Have you ever wondered if a cup of coffee or tea and milk can substitute as one of your recommended eight glasses of water a day? Most drinks do a good job of hydrating, but the components of some common drinks sharply reduce their hydrating ability. Which drinks are the best hydrators, and which the worst? Here are the three most hydrating and the four least hydrating drinks.

Drinks That Are Strong Hydrators

*Water
Water is the preeminent beverage for correctly hydrating the body.

* Herbal Teas (Infusions)
The leaves from plants such as mint, verbena, linden, balm, and so on give a pleasant aroma and flavor to the water in which they are steeped, which makes infusions a satisfying alternative to people who don’t enjoy drinking plain water.

The medicinal properties of the plants do not have a negative effect on the body’s assimilation of the water.

Note: The benefit does not extend to sweetened infusions, or if the tea is made with plants that have diuretic properties, such as dandelion.

* Fruit and Vegetable Juices
The water in fruits and vegetables–their juice–is one of the liquids nature has provided for hydrating our bodies. Juice is water bound to a substance. To maintain our harmonic balance with nature and avoid taking in too high a concentration of nutrients and sugars, we should consider juice a secondary resource to be used in moderation.

Tip #1:

Don’t underestimate the importance of proper hydration

Hydration is one of the most critical factors in an athlete’s ability to train, compete and recover. Lean body tissues like muscles and the heart are about 75% water, so they absolutely need to be hydrated to perform. Even slight dehydration (1-2% loss in body weight) can significantly degrade sports performance, and dehydration of 5% decreases performance by 30% or more – easily enough to account for a loss in competition. In certain high intensity sports, athletes can see a 45% decrease in performance from dehydration.

A major study on sports nutrition summed it up: “The simple truth is that no other nutritional intervention comes close to providing the performance-enhancing effects of staying well hydrated.” And hydration and nutrition are tightly linked. Studies have shown that the fatigue that often accompanies prolonged exercise is caused as much by dehydration as by depletion of body’s fuel, glucose, which is more often blamed for the problem. Dehydration also increases the rate at which the body uses its stored glucose (muscle glycogen), causing an athlete to run out of fuel prematurely.

Tip # 2:

Understand that all waters are not equally hydrating

There are big differences between waters in terms of hydrating ability. In fact, if you drank only plain, unenhanced water after an intense workout, you would actually become even more dehydrated. That’s because plain water dilutes blood plasma sodium which decreases the sensation of thirst, while at the same time stimulating more urine production. The net-net is dehydration rather than hydration.

Research with animals has shown that alkaline, electrolyzed water, such a AquaHydrate — in comparison to tap water – is actually better absorbed, in addition to providing many other health benefits.

Tip #3:

Don’t substitute sugared, flavored sports drinks for water

Most sports beverages do not contain the full complement of electrolytes the body needs — only the major ones, and often not in the amounts needed. The problem with that is that you sweat out dozens of macro and trace minerals when you exercise, so if you’re not replacing them, you will end up depleted.

The other problem with sports beverages is that they contain a lot of additives and artificial ingredients that actually contribute to dehydration and hamper performance. For example, concerns have been raised about the most popular citrus-flavored sports drinks, which contain additives like brominated vegetable oils. This additive, used to enhance flavor, is actually banned in over 100 countries because of its association with causing severe muscle weakness and mental confusion.

Popular sports drinks also contain sugary carbohydrates that may hamper performance by delaying gastric emptying which can cause gastrointestinal upset. Protein drinks also delay stomach emptying. And energy drinks are not recommended as many of them contain caffeine or theophylline, which are known dehydrators.

Tip #4:

Know what to drink before you exercise

Prior to exercise, additional fluid intake provides the primary prevention against dehydration and other heat-related problems affecting performance. Pre-exercise hydration is especially important in endurance events or before activities in which fluid intake is restricted.

Athletes should practice pre-hydrating while they train so that they will be better able to tolerate the fluid volume needed for optimal performance at the time of their actual competition.

A sensible method for increasing pre-exercise hydration is to drink about 500 mL (about 17 ounces or 2 cups) of water the night before the competition, another 500 mL (2 cups) first thing in the morning, and another 400 – 600 mL (2 cups) of cool water approximately 20 minutes before the event.

In a study involving elite soccer players, a regimented intake of fluid of roughly 4.5 liters per day a week before competition facilitated better control of body temperature during warm weather competition, creating a 1.1 liter improvement of total body fluid volume when compared to their usual daily intake of fluid.

Tip #5:

Know what to drink during exercise

Dehydration can only be avoided by matching fluid intake with sweat loss during exercise. This can be difficult because sweating while exercising in the heat can drain about 2-3 liters of body water or more. Yet, drinking more than 1 liter of fluid feels uncomfortable for most people, so it’s often not practical to replace all that is lost. That’s why it’s important to drink a water that is highly absorbable so it is emptied quickly by the stomach and is not perceived as sloshing around. The most highly absorbable water has ionic minerals, an alkaline pH, and is microclustered into small groups of molecules.

The general guideline is to drink 2 ml per kilogram of body weight every 15 minutes if possible. This means that a 150 pound athlete needs to drink a a little more than ½ cup of water every 15 minutes during exercise. A study showed that drinking this amount can improve endurance by as much as 33%. Athletes should practice drinking fluid at regular intervals, whether they feel thirsty or not, since thirst is not a reliable indicator of hydration. They need practice hydrating during training so that they can tolerate the feeling of more fluid in the stomach. Weighing in before and after exercise will allow an estimate of a person’s sweat rate under different conditions. Knowing how much weight is lost helps athletes determine their individual requirements for fluid intake during competition.

Tip #6:

Know what to drink after exercise to recover

Replacement of water and electrolytes after exercise is critically important during training in order to avoid progressive dehydration which causes loss of fluid both inside and outside of cells. This in turn causes cell volume shrinkage which is shown to have slower metabolism than cells full of water.

Drinking the proper kind of water is critical. Drinking plain water actually promotes dehydration by causing a rapid fall in blood sodium concentration which lowers the sensation of thirst and increases urine output. Electrolytes are absolutely essential for rehydration, most importantly, sodium chloride which promotes rapid fluid absorption in the small intestine. Many sports drinks are deficient in providing adequate amounts of sodium replacement.

In addition to sodium chloride, your rehydration water should include the other macro and trace minerals that are lost through sweat. These minerals – in ionic, absorbable form — help buffer the lactic acid buildup in cells after exercise. It is critical to replace all of these minerals after exercise in order to aid recovery. For example, athletic stress increases the need for magnesium, which is necessary for more than 300 enzyme processes involved in energy production, electrical conduction of nerves and coordination of muscles.

In order to adequately rehydrate in the postexercise recovery period, it is recommended that fluid intake be 150% or more of weight loss within 6 hours of the event/exercise. This volume, equivalent to at least one-an-a-half times the sweat loss, allows for expected urine excretion that naturally occur after drinking fluids over a period of hours. Drinking caffeine and alcohol in the post-exercise recovery period is discouraged because of their diuretic effects.

Drinks that Are Weak Hydrators

* Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa
Drinks that have a base of coffee, black tea, or cocoa are quite high in purins, toxins that must be eliminated from the body by urine or sweat in the form of uric acid. Purines need to be diluted in large quantities of liquid to be evacuated without irritation. A good portion of the water consumed with these drinks is used to eliminate the toxins.

* Milk
Milk is a food, not a drink, and its digestion by adults is frequently incomplete.

Whey, on the other hand, is very easily digested, but its diuretic properties are an impediment to its consumption as a daily beverage.

* Soft Drinks
Soft drinks often have a high caffeine base, a diuretic, which makes a body lose water before it has time to make its way into the intracellular environment. The other problem comes from the high sugar content of most sodas. The body has a hard time properly metabolizing refined sugar. To correct the reaction to this, the body has to surrender water from the extracellular fluid. Because that makes a person thirsty, a vicious circle is created, as the thirst is being maintained by the very beverage that is drink with the intention of getting rid of it.

* Alcoholic Beverages
Alcohol itself has dehydrating properties, removing water from the tissues it contacts and drying them out and increasing the need for water.