Energy

The body provides energy by burning fats, carbohydrates and some proteins. Carbohydrate has a much lower oxygen cost than fat, so more energy can be produced with a given amount of oxygen using carbohydrate as a fuel rather than fat, i.e. you can go faster and further per breath! The efficient use of fat is also dependent upon the availability of carbohydrate. It is often said that "fat burns in the flame of carbohydrate". The rate of energy production from aerobic use of carbohydrate is 50 - 100% greater than the rate of energy production from the aerobic use of fat alone. Carbohydrate can also be used to provide anaerobic energy for sprint efforts. Fat is a very efficient store of energy. Scientists have deduced that the fat stores of an average man could provide enough energy to fuel about 3.5 days running at marathon pace, so you are unlikely to run out of fat even in the longest race.

 

Energy Drinks

The problem with ordinary glucose drinks is that glucose is highly osmotically active. This means that a glucose solution greater than 5% (5g in 100 ml.) will empty only very slowly from the stomach. In some cases it may even draw fluid into the stomach from the body and so contribute to dehydration. To avoid this, an energy drink must be less osmotically active than blood, i.e. at or below the isotonic level. The preferred alternative to an ordinary glucose drink is a glucose polymer solution that is less osmotically active than glucose, and can therefore be taken in much higher concentrations without affecting how quickly it empties from the stomach. A solution such as this can provide fluid and also provide a significant energy source during exercise. PSP22 Energy is isotonic at over 50% solution so it can provide over 10 times the energy of glucose. This can be explained in a simple way by saying that the stomach will only allow so many molecules through in a given period of time, so if you drink a glucose polymer solution that has say twenty glucose units in one molecule, then your stomach will be able to process more glucose units than it would if you drank a simple glucose solution. A useful starting point for working out the amount of PSP22 Energy that should be used is to use 1g per kilogram body weight for each hour of exercise. This is roughly equivalent to drinking a 10% solution of PSP22 Energy in a standard sized (or 600ml) cycling bottle each hour. Solutions used in this way have been shown to improve performance significantly. Go-Gels, the world's first isotonic energy gel, provide 22g of carbohydrate in a 70ml isotonic solution and tend to be ideal for 20-30 mins of exercise

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