How important is hydration?

Healthy hydration is the single most important thing for proper athletic performance as well as longer-term health. We only eat three times a day, and we only sleep once every 24 hours, but the body is constantly losing fluids. We need hydration moment by moment, all day every day.

The most basic thing for rehydration is that we replace the fluid and electrolytes that are lost. Beverages should be chosen with that goal in mind: they should be taken to replace what is lost. ReddRox is designed to have only the normal ingredients and the normal level of those ingredients for rehydration. ReddRox is designed to have only the natural ingredients that are present for rehydration at the natural levels or concentrations of those ingredients. That is very different from many of the other beverages that are sold as sports beverages and performance beverages which are full of high levels - much higher than natural levels - of salts, sugars and oils, as well as artificial colors and flavorings. These are not good for hydration, but unnecessary and can even be counterproductive.

Ingredients in Sports Drinks

Almost all sports drinks today have excessive amounts of salts, sugars, oils and other constituents. When those types of ingredients come into the body, they have to be broken down and excreted from the body. Much of the time, it actually requires water to get rid of the excess ingredients, salts, sugars and oils found in some beverages. If a beverage contains excessive amounts of salt, sugars, oils and other ingredients, it actually takes water away from the body to get rid of the excess levels of ingredients.

For proper hydration to occur, the combination of water, electrolytes and minerals being ingested should reproduce that which is normally found in the body. This fluid bathes the cells and is present inside the muscle cells and in the other cells in the body. If we take in a normal mix of fluids, electrolytes and minerals, this will be absorbed from the gastrointestinal system into the bloodstream and be delivered to the tissues in the body and the fluids that surround these tissues. All of these tissues need to be at the right levels of fluids, electrolytes and minerals for the muscles and the rest of the body to function.

Certain sports drinks actually cause dehydration instead of rehydration, because they contain unhealthy ingredients like salts, sugars and oils that have to be eliminated from the body. When you get these excess ingredients, it takes water away from the body to do that.