Affects of Fueling from Sugar or Carbs and Affects on your body

A Long Swim & One Stroke at a Time Teams

"Channel of Bones" Hawaii Charity Swim

July 25-31, 2016

First lets talk about health fueling when you swim - 

Two great video shorts on the affects of fueling your body using sugar based diet or carb based diet in easy and simple to understand terms.

The affects of these fuels, the timing, and amounts can act as a arterial inflammation agent. Review and consider the fuels used for open water and marathon level athletic events. Consider using natural foods as an alternative such as juices, fruits, peanut butter rather than dextrose based gels and Gu pacs.

Keep up the great adventures and remember One Stroke at a Time.

Catch our next adventure kayaking for friend and training partner Doug McConnell and the A Long Swim (ALS) team as we attempt to cross the Channel of Bones from Molokai to Oahu over some 18 hours of truly open ocean swimming. 

Heres the link: http://www.alongswim.com/meet-the-team-don-macdonald/

Eat Well, Live Well

Healthy Nutrition - What 2000 Calories Looks Like

Heart healthy nutrition for athletes (of any age) is a subject often not spoken about at the family dinner table, the team locker room, or often by coaches until you reach perhaps the elite level and even then selectively or at best incorrectly.  

Coupled with ninja marketing campaigns from babyhood ranging from outright miss-information to subliminal marketing, these messages cross the airwaves and internet bombarding our kids, teens and families. 

So for starters lets begin with some basics:

Cold Water Swimming Affects

Cold water immersion diuresis (urination) is common to cold water swimmers and is the strong desire to pee after (and sometimes during) swimming in cold water.

Marathon swimming requires one to overcome this 'societal faux pas' as a matter of time in the water but as the article points out, it is critical in replenishing liquids (hydration) and nutrients for fuel.



As we have now discussed many times, swimming in cold water leads to peripheral vasoconstriction, by the cold of the water leaching away the heat of the blood vessels closer to the surface. The blood vessels constrict resulting in reduction of blood flow in the body’s extremities to conserve heat in the cold.

This reduction in blood flow to the periphery therefore actually leads to a quick increase in blood pressure. The body attempts to compensate for this increase in arterial blood pressure by relieving itself of liquid elsewhere. The easiest, quickest and least costly expenditure from a metabolic (energetic) point of view is urine. So you will often find as cold swimmers do, that walking into cold water even before you are fully immersed, you will develop a sudden urge to urinate caused by this blood pressure increase. And during a swim liquid also builds up in the bladder but without practice, they are unable to urinate in really cold water while swimming, many swimmers, even very experienced cold water swimmers will have to stop or momentarily pause to urinate.

When you exit the water the demand to urinate can reach quite powerful levels as the muscles finally relax.

A consequence of this increased urination often forgotten is mild dehydration. Marathon swimmers in cold water, such as the English Channel are taking most of their food as liquid carbohydrates. The volume of water needed or used is generally close to one litre an hour, and because of cold diuresis, more of the liquid processed by the kidney, instead of being absorbed back as is normal, goes to the bladder. Part of this mechanism is that the cold suppresses the production of ADH, aka vasopressin, the anti-diuretic hormone that suppresses diuresis (urination). The swimmer urinates more, so the swimmer needs more liquid to compensate for the mild dehydration. And you have a self-sustaining cycle as long as the swimmer is immersed in tolerable cold water.

This article was reprinted from Lone Swimmer, a great resource.

Comparing marathon swimming to running, for perspective...

 
I recently came across a blog entry from Simon who resides in the UK on discussing the caloric expenditure for a 10k and relating it to marathon running. This is probably the simplest (maybe not the most scientifically accurate, but who knows) explanation for all you land lubbers out that have wondered wit like's like to swim 10k or further...

The basic calculation he found on the web was 2.93 calories per mile, per
pound.
 
So assuming you are 13 Stone (182 pounds) the calculation would be: 2.93 X 10 Miles X 182 Pounds = 5,332.6 calories

I, myself talking here, weigh 207 lb, so you can see 7000 calories per ten miles is easily in the range. For a channel length swim you are into the 20,000 range I'll bet with factoring in the cold water shiver factor probably more. Good to know I can keep eating!


Going back to Simon's comments...I have also heard 'said' that swimming a distance is the rough equivalent to 4 times a running distance - not sure about that one though?