Stomach and intestinal problems during endurance sports

Stomach and intestinal problems during endurance sports

We repeatedly receive inquiries from athletes who have repeated problems with their gastrointestinal tract during endurance sports.

At this point, we would like to briefly discuss the most important causes.

1. We believe that fructose intolerance under stress is one of the main causes, with a very high number of unreported cases. In everyday life, fructose usually does not cause any problems, but under stress, when the gastrointestinal tract does not have enough energy available, problems occur more frequently.
2. A second important cause is certainly the amount of carbohydrates consumed per hour. Often too little is consumed at the beginning and then too much when the energy gap approaches. Amateur athletes will generally not be able to consume more than 60-80g of carbohydrates per hour under high exertion and even that sometimes needs to be trained.
3. A third cause that should not be forgotten is the osmolarity of the drinks, gels etc. consumed . Osmolarity is the pressure of the dissolved particles in relation to each other. The higher the osmotic pressure, the slower the body can metabolize it. "A lot helps a lot" has exactly the opposite effect here. As athletes, we should only consume what we urgently need during exercise. First and foremost, these are water, carbohydrates, sodium and potassium.Products with many additional ingredients, which in our opinion are not needed at all during exercise, can be a further cause of problems here, especially as every additional ingredient potentially carries the risk of intolerance. And even when it comes to carbohydrates, there are a lot of differences. Maltodextrin, for example, has a significantly lower osmolarity than mono- and disaccharides, such as glucose or fructose, for the same physiological amount of energy.

This is precisely why we developed our BASIC FORMULA line 2 years ago. First as a drink, and now also as an energy gel. And we promise, we are already in the process of launching it on the market as a liquid energy gel.

You can find more information here:https://www.squeezy.de/basic-formula/

Photo by www.freepik.com