Think you are “doing your body good” by sucking down a sports drink after a workout? Time to think again. Sports nutrition advocates recommend using sports drinks in order to maintain your body’s electrolyte levels. The electrolytes, which are mainly sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chloride are needed in your body for proper water balance, and to prevent muscle weakness and cramps when you push yourself to your peak.
Vigorous exercise, or exercise of long duration may deplete electrolyte levels in your body due to dehydration. That’s the whole idea of using a “sports drink” in the first place: to keep your body properly hydrated, and keep your muscles at peak performance.
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So what is the problem with sports drinks?
If you take a look at the ingredients list —something I do all the time— you will notice an ingredient called “BVO.” On the labels of Powerade, and AMP Energy Drink it is listed as Brominated Vegetable Oil. On other soft drink labels such as Mountain Dew, Orange Crush, Squirt, Sun Drop, and Orange or Pineapple Fanta, you might also see it listed as Brominated Soybean Oil or just BVO. Read the labels. BVO is used as an emulsifier—like soap is to oils—so that the cloudy appearance of the drink looks uniform. By now, Gatorade has replaced this ingredient with sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB), which has its own toxicity potentials.
So why is BVO bad for you? Have you ever heard of those kinds of oils that are bad for you called “hydrogenated oils?” How about “trans-fats,” ever heard of those? Dietary trans fats and hydrogenated oils are just different descriptions of the same thing. We have finally become familiar enough with nutrition to know that these oils are not suitable for human consumption on a regular basis. As a matter of fact, hydrogenated oils, as found in processed foods, margarine, and shortening, are dangerous for cardiovascular system health, and conventional early detection is not early enough to prevent disease, so conventional early detection won’t help. People who consume margarine have twice the rate of heart disease than butter eaters—and you thought butter was bad! source: Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12
“Margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters”
Hydrogenated Oil vs. BVO
BVO is also a processed oil, but instead of using hydrogen to destroy the oil (as in hydrogenated oils), bromine is used. Bromine is an element like chlorine, but bromine—in any form—has no use at all in your body. Like fluoride, bromine is toxic to your thyroid gland, and many other tissues in the human body, such as the breasts, ovaries, prostate, stomach, skin, and ultimately, your brain— a factor in confusion, brain fog and memory loss.
Over the long term, ingestion of artificially brominated products can only be a detriment to your overall health, not just muscle performance. Where else do we encounter bromine in our environment or food? Bleached white flour (brominated flour), pesticides,,toxins fumigants, fire retardants, and certain chemical compounds used in chemical medicine.
What can you do for health optimization?
If you are concerned about how your own exposure to BVO has affected your body, and want to maintain peak muscle performance, call us for our nutritional kinesiology, using our integrative testing method in Los Angeles. We help you find out where your body has become toxic, or sub optimal, and how to bring it back to peak performance. Conventional tests will be useless. Call us for your appointment.
In the mean time, make your own sports drink! Start with pure water, add a little lemon juice, add a pinch of unprocessed salt (not regular table salt), and just a little honey, if needed. Want a great tasting natural alternative to sports drinks? Try some coconut water with just a little pinch of unprocessed salt! It has all of the electrolytes, and the taste is—Wow!