Elite athletes now drink seawater as an isotonic drink, are you crazy?

One of the latest sports trends, in terms of hydration, is to use seawater as an isotonic drink. But didn't seawater dehydrate you?

Are isotonic drinks fattening ? Do sugary drinks increase the risk of premature death ? When do I have to hydrate myself, before, during or after exercise ? Sports hydration generates too many doubts and every day more athletes are looking for alternatives. The world of nutrition is always looking for ways to go further in its quest for improvement and seawater is now positioned as the best isotonic drink... at least it doesn't have sugar.

We spoke with the Galician athlete Antón Ruanova, South American Triathlon champion, who tells us how he started working with seawater as an isotonic drink : "Three years ago, my brother Iago was looking for different articles and studies to write a nutrition book and ended up reading about the benefits of ocean water . It was when he remembered a physical trainer who had recommended it to him years ago, when he was competing in the city's cycling team. We delved deeper and came across the research of the French scientist Rene Quintón "

They were incredulous but since they tried it back in 2015 they have not drunk anything else. "It was a before and after," he says. "I had quite a few cramps when I trained hard even drinking a lot of water or commercial isotonics." He tells us that it was not easy to get sea water since he had to get into the middle of the estuary with five-liter bottles and then mix it (20% with spring water) at home.

Nowadays, Antón has it easier thanks to the Artio isotonic drink , which has other ambassadors such as Vero Boquete, Solangue Pereira or the Froiz cycling club. "Athletes demanded a natural isotonic and without added sugars, and we found it next to home, in the Galician sea."

To understand why seawater is an isotonic drink (20% of the total volume) we have to think about the composition of our blood. Our blood plasma has approximately 9g/l of mineral salts, the same, and in the same proportion as isotonic seawater. If we remove red blood cells, white platelets, etc. from the blood, what we obtain has a very similar composition to seawater.