Hydration Research

Fluid replacement promotes optimal physical performance

Adequate fluid replacement helps maintain hydration and promotes the health, safety, and optimal physical performance of individuals participating in regular physical activity. Med Sci Sports Exercise

1996 Jan;28(1):i-vii.

American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Exercise and fluid replacement.

Convertino VA, Armstrong LE, Coyle EF, Mack GW, Sawka MN, Senay LC Jr, Sherman WM.

  1. It is the position of the American College of Sports Medicine that adequate fluid replacement helps maintain hydration and, therefore, promotes the health, safety, and optimal physical performance of individuals participating in regular physical activity. This position statement is based on a comprehensive review and interpretation of scientific literature concerning the influence of fluid replacement on exercise performance and the risk of thermal injury associated with dehydration and hyperthermia. Based on available evidence, the American College of Sports Medicine makes the following general recommendations on the amount and composition of fluid that should be ingested in preparation for, during, and after exercise or athletic competition: 1) It is recommended that individuals consume a nutritionally balanced diet and drink adequate fluids during the 24-hr period before an event, especially during the period that includes the meal prior to exercise, to promote proper hydration before exercise or competition.
  2. It is recommended that individuals drink about 500 ml (about 17 ounces) of fluid about 2 h before exercise to promote adequate hydration and allow time for excretion of excess ingested water.
  3. During exercise, athletes should start drinking early and at regular intervals in an attempt to consume fluids at a rate sufficient to replace all the water lost through sweating (i.e., body weight loss), or consume the maximal amount that can be tolerated.
  4. It is recommended that ingested fluids be cooler than ambient temperature [between 15 degrees and 22 degrees C (59 degrees and 72 degrees F])] and flavored to enhance palatability and promote fluid replacement. Fluids should be readily available and served in containers that allow adequate volumes to be ingested with ease and with minimal interruption of exercise.
  5. During intense exercise lasting longer than 1 h, it is recommended that carbohydrates be ingested at a rate of 30-60 g.h(-1) to maintain oxidation of carbohydrates and delay fatigue. This rate of carbohydrate intake can be achieved without compromising fluid delivery by drinking 600-1200 ml.h(-1) of solutions containing 4%-8% carbohydrates (g.100 ml(-1)). The carbohydrates can be sugars (glucose or sucrose) or starch (e.g., maltodextrin).
  6. Inclusion of sodium (0.5-0.7 g.1(-1) of water) in the rehydration solution ingested during exercise lasting longer than 1 h is recommended since it may be advantageous in enhancing palatability, promoting fluid retention, and possibly preventing hyponatremia in certain individuals who drink excessive quantities of fluid. There is little physiological basis for the presence of sodium in n oral rehydration solution for enhancing intestinal water absorption as long as sodium is sufficiently available from the previous meal.

Electrolyzed-reduced water scavenges active oxygen & protects DNA from oxidative damage

Electrolyzed-reduced water scavenges active oxygen species and protects DNA from oxidative damage.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1997 May 8;234(1):269-74.
Shirahata S, Kabayama S, Nakano M, Miura T, Kusumoto K, Gotoh M, Hayashi H, Otsubo K, Morisawa S, Katakura Y.

Institute of Cellular Regulation Technology, Graduate School of Genetic Resources Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. [email protected]

Active oxygen species or free radicals are considered to cause extensive oxidative damage to biological macromolecules, which brings about a variety of diseases as well as aging. The ideal scavenger for active oxygen should be active hydrogen . Active hydrogen can be produced in reduced water near the cathode during electrolysis of water. Reduced water exhibits high pH, low dissolved oxygen (DO), extremely high dissolved molecular hydrogen (DH), and extremely negative redox potential (RP) values. Strongly electrolyzed-reduced water, as well as ascorbic acid, (+)-catechin and tannic acid, completely scavenged O.-2 produced by the hypoxanthine-xanthine oxidase (HX-XOD) system in sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.0).

The superoxide dismutase (SOD)-like activity of reduced water is stable at 4 degrees C for over a month and was not lost even after neutralization, repeated freezing and melting, deflation with sonication, vigorous mixing, boiling, repeated filtration, or closed autoclaving, but was lost by opened autoclaving or by closed autoclaving in the presence of tungsten trioxide which efficiently adsorbs active atomic hydrogen. Water bubbled with hydrogen gas exhibited low DO, extremely high DH and extremely low RP values, as does reduced water, but it has no SOD-like activity.

These results suggest that the SOD-like activity of reduced water is not due to the dissolved molecular hydrogen but due to the dissolved atomic hydrogen (active hydrogen). Although SOD accumulated h3O2 when added to the HX-XOD system, reduced water decreased the amount of h3O2 produced by XOD. Reduced water, as well as catalase and ascorbic acid, could directly scavenge h3O2. Reduced water suppresses single-strand breakage of DNA b active oxygen species produced by the Cu(II)-catalyzed oxidation of ascorbic acid in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting that reduced water can scavenge not only O2.- and h3O2, but also 1O2 and .OH.


Environmental electrochemistry of water

Effects of alkaline ionized water on formation & maintenance of osseous tissues

by Rei Takahashi Zhenhua Zhang Yoshinori Itokawa
(Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Dept. of Pathology and Tumor Biology, Fukui Prefectural University)

Effects of calcium alkaline ionized water on formation and maintenance of osseous tissues in rats were examined. In the absence of calcium in the diet, no apparent calcification was observed with only osteoid formation being prominent. Striking differences were found among groups that were given diets with 30% and 60% calcium. Rats raised by calcium ionized water showed the least osteogenetic disturbance. Tibiae and humeri are more susceptible to calcium deficiency than femora. Theses results may indicate that calcium in drinking water effectively supplements osteogenesis in case of dietary calcium deficiency. The mechanism involved in osteoid formation such as absorption rate of calcium from the intestine and effects of calcium alkaline ionized drinking water on maintaining bone structure in the process of aging or under the condition of calcium deficiency is investigated.

Osteoporosis that has lately drawn public attention is defined as “conditions of bone brittleness caused by reduction in the amount of bone frames and deterioration of osseous microstructure.” Abnormal calcium metabolism has been considered to be one of the factors to contribute to this problem, which in turn is caused by insufficient calcium take in, reduction in enteral absorption rate of calcium and increase in the amount of calcium in urinal discharge. Under normal conditions, bones absorb old bones by regular metabolism through osteoid formation to maintain their strength and function as supporting structure. It is getting clear that remodeling of bones at the tissue level goes through the process of activation, resorption, reversal, matrix synthesis and mineralization.

Another important function of bones is storing minerals especially by coordinating with intestines and kidneys to control calcium concentration in the blood. When something happens to this osteo metabolism, it results in abnormal morphological changes. Our analyses have been focusing mostly on the changes in the amount of bones to examine effects of calcium alkaline ionized water on the reaction system of osteo metabolism and its efficiency. Ibis time, however, we studied it further from the standpoint of histology. In other words, we conducted comparative studies on morphological and kinetic changes of osteogenesis by testing alkaline ionized water, tap water and solution of lactate on rats.


Reduced Water for Prevention of Disease

Dr. Sanetaka Shirahata
Graduate school of Genetic Resources Technology, Kyushu University,
6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan.

It has long been established that reactive oxygen species (ROS) cause many types of damage to biomolecules and cellular structures, that, in turn result in the development of a variety of pathologic states such as diabetes, cancer and aging. Reduced water is defined as anti-oxidative water produced by reduction of water. Electrolyzed reduced water (ERW) has been demonstrated to be hydrogen-rich water and can scavenge ROS in vitro (Shirahata et al., 1997). The reduction of proton in water to active hydrogen (atomic hydrogen, hydrogen radical) that can scavenge ROS is very easily caused by a weak current, compared to oxidation of hydroxyl ion to oxygen molecule.

Activation of water by magnetic field, collision, minerals etc. will also produce reduced water containing active hydrogen and/or hydrogen molecule. Several natural waters such as Hita Tenryosui water drawn from deep underground in Hita city in Japan, Nordenau water in Germany and Tlacote water in Mexico are known to alleviate various diseases. We have developed a sensitive method by which we can detect active hydrogen existing in reduced water, and have demonstrated that not only ERW but also natural reduced waters described above contain active hydrogen and scavenge ROS in cultured cells. ROS is known to cause reduction of glucose uptake by inhibiting the insulin-signaling pathway in cultured cells.

Reduced water scavenged intracellular ROS and stimulated glucose uptake in the presence or absence of insulin in both rat L6 skeletal muscle cells and mouse 3T3/L1 adipocytes. This insulin-like activity of reduced water was inhibited by wortmannin that is specific inhibitor of PI-3 kinase, a key molecule in insulin signaling pathways. Reduced water protected insulin-responsive cells from sugar toxicity and improved the damaged sugar tolerance of type 2 diabetes model mice, suggesting that reduced water may improve insulin-independent diabetes mellitus.

Cancer cells are generally exposed to high oxidative stress. Reduced water cause impaired tumor phenotypes of human cancer cells, such as reduced growth rate, morphological changes, reduced colony formation ability in soft agar, passage number-dependent telomere shortening, reduced binding abilities of telomere binding proteins and suppressed metastasis. Reduced water suppressed the growth of cancer cells transplanted into mice, demonstrating their anti-cancer effects in vivo. Reduced water will be applicable to not only medicine but also food industries, agriculture, and manufacturing industries.

Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies

Developed to promote human health and well being, certain pharmaceuticals are now attracting attention as a potentially new class of water pollutants. Such drugs as antibiotics, anti-depressants, birth control pills, seizure medication, cancer treatments, pain killers, tranquilizers and cholesterol-lowering compounds have been detected in varied water sources. Where do they come from? Pharmaceutical industries, hospitals and other medical facilities are obvious sources, but households also contribute a significant share. People often dispose of unused medicines by flushing them down toilets, and human excreta can contain varied incompletely metabolized medicines. These drugs can pass intact through conventional sewage treatment facilities, into waterways, lakes and even aquifers. Further, discarded pharmaceuticals often end up at dumps and landfills, posing a threat to underlying groundwater.

Farm animals also are a source of pharmaceuticals entering the environment, through their ingestion of hormones, antibiotics and veterinary medicines. (About 40 percent of U.S.-produced antibiotics are fed to livestock as growth enhancers.) Manure containing traces of such pharmaceuticals is spread on land and can then wash off into surface water and even percolate into groundwater. Along with pharmaceuticals, personal care products also are showing up in water. Generally, these chemicals are the active ingredients or preservatives in cosmetics, toiletries or fragrances. For example, nitro-musks, used as a fragrance in many cosmetics, detergents, toiletries and other personal care products, has attracted concern because of their persistence and possible adverse environmental impacts. Some countries have taken action to ban nitro musks.

Also, sunscreen agents have been detected in lakes and fish. Researchers Christian G. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes reported in the December issue of Environmental Health Perspectives that the amount of pharmaceuticals and personal care products entering the environment annually is about equal to the amount of pesticides used each year. Concern about the water quality impacts of these chemicals first gained prominence in Europe, where for over a decade scientists have been checking lakes, streams, and groundwater for pharmaceutical contamination. American officials and scientists are taking note, with two recent U.S. professional organizations the National Ground Water Associations and the American Chemical Society addressing the issue at their annual meetings this summer.

The issue emerged in Europe about ten years ago, when German environmental scientists found clofibric acid, a cholesterol-lowering drug, in groundwater beneath a German water treatment plant. They later found clofibric acid throughout local waters, and a further search found phenazone and fenofibrate, drugs used to regulate concentrations of lipids in the blood, and analgesics such as ibuprofen and diclofenac in groundwater under a sewage plant. Meanwhile, other European researchers discovered chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics and hormones in drinking water sources. In the United States, the issue might have attracted earlier notice if officials had followed up on observations made 20 years ago. At that time, EPA scientists found that sludge from a U.S. sewage-treatment plant contained excreted aspirin, caffeine and nicotine.

At the time, no significance was attached to the findings. In Phoenix about this time another event occurred that also might have alerted officials that pharmaceuticals could pose a water quality threat. Herman Bouwer of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service in Phoenix recalls that clofibric acid was found in groundwater below infiltration basins that were artificially recharging groundwater with sewage effluent. Bouwer says more attention should have been paid to the finding; if clofibric acid could pass through a sewage treatment plant and percolate into the groundwater so also could many other drugs. Europeans, however, took the lead in researching the issue. In the mid-1990s, Thomas A. Ternes, a chemist in Wiesbaden, Germany, investigated what happens to prescribed medicines after they are excreted.

Ternes knew that many such drugs are prescribed, and that little was known of the environmental effects of these compounds after they are excreted. He researched the presence of drugs in sewage, treated water and rivers, and his findings surprised him. Expecting to identify a few medicinal compounds he instead found 30 of the 60 common pharmaceuticals that he surveyed. Drugs he identified included lipid-lowering drugs, antibiotics, analgesics, antiseptics, beta-blocker heart drugs, residues of drugs for controlling epilepsy as well as drugs serving as contrast agents for diagnostic X rays. Results of recent research in North America also indicate the reason for concern. At the June National Groundwater Association conference, Glen R. Boyd, a Tulane University civil engineer, reported detecting drugs in the Mississippi River, Lake Ponchetrain and in Tulane’s tap water.

Boyd and his team found in tested waters low levels of clofibric acid, the pain killer naproxen, and the hormone estrone. Samples of Tulane’s tap water showed estrone averaging 45 parts per trillion with a high of 80 parts per trillion. At the recent American Chemical Society conference, Chris Metcalfe of Trent University in Ontario reported finding a vast array of drugs leaving Canadian sewage treatment plants, at times at higher levels than what is reported in Germany. Such drugs included anticancer agents, psychiatric drugs and anti-inflammatory compounds. North American treatment plants may show higher levels of pharmaceuticals because they often lack the technological sophistication of German facilities. The U.S.G.S. is currently conducting the first nationwide assessment of emerging contaminants found in selected streams, including the occurrence of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, sex and steroidal hormones and other drugs such as antidepressants and antacids.

One hundred stream sites were identified, representing a wide variety of geographical and hydrogeological settings. Four of these sites are in Arizona: Santa Cruz River at Cortaro Road; Santa Cruz River near Rio Rico; Salt River below 91st Ave. sewage treatment plant; and Gila River above diversions at Gillespie Dam. Stream sites were chosen that were expected to be highly susceptible to contamination by targeted compounds. Testing the sites will provide an initial indication of the potential for these compounds to enter the environment, as well provide an opportunity for developing suitable laboratory methods for measuring compounds in environmental samples at very low (sub-ppb) levels. Detected contaminants include caffeine, which was the highest-volume pollutant, codeine, cholesterol-lowering agents, anti-depressants, and Premarin, an estrogen replacement drug taken by about 9 million women.

Also, chemotherapy agents were found downstream from hospitals treating cancer patients. Final results from the study are expected to be released in the fall. What risk does chronic exposure to trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals pose to humans or wildlife? Some scientists believe pharmaceuticals do not pose problems to humans since they occur at low concentrations in water. Other scientists say long-term and synergistic effects of pharmaceuticals and similar chemicals on humans are not known and advise caution. They are concerned that many of these drugs have the potential of interfering with hormone production. Chemicals with this effect are called endocrine disrupters and are attracting the attention of water quality experts.

To some scientists, the release of antibiotics into waterways is particularly worrisome. They fear the release may result in disease-causing bacteria to become immune to treatment and that drug-resistant diseases will develop. Scientists generally agree that aquatic life is most at risk, its life cycle, from birth to death, occurring within potentially drug-contaminated waters. For example, anti-depressants have been blamed for altering sperm levels and spawning patterns in marine life. Most studies of pharmaceutical and pharmaceutically active chemicals in water have mostly focused on aquatic animals. For example, recent British research suggests that estrogen, the female sex hormone, is primarily responsible for deforming reproductive systems of fish, noting that blood plasma from male trout living below sewage treatment plants had the female egg protein vitellogenin.

This finding would seem to be consistent with what U.S. researchers suspect has occurred downstream from treatment plants in Las Vegas and Minneapolis. Carp in these areas show the same effects as the British fish. Some scientists believe arid regions of the West are especially vulnerable to the effects of drug-contaminated effluent. These areas are more likely to have streams that rely almost entirely on effluent for flow, especially during dry months. Further, the effluent is extensively used in irrigation and even for recharging drinking water aquifers. Also, areas of the West have attracted a large number of retired people who are likely to use more pharmaceuticals than other population segments; thus more pharmaceuticals in wastewater.

Author: Compiled by Life Enthusiast Staff