Sports Nutrition/Hydration for Divers2
Login Why Register
close

Why Register

This is about YOU being able to get the special Package Deals SFDJ has negotiated with the best area Hotels..to enjoy the Best Dive Resort experience possible. possible.

Examples of the benefits of logging in:

  • 1. Much lower prices when reserving  hotel rooms for divers with SFDJ log-in ID
  • 2. All perks we are currently offering  will be immediately offered to you, such as:
    • a. Any "special" boat or hotel deals
    • b. Better fill discounts for air, Nitrox or trimix
    • Shuttle Van availability which is most likely when we have a large number of SFDJ registered Hotel guests in a given week.
    • d. High likelihood of getting you diving with other divers with exactly the same diving interest you have ****Should be the most important perk..see Specific Interest Dive Group article
    • e. Planning tools and Groups Calendar system to help you find the best times to find what you want on a Palm Beach Dive Trip
  • 3. If you are a Scubaboard member, we can alert you when there are several other Scubaboard members in town diving during your trip here
  • 5. Opportunity to be notified and involved in Free Gear Demos, free DIR Dive Experience and Training demos
  • 6. Help us create a larger lobby for Palm Beach Diving which we can leverage with County Tourism to push for better State and local protections for the Palm Beach Reef system.

Beyond being an Underwater Adventure Magazine, SFDJ  is the collaborative infrastructure of the best Dive Operators and best Hotels for diving in Palm Beach county Florida..SFDJ is the system the hotels and boats are using to connect with traveling and local divers, and if you don't login each time you visit, the boats and hotels won't be able to offer you the best deals and ideas we have come up with.

Enter Title

Text/HTML

Drinking Coke or Pepsi on the diveboat for 4 hours…. Research has shown that 80% of all people are functioning at some level of dehydration daily and that most athletes consistently train, exercise, compete and live in a dehydrated or near dehydrated state - as they neglect consistent and proper electrolyte replenishment. If you agree that athletes generally are more likely to pay attention to their body than non-athletes, then it should make sense to you that non-athletes are likely to allow themselves to reach a fairly dehydrated state chronically, with no awareness of it.

When I refer to “proper electrolyte replenishment”, this is about hydration being only partially about actual “water”. People don't think they are dehydrated because they don't "feel" dehydrated, or they haven't been experiencing cramps or other outward signs of extreme dehydration, but none the less, their cells are not fully hydrated for optimal performance or recovery. Proper hydration is not about preventing cramping, but specifically to maintain the positive mechanism that cellular hydration provides with regards to promoting energy production from glycogen resynthesis, stamina, muscle function and performance as well as recovery and supporting the anabolic state. To a diver that happens to be a non-athlete, this means feeling fresh and energetic throughout the dive trip. To a diver that is an athlete, this means feeling optimal throughout the trip. This also means cramping is far less likely to occur. One thing few divers will disagree about, is that cramping after the nitrogen saturation of a typical dive, is dangerous on many levels. Whether the cramping could lead to constricted blood flow and bubbling which you don’t want, or just place the diver in a helpless state in need of a rescue, it is poor dive planning to engage in behaviors likely to cause cramping.

Hydration in other “non-sports”.

First, I do believe that diving is a sport. There are those that feel it is not, and so not worthy of a discussion of hydration and sports performance. There are also those that feel that Car Racing is not a sport. While my sports background includes my having been a world class martial artist, a top Power lifter and bodybuilder, Motocrosser and even a cyclist, my passion at the moment is Road Racing in SCCA events ( car racing). There is a remarkable similarity to diving with this, particularly in summer. In the car, we wear firesuits and sit in a cockpit where the temperature can reach well over 120 degrees, and where a driver can lose a quart of body water in less than a half hour of racing. The race car driver that allows himself to get significantly dehydrated, will begin to experience PERCEPTUAL NARROWING. This is catastrophic for a race car driver if they want to win or remain safe, and this is almost equally undesirable for a diver.

Text/HTML

Perceptual narrowing means losing focus on essentials of your dive—things like: where is your buddy, how much gas do you have left, is your buddy OK, what is going on around you….While a diver would need to become quite dehydrated to reach a dangerous state of perceptual narrowing, there are plenty of divers that will flirt with chronic dehydration enough that on a particularly hot day, with a few other X factors thrown in, perceptual narrowing can occur. I have spoken to more than a few GUE Fundies people that enjoy blaming the perceptual narrowing they experienced in class, on dehydration. This is a maybe, and kind of interesting I think. THE IMPORTANCE OF INTRACELLULAR HYDRATION
Water hydrates the extracellular(outside the cells). In order to fully hydrate the cells, the fluid replenishment needs to be at the intracellular level (inside the cells). Water and sports drinks cannot achieve this level of hydration as sodium is the number one ion outside the cell and potassium is the number one ion inside the cell – to drive intracellular hydration the ionic force inside the cell must be greater than outside the cell. Intracellular hydration requires a proper hydration drink to have a specific ratio of sodium and potassium, to "unlock" the cells, allowing for nutrient transmission across the cell walls. A proper hydration drink would include a combination of protein and carbohydrate in a balanced ratio to facilitate cell function, energy and recovery and to promote intracellular hydration which is an anabolic state. An anabolic state is a positive state of being for the muscles. When the body’s cells are fully hydrated, they are "volumized" as a result of intracellular hydration, which blocks the catabolic state. The catabolic state is the physiological state wherein the body breaks down its own muscle proteins as a result of oxidative stress and demands exceeding the available nutrients in the cells and bloodstream.

The diver drinking sugary soda drinks, IS effectively pushing their body into a Catabolic state, by the high sugar and poor chemical makeup of the soft drink. Even diet sodas will create this negative cascade of events, by causing your body to think it is being flooded with sugar ( the high sucralose or Aspartame levels in the absence of food based stabilizers, will cause insulin spiking very similar to the sugar versions of the same drink). The diver ends up less able to tap into energy stores, and far more likely to experience cramping as muscle cells fail to access sufficient energy for the demands of the dive or the climb back up the ladder.

Text/HTML

Drinking water will improve your overall hydration status, but it will not significantly alter the ratio of intracellular to extracellular fluid. Drinking most sports hydration drinks will do little to nothing to improve your intracellular hydration and in fact could actually hinder your performance due to high levels of sugar and incomplete or unbalanced electrolytes.
Drinking sodas on the diveboat for 4 hours…. Research has shown that 80% of all people are functioning at some level of dehydration daily and that most athletes consistently train, exercise, compete and live in a dehydrated or near dehydrated state - as they neglect consistent and proper electrolyte replenishment. If you agree that athletes generally are more likely to pay attention to their body than non-athletes, then it should make sense to you that non-athletes are likely to allow themselves to reach a fairly dehydrated state chronically, with no awareness of it.

MUSCLE STAMINA - FEEDING THE POTASSIUM-SODIUM PUMP

As you better understand how intracellular hydration supports our muscle function, and that intracellular hydration actually puts our bodies in a positive state (anabolic), you should see that hydration also is vital in muscle performance, integrity and in recovery. You begin to realize the importance of a properly balanced matrix of electrolytes. Recently published ground-breaking research shows that a major cause of muscle fatigue during exercise or stressful activity is the exhaustion of the "sodium-potassium pump", not simply lactic acid buildup as most have believed to be true.
The "sodium-potassium pump" is your body's active mechanism of transport to move potassium into a cell and sodium out. A muscle can contract only if it has an electrical charge across the muscle cell membrane. This electrical charge comes from having sodium primarily outside the cell and potassium primarily inside the cell. These higher concentrations are maintained by the "sodium-potassium pump" in the cell membranes. During rapid contractions, like you experience when exercising or performing a stressful activity or task, the muscle cells lose potassium so fast that it's doubled outside the cells in less than a minute. The pump is overwhelmed. This reduces the electrical charge between the inside and outside, so the muscle cells contract with much less force until they finally cannot contract at all. Given that your body does not store potassium, it is vital that your hydration drink supplements your dietary intake of potassium to ensure an adequate supply of potassium is available for your working muscle.

Not to beat a dead horse, but when you look at the ingredients of your Coke or Pepsi, take a peek at how much sodium is in the drink. Then see if you can find any potassium.

Be very aware that your muscles require a drink with about twice the potassium to the sodium it contains, and if the drink is high sodium with little or no potassium, you are actively destroying the essential activity of your body’s “sodium-potassium pump”.
So you might ask yourself the question—“Do you really want to drink Coke or Pepsi on a Dive Trip”?

Or, put another way, Do you want Free Sodas, or would you prefer to either pay for a quality sports drink, or to just drink pure water for free? Right now it is the Divers who are driving the diveboats to serve free softdrinks. For change to occur, you need to ask for it.