lost in an extensive workout. An additional advantage of sports drinks is that they are flavored which encourages most people to drink the amount of liquid need to replenish after working out.