How You’re Being Manipulated By The Sports Drink Industry And What You Can Do About It.

Ben Greenfield (0:02)

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And with me today is Dr. Tim Noakes, the South African Physiologist who has been on this show in the past and has shared with us a great deal of valuable knowledge about electrolyte intake and also about something called the central governor. And today, we're going to be discussing some of the concepts that Dr. Noakes lays out in his new book, which is called Waterlogged, The Serious Problem of Over-Hydration in Endurance Sports. I read this book, I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it's pretty mind-blowing in terms of the amount of knowledge that it contains that you never, ever learn.

You know, and I spent five years in university learning what was supposed to be everything you need to know about how to fuel the human body during exercise and did not learn any of the stuff that Tim talks about in his book. So, Dr. Noakes, thanks for coming on the call today.

Timothy Noakes (1:05)

Thank you, Ben. I appreciate you having me back again.

Ben Greenfield (1:08)

So, let's jump right in. You start this book out with a case study about this girl named Cynthia Lucero who is going to run the Boston Marathon. Can you talk about what happened there and why it's a perfect way to outline why this book needs to be written?

Timothy Noakes (1:27)

Well, the tragedy for Cynthia is that we predicted this was going to happen. I predicted in 1992, we had the editors of Runner's World here, sorry, it was 1993, and we had the editors of Runner's World here, including Ambie Burfoot, who wrote the introduction to my book. And the first lady had died from this overdrinking during the Valley of the Giants race in California that very weekend. And I said, Ambie, they're gonna be many more American females who are gonna die in marathon races unless we do something about it, because you guys are overpromoting drinking in the United States, and it's gonna have tragic consequences.

And so the next case that occurred was in the Chicago Marathon in 1998 But that case went under the radar, but Cynthia didn't. She, well, her case was reported on the front pages of the Boston Globe. And the New York Times. And so then I realized that this was the real case that would change everything. And particularly what was important was when it was reported, it said that she died because she drank too much fluid, including too much of a particular sports drink.

And that it became, I really wanted to know what had happened. Unfortunately, we could get some of the medical records on Cynthia from the Boston Hospital, where she was treated, and once we had that information, we could calculate exactly how much she had drunk during the race.

And it turned out she had done exactly what she'd been told to do. She drank 1.2 liters per hour. That's 40 ounces per hour.

Ben Greenfield (3:05)

And who had told her to do that?

Timothy Noakes (3:09)

Well, I can't say exactly, but she'd certainly drunk with the group, and they were advised to drink lots. But there was an advert in some of the running magazines in January 2002, and I have that advert, and it says, you must drink 40 ounces per hour, or else your performance could suffer.

And it has a picture, in fact, of a young woman running. And so had she seen that advert, that's clearly what she would have wanted to do.

So the story is exactly what happened that she had just graduated with a PhD from a university in Boston. Her family had come up from Ecuador to watch her finish the race, and tragically, she never reaches the finish. She collapses at 35 kilometers. She has all the symptoms of hypernatremia. She loses consciousness. She becomes confused. She loses consciousness. And she's unconscious when she's admitted to hospital. And I don't know what happened thereafter. Thereafter, I can only speculate, but we do know that she was declared brain dead within 24 hours, and her five organs were transplanted into five other people.

And that was the tragic case, so her parents never got to see her finish the race.

Ben Greenfield (4:29)

It was a very kind of tragic way to write the book, but it gave me pause just because three months before I even opened this book, I was told the same advice by an exercise physiologist that I did a sweat-sodium analysis, and I was losing more than 40 ounces per hour, and he told me I needed to be drinking exactly that if I wanted to keep myself from decreased performance.