electrolytes

Editor Mike Haney is training for the New York City Marathon with all the help from high-end running tech he can get. Read his previous posts here.

Did you know that several of the NASA research centers scattered around the country keep lists on their Web sites of the technologies they have available to license and sell to the public? Neither did I, but that's why I'm not launching businesses like David Belaga is. He's the CEO of Wellness Brands, which plucked a beverage NASA developed to keep astronauts hydrated and just started selling it as The Right Stuff, a concentrate for elite athletes that want to separate their electrolyte intake from their carb intake (carbs in sports drinks typically being some form of sugar).

I consider myself more of an elite non-athlete, but on a few recent runs, I poured some Right Stuff vials into bottles of water to see if it helped keep my whistle wet.

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Real time biofeedback from athletes is popping up everywhere. From heart rate monitors to electrolyte sensors, there’s a push to know what’s happening inside the body. For each sensor, a good ‘connection’ to the body is critical for obtaining accurate data but that often requires that something be stuck to the athlete. Now, a new technology developed by ConText, a European research collaboration, hopes to monitor EMG signals without attaching to, or getting under, an athlete’s skin.

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Gatorade goes to great lengths to determine if “It” is in you. Sweat patches slapped on Maria Sharapova and Tiger Woods provide before and after snapshots of electrolyte levels and sweat rate. But, what about during competition? Swiss company Biotex is developing a garment with wireless sensors embedded in the lower back to provide real-time values for similar metrics. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic material draws the sweat into flexible sensors just two millimeters thick and a few square centimeters. Data can be stored for future analysis or transmitted to wireless phones or PDAs so athletes know to hit the water fountain before it’s too late.

“It’s like driving a car around town, if you don’t watch your gas gauge it will be too late and you’ll be empty,” said Project Coordinator Jean Luprano. “You need to know whether to slow down or if you can go faster.”

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