How Beachbody Performance Hydrate Works to Help Keep You Fueled
Hydration has a massive impact on athletic performance, so the obvious solution is to drink more water, right? Maybe not.
In day-to-day situations, water is an ideal hydrator, but when you’re exerting yourself, factors such as fluid imbalance and electrolyte loss — which can lead to reduced performance, cramps, and other issues — come into play. That’s why Beachbody Performance Hydrate aims to take any loss out of the equation and help maximize fluid absorption.*
“The idea of Hydrate is to optimize fluid absorption and fluid balance during exercise,” says Nima Alamdari, PhD. “And optimizing fluid balance is important because we know it has a direct correlation to performance.”
The Science Behind Beachbody Performance Hydrate
Fluid balance
The reason why Beachbody Performance Hydrate is so effective is because of a physiological phenomenon known as osmolality. Osmolality refers to the amount of dissolved substances, or solutes, in a liquid and how that affects the rate at which a solution is absorbed by the body.
There are three basic types of sports drinks — hypotonic, isotonic, and hypertonic — all distinguished by a varying levels of osmolality:
- Hypertonic drinks have a higher osmolality than your blood.
- Isotonic drinks have the same osmolality as your blood.
- Hypotonic drinks have a lower osmolality than your blood.
The osmolality of a hydration drink is important because liquids with a lower concentration of particles will cross the membrane to where the higher concentration is in order to create fluid balance.
Why does this matter when it comes to hydration drinks? A hypotonic drink, like Beachbody Performance Hydrate, will enter your bloodstream more quickly than an isotonic or hypertonic drink.*
Electrolyte replacement
Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge and play a key role in important bodily processes, such as muscle contraction, nerve function, and your circulatory system. So when you lose fluids and several key electrolytes through sweat during exercise, you’re at risk for cramps, fatigue, dizziness, and lack of focus.
However, any old ready-to-drink hydration beverage might not cut it — most of them usually include just two electrolytes: sodium and potassium. That’s why Beachbody Performance Hydrate includes an optimal balance of four critical electrolytes: sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.
With a greater variety of electrolytes than some of the top electrolyte drinks on the market, Beachbody Performance Hydrate can help you replenish what’s lost through sweat quickly and efficiently to keep you performing at your best.*
Quercetin
Finally, Hydrate stands apart because it contains quercetin, a phytonutrient researched for its capacity to help improve exercise performance.
“We included quercetin because it’s the most researched phytonutrient for improving exercise performance,” Alamdari says.
Quercetin is believed to work both acutely and chronically, meaning you should experience benefits on the day of as well as through long-term use. The acute benefit works well here because the longer you exercise, the more Hydrate you drink. And the more Hydrate you drink, the more quercetin you consume to continue pushing performance.
This means it also works cumulatively with Energize, the Beachbody Performance pre-workout supplement. “It complements Energize but it also has its own distinct benefits,” Alamdari explains. “We didn’t just want the most effective hydrator; we want to be the most effective performance-enhancer.”
Intense exercise can take a lot out of you — literally. Not only do you lose water and electrolytes as you sweat, but you also burn through carbs (in the form of glucose and glycogen) as your body’s demand for energy increases. Beachbody Performance Hydrate helps replace those losses.
And as Dr. Marcus Elliot, founder of the Peak Performance Project (P3) explains in the video below, the result is a greater capacity for high-intensity work. In short, Hydrate can help improve both your endurance and exercise performance.*
Why Beachbody Performance Hydrate Works Better Than Other Drinks
Traditional sports drinks on the market emphasize energy replenishment and lean more toward carbohydrates as fuel as the primary driver for performance enhancement.
That, in turn, creates a hypertonic drink with a higher osmolality that the body will absorb more slowly. They are essentially trying to create a product that provides both energy and hydration, but the solution can lose effectiveness. While it supplies sugar for fuel, the osmolality may be too high to efficiently mitigate fluid loss.
“High-sugar sports drinks are not optimal for hydration. The carbohydrate level is too high,” Alamdari says. “That can lead to delayed gastric emptying. It can sit in your stomach. Ultra-endurance athletes or marathon runners will often talk about stomach ‘sloshing’ or [gastrointestinal] distress.”
Beachbody Performance Hydrate’s citrus flavor has also been formulated to lessen flavor fatigue — a common occurrence in endurance athletes, who sometimes lose tolerance for the taste of their during-event supplements after hours of consuming them.
“Hydrate was formulated with a balanced, not overwhelming flavor or sweetness,” says Denis Faye, M.S., and an ultra-endurance cyclist. “I can tell you firsthand that when you’re eight hours into an event and your sports drink starts tasting like ash, it’s a problem. Hydrate avoids this nicely.”