How long does it take to drink water after exercise?

Many people drink a lot of water immediately after exercise because they are thirsty, and this has become a habit for everyone. However, recent studies have shown that you should not drink water immediately after exercise. Everyone will have a question in their mind: why? The reason why you cannot drink water is related to the body's own body functions. Let's introduce it in detail below, so that you can avoid poor health due to this reason.

After strenuous exercise, people often sweat a lot to remove heat, and sweat also removes some of the salt in the blood. If you drink a lot of water right away, it will increase sweat excretion, causing more salt loss, and increase blood circulation, thereby increasing the burden on the heart. Therefore, people should not drink water immediately after strenuous exercise.

Sports drinks should not be consumed casually. Taking them when they are not needed may cause harm to the body. In addition to water, functional drinks also contain glucose, sodium, and potassium. These substances only need to be replenished after a large amount of loss. If exercise does not cause the loss of solutes such as sodium and potassium, drinking a large amount of functional drinks will increase the sodium and potassium content, which may affect the balance of water and electrolytes.

Hydration during exercise is very important. Exercise intensity, duration, weather conditions, etc. all have an impact. The easiest way is to judge based on weight. Since dehydration is the main reason for weight loss after exercise, you can calculate the proportion of dehydration to body weight based on the method of "pre-exercise weight minus post-exercise weight divided by pre-exercise weight". When the amount of dehydration is less than 1% of your body weight, you will feel slightly thirsty and only need to drink ordinary water. When the amount of dehydration is 2%-3% of your body weight, taking a 50 kg body weight as an example, if your weight drops by 1-1.5 kg after exercise, you need to drink salt water with a concentration below 0.9%.

In short, you need to replenish water in time after running. It is best to drink some light salt water. The sodium ions in the light salt water can help you replenish the sweat lost during exercise. Because exercise consumes a lot of water, electrolytes, sodium, potassium and other substances are also lost in large quantities. Supplementing with sports drinks can help restore human body functions, but remember not to drink water suddenly.