Gatorade Gx Bottle, Blue, For use with Gatorade Gx Pods, 30 Ounces

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For most people, including children and adolescents, the extra sugar, sodium, and calories found in sugary drinks are not necessary. In fact, these calories may be replacing calorie intake from more nutritious sources. To be clear, this is not the way the data would be analysed in a study, but it does demonstrate the wide range of interpretations possible with the way sweat sodium data is presented in the Gx app. We started with a simple hypothesis: that every athlete is unique, and therefore has unique hydration needs. The perfect scenario to test this hypothesis came when the Brazilian national soccer team asked Gatorade for help in preparing for the 2014 World Cup. Brazil’s coaches were looking to improve the team’s hydration and recovery during the two-week competition on their home turf. It wraps many of these parameters along with training data into a single target number which can be toggled to either a 'Rest, Maintain, Improve or Compete' setting - presumably to push you in an appropriate way to help meet the relevant goal but, so far, it's not especially clear what this all really means, nor how it relates specifically to planning your fluid and electrolyte intake.

Your sweat sodium loss is also categorized as anything from 'Low' to 'Very High' and presented in terms of a range of loss rather than a single exact number. As we know from our own data and experience of sweat testing over the last decade, sweat sodium can vary dramatically (up to 10-fold) between people so is a huge driver of the inter-individual differences we see in net sweat sodium losses during longer and hotter workouts and races.It's rated to work in a temperature range of between 47F and 95F (~8C and 35C) and can be used either indoors or outdoors and across a variety of land based sports, but does not work in the water. Baker, L. B. et al. Skin-interfaced microfluidic system with machine learning-enabled image processing of sweat biomarkers in remote settings. Adv. Mat. Tech. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202200249 (2022).

Gathering sweat rate and sweat sodium data is most useful if it can be used to inform your hydration strategy and help you perform at your best. The unexpectedly huge popularity of low-tech bottle personalization (names, colors, teams, numbers), as they became a statement of identity and creativity for athletes. The “ah ha” came when players put masking tape and their names on bottles with their unique formulas during COVID.Given that measuring your sweat rate by weighing yourself before and after exercise is neither difficult nor expensive and is likely more reliable (often still considered the 'gold standard' for fluid loss measurement in lab based testing), perhaps it should remain the serious athletes' go-to method for collecting sweat rate data anyway? Something to consider if understanding your sweat rate is the primary reason you're considering buying some Gx Sweat Patches. The hydration recommendations in the app

Lesser, L. I., Ebbeling, C. B., Goozner, M., Wypij, D., & Ludwig, D. S. (2007, January 9). Relationshipbetween funding source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles. PLoS Medicine, 4(1), e5 The overall concept behind the patch is to enable you to better understand your total sweat and sodium losses during exercise so that you can better personalize your hydration strategy. More on why this is so important here.So far, the Gx Sweat Patch appears effective at providing 'ballpark' estimates of your sweat sodium concentration (i.e. how salty your sweat is) when compared with our Sweat Test. If this trend continues, the Gx Sweat Patch may prove to be a viable alternative option if you want to get the Sweat Test with us done, but are not in a position to visit a Sweat Test Center. NB: The Gx patches are only available to US-based athletes at present, with the app only available on iOS devices Similarly, Andy's lowest data point put his sweat sodium losses at 754mg/l (low), with his highest reading being more than 2x higher at 1,616mg/l (very high). Again, this would likely impact his hydration strategy in a long, hot event. It also seems to offer tips on many aspects of performance, health, nutrition and recovery such as sleep, foam rolling, protein intake and so on. Ghaffari, R. et al. Soft wearable systems for colorimetric and electrochemical analysis of biofluids. Adv. Funct. Mater. 30, 1907269 (2020).