As you know, I’m always on the search for food. If you own a buffet, or have friends over for a potluck, watch the skinny kid–he’ll eat you out of house and home.

A commenter wrote me yesterday and asked about ELETE, an electrolyte add-in (their words) for athletes. Add a few drops of this to your water, and you have instant sports drink. The best part? It’s SCD friendly. Yup.

When the commenter wrote me, I thought, “Crap! I’ve had this stuff on my shelf, an SCD-friendly electrolyte supplement, for months now, and haven’t told anyone about it.”

I don’t suppose that the excuse of being too busy flies here. I just forgot. I’ve been writing about so many other things that I’ve forgotten my heart and soul: Athletes.

Crap.

Well here’s a shout out to other athletes with IBD: ELETE electrolyte add-in is fantastic. It’s SCD friendly, and provides three of the five major electrolytes, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Put it into your water and you’re off.

Here are a couple of thoughts on electrolyte drinks for the geeky out there (all others, bottom line: ELETE add in is a good SCD-friendly electrolyte drink):

  • There are five major electrolytes upon which your body relies for full performance: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus. A complete electrolyte replacement supplement will have all five. Chloride is always present in these supplements because it is a good partner for these positive ions, especially sodium and potassium. ELETE water supplement has two of the biggies (sodium and potassium) and one of the ‘minor’ (magnesium) electrolytes. It is missing calcium and manganese.
  • Most electrolyte drinks have way too much sugar. You don’t need all that sugar. It will hamper your performance. Don’t buy into the sugar craze. Properly trained, you can exercise for hours without “carbs”. Now, it is true that your body has a basic daily carbohydrate need: between 2-500 calories depending on your activity level (a good heuristic is to take 200 calories and add about 100 calories per hour of intense exercise to get your daily carbohydrate needs). This will cover your liver glycogen needs. Your body stores about 2,200 calories in accessible glycogen (in muscle and liver), and about 130,000 calories of fat (in adipose tissue and muscle). Now, why would your body do that? It’s because (good) fat is your body’s primary source of fuel.
  • 5/18/11 Edit in Orange: Coconut Water is probably the best natural electrolyte drink in existence, but it also has a decent amount of natural sugars. I love Naked 100% Naked Coconut Water. It contains four of the five electrolytes mentioned above (not a lot of sodium), which makes it the most complete natural electrolyte drink I know of. Yes, plain coconut water is SCD. Thanks to Paul Stocker, from Eating SCD for persistently researching Coconut water. He wrote me to let me know that IT IS NOT SCD LEGAL–Though it’s not listed on Elaine’s website, or on Pecanbread.com. Paul found a discussion thread about it in the SCD Yahoo forum. The forum moderator, Marilyn Alm, said that Coconut water is illegal for the same reason that green bananas are illegal, the starch hasn’t matured through the ripening process to form simple sugars. Sorry folks. I had searched, and searched–thought I knew this one. Thanks Paul, for setting us on the (SCD) straight and narrow.  So, that explains why– I can’t drink more than 500 ml without adverse gut effects. Stick with ELETE water. It’s now the best (only) SCD-legal electrolyte drink on the market that I know of. On the other hand, you could make your own celery juice, if you have a juicer. It’s full of electrolytes, but it is also a mild laxative, so caution is warranted here too.
  • Hammer Nutrition makes the best electrolyte supplement out there. Period. Hammer Endurolytes…But it’s not SCD friendly. Sad they use rice flour as an additive in their endurolytes caps. Otherwise I’d still be using them. They were my favorite, BC (Before Colitis). Their complete food shake is the best thing in the world (Perpetuem), but it’s not SCD either. These two products were all I used for training and events over 3 hours, BC. Some days I think I’m seeking a colitis cure, just so I can drink Perpetuem in events again. I once did a 24-hour adventure race solely on Perpetuem, and had energy to spare at the end–amazing stuff.

Onward to Health.

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