BRT Insights - WW Kayaking & Hiking

Help relieve your delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) with a healthy, natural sports drink.

Cherry juice has been promoted for helping to reduce muscle soreness in athletes, but recent information suggests that similar effects are also produced by pomegranate, grape and blueberry juices. When you understand that fruit juice can provide more than just flavor, color and sweetness it is easy to understand why it is worth buying these high quality 100% fruit juices. More testing will be needed to determine which of these colorful, antioxidant-rich fruits and which processing methods produce the juices with the greatest effects on delayed onset muscle recovery after exercise. More information is also needed on how much of these fruit juices to drink per day to have the greatest effect on reducing DOMS.

Purple grape juices make great, all natural sports drinks !!

Purple grape juices are the least expensive of these colorful fruit juices, so recently I've been making lots of grape juice sports drinks to help me get through another hot summer. Because of its high sugar concentration a 64 oz bottle of purple grape juice makes over 2 gallons when properly diluted in my recipe for homemade sports drinks. Precise dilution is critical to make a drink that will be rapidly absorbed into your body. This helps athletes to maintain optimum hydration.

Welch's makes some grape juice blends that taste much better than grape juice alone! Blueberry Pomegranate Concord Grape!! Black Cherry Concord Grape!! Yum, yum!!

Straight out of the bottle the purple grape juice is much too sweet for my taste, but when diluted in the sports drink homemade recipe it has a light, refreshing fruity taste that helps encourage me to keep drinking enough to stay well-hydrated throughout the day. No matter how much I have read about the importance of hydration I have never been able to drink enough boring plain water in a day to maintain good hydration. Having something that tastes good makes it easier for me to remember to drink, drink, drink throughout the day. Whenever I try to drink only plain water I always find that it is easy to "forget" to drink enough and I always end the day severely dehydrated.

Do it yourself (DIY) grape juice sports drinks taste better and provide more benefits than commercial sports drinks.

If you were planning to drink one or two glasses of grape juice per day in hopes of helping with muscle soreness, then you could also dilute that grape juice into a larger volume of the sports drink recipe and use the grape juice sports drink for all of your daily hydration needs. I would never drink the junk food, empty calories of a commercial sports drink throughout the day to satisfy my hydration needs, but I'm happy to drink homemade fruit juice sports drinks all day for the combined benefits of hydration, muscle recovery and whatever other nutritional benefits these high quality natural fruit juices provide.

More about:
• Grape juice: Same heart benefits as wine? - Mayo Clinic.
• Hydration Fruit-Ade homemade sports drink recipe - BRT Insights 22sept2009.
• Athletes need good hydration for optimum muscle performance - BRT Insights 09sept2009.
• Food & Drink for Outdoor Activities - BRT Insights.

Tags: hydration, sports drink, do it yourself, DIY, delayed onset muscle soreness.
Tags: antioxidant, hydration, muscle soreness, fruit juice, DOMS.

Labels: food-drink