Is drinking water the most effective treatment for dehydration, or are there more effective treatments available?
If people are dehydrated on a repeated basis — for instance, people who have outdoor labor jobs, or football players who have “two-a-days” — they should favor sports drinks over water. That’s because the sodium in the sports drink maintains thirst longer, so they end up drinking more of a sports drink, plus it replaces some of the sodium and other electrolytes that are lost in sweat. But if they don’t have access to sports drinks, then certainly water is the next best option. Does the average person need to consume sports drinks during hot weather? Kenney: People need to drink, but drink sensibly. For the typical person who’s not an athlete or a laborer, simple advice would be to drink water and add a bit of salt to their food. For people who are in those other categories, who are going to have more heat stress and be out there on more of a sustained basis, then if they have the ability to do so, drinking sports drinks is beneficial. But also, unless their doctors have told them very
