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00:03
Welcome. Hi, I'm Mikki and this is Mikkipedia, where I sit down and chat to doctors, professors, athletes, practitioners, and experts in their fields related to health, nutrition, fitness, and wellbeing. And I'm delighted that you're here.

00:25
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, I speak to Andy Blow, founder of Precision Hydration, all about hydration. Funny that. We discuss Andy's initial interest in the area, coming from an athlete background and his own experience with hydration and getting it wrong and how this leads to the creation of Precision Hydration. We discuss the accuracy of the sweat test.

00:52
because I've got to be honest, as I was with Andy, I wasn't really brought into the idea. And we talk about what it can tell us, what is a field-based test any athlete can do to determine their hydration requirements, why some athletes sweat more or lose more sodium than others, and any sex-based differences that we need to be aware of. And we also talk a load more because Andy is great at explaining things, he's a really good athlete, and we...

01:19
discuss his work with his athletes and also what his response is to sodium deniers and people who don't necessarily believe that we need to consider sodium to the extent that Andean precision hydration does. So I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation because there are a number of objections which are met and which we have a really good discussion about and I really like that. It was quite a good open discussion.

01:46
And for those of you unfamiliar with Andy, he is a sports scientist with a degree in sports and exercise science from the University of Bath. An expert in sweat, dehydration, and cramping, Andy previously worked as a team sports scientist for the Bennett and Renault Formula One teams and remains an advisor to the Port Human Performance Center. He was an elite-level triathlete in his younger days. Apparently, he raced against Dr. Dan

02:15
Andy has finished in the top 10 of Ironman in 70.3 races, as well as winning an Exterra World title. It was Andy's own struggles with cramp and dehydration that led to him specializing in electrolyte replenishment and founding Precision Fuel and Hydration. He is a leading figure in the world of sports hydration and has worked alongside Dr Raj Jutley as well as other top sports scientists to co-author a number of studies and books.

02:44
we have a link as to Andy's bio in the show notes and of course to precision hydration. All right guys enjoy this conversation.

02:55
Thank you so much for taking time with me this morning to chat all about hydration. I don't know if you'll approve actually, but I have coffee and an electrolyte drink to supplement just coming from Iran actually, the conversation this morning. We're actually going to be speaking about both of these. You're an athlete or I mean, I imagine we're all athletes but...

03:22
I understand that you were an athlete before you were a sports scientist. Can you sort of share a little bit of your background? Yeah, definitely. And by the way, I'm impressed because I know that we're talking at 6.30am your time. So if you've already been out and done a run, that's pretty good going. I'm an early morning person. Yeah, I'm an early bird as well. So I kind of, yeah, I'm often out, but maybe usually my runs start at half five or six, but not a lot before that. Yeah, to be fair, it was particularly early.

03:50
But I figure that by the time my day, I've finished with clients at 10, I've basically had a day, so then I can just like faff off for the rest of it, so it's not too bad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, all good. No. So my kind of athletic background was playing football, like most kids in the UK, most lads in the UK anyway, when I grew up. I clearly wanted to be a professional footballer. That seemed like a good life. It became pretty apparent fairly early on that I wasn't going to go down that route.

04:20
I did a bit of cross-country running and swimming as a kid, not to any great level. I kind of ran at English schools, but was making up the numbers as opposed to worrying anyone near the front. And I swam a little bit for a swimming club, but again, I wasn't going to nationals or anything. And then kind of in my mid-teens got into endurance sports. My dad took me to a triathlon and I did a biathlon, which is like the swim run equivalent. And I think, you know, I kind of remember.

04:49
still quite vividly seeing the cool bikes and that kind of stuff and thought I fancy to go at that. So I got myself a road bike, started to get into triathlon and then used to get VHS videotapes of Dave Scott and Mark Allen doing the Ironman in Hawaii and watched trans world sport on a Saturday morning for all the crazy things. I used to watch Steve Gurney doing the post to post race in New Zealand. I was inspired by those kinds of things.

05:17
I actually got to do the coast to coast race a few years ago as well, which was a kind of a bucket list thing for me. But yeah, kind of that got me into endurance and I pursued that pretty persistently for a number of years. I again, a bit like the professional football thing, I really wanted to go to the Olympics. It became apparent that although I probably got a bit closer to that than I did to be in a professional football, although I didn't get, you know, I was never worrying the top five or six.

05:46
triathletes in the UK. So I was making up the numbers in the national team and doing exterra, switched to doing Ironman and all that kind of stuff. So, and then since then I kind of stopped racing seriously in the early to mid 2000s. I actually mainly stopped if I'm honest, because I had to have a pretty big knee surgery. And since then I've kind of bitten and bobbed around doing all the things that the surgeon told me not to do

06:16
know, with a rehabilitated knee, but it seems to be holding up at the moment. We're a few years past that now. Nice. And so can you still like run and stuff? Yeah, I have to be a little bit careful with the frequency and intensity of what I do, but I've run some marathons and some ultras and stuff. And it's more about like not training, not running every day on it, I suppose. Just have to be a bit careful. Yeah, for sure. Random, how old are you, Andy? 45.

06:44
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cause you just like sort of listed off a whole range of your athletic career and it seems like quite extended. So I'm like, Oh, I think you're older than what I thought you were. And yeah, true. You actually are. So obviously as an athlete, you know, how important was nutrition to you sort of going through it, particularly, I guess, suppose in your later years, obviously, because we're a little bit more attuned to things like that. Yeah. I think early on I looked

07:14
I look back on my career like probably a lot of athletes do and realise that especially the era that I was in in the 90s and early 2000s, although the knowledge on nutrition and hydration was starting to become more, it was a bit more out there. This was kind of pre-internet really. There wasn't so much stuff on the internet. So everything was a bit behind in terms of knowledge transfer from what was going on to athletes.

07:40
I didn't necessarily, I don't think looking back at it, I engaged with it as much as I should have done. I think I left some good performances on the table because of a lack of focus on nutrition and hydration. And I certainly, but what I did have was some really bad experiences with hydration because I have a really, really high sweat rate and I lose a lot of salt in my sweat. Both were facts that I learned right at the very, very back end of my career. And I learned them out of really...

08:07
doing some very desperate investigation because so many races were getting ruined. I spent years trying to qualify to go and do the Hawaii Ironman and I managed to qualify a few times. I went once and I had such a horrific experience because I just screwed up my hydration. I ended up with, you know, hyponatremia. I ended up putting in a pretty ropey performance and it kind of put me off from going back and doing those things. After that, I did some sweat tests. I learned about...

08:36
electrolyte loss, I learned about fluid loss and I managed to put it into practice for some of my later races, even though it was towards the end of my career. It made such a huge difference for me. All throughout that time, although I was a semi-professional athlete, I was never truly completely full-time. I always worked doing something and it was coaching or sports science related. I went into sports science more heavily.

09:06
when I stopped competing as an athlete and sweat testing and hydration and all of that became an immediate area of interest and has ultimately led to the business that I run now which is precision fuel and hydration. Yeah. So, Andy, I find it really interesting because I speak to a number of clients, endurance-based athletes and I have a lot of them who are...

09:29
similar in that they've either qualified or they're trying to qualify for Kona, and they go to a hot environment and they're just like, I just don't do that well in the heat. I'm listening to you talk and I'm wondering how much of that is truly they're just not very good in the heat or actually is it just something that they're missing with their hydration practice? Like, do you have a sense of, are they actually one in the same? If someone can dial in their hydration, then actually, I mean, all things obviously are...

09:56
climatizing to the environment is important as well. But do you think a lot of those issues could be mitigated with the correct hydration? Yeah, for me, that was absolutely the case. I went into races in the heat, extremely well conditioned, extremely fit, extremely well prepared, but completely unprepared from a hydration and electrolyte replenishment point of view. And the mistake that I was making was drinking probably too much fluid and not taking enough, enough.

10:25
in anywhere near enough salt. And there was that balance was all out of whack for me. That being said, I don't think I would want to sell the idea of getting your hydration right as a magic bullet for racing in the heat. We work with a lot of elite athletes that perform well in the heat and some that really struggle in the heat. And sometimes it can be due to other genetic factors. Sometimes it can be due to your...

10:53
a bit more due to your body type. You know, if you're a bigger, more muscular athlete, often you're producing a lot more heat and finding it more difficult to offload with the environment. Sometimes it can just be that some people aren't particularly adept at modifying their tactics and strategy and pacing for the heat. That's a huge thing, you know, especially endurance racing. If you want to race well in the heat, in my opinion, if you're struggling, you need to learn to kind of keep a lid on your...

11:21
efforts and pace. You can't afford to race in a very spiky and emotional way and going hard on the hills and chasing people and this. You've got to learn to sort of... The heat is like a weight pressing down on you and you've got to accept that and you've got to suppress your performance levels a little bit. I think I'm right in saying that it was Jan Frodeno in Triathlon who was interviewed about Kona and he kind of said, look, the heat...

11:48
out there is the equivalent of racing at altitude or something. It just takes something away from your performance. You have to accept that. You have to accept you're going to be 10% of your watts down on the bike and you have to accept that you're going to be 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds a K slower on the run because of that heat. I would put myself in that category as well. There are a lot of athletes that are unwilling to accept that. They want to do their best performance in the heat.

12:16
and they can't mentally cope with this idea that, okay, in the heat, I've just got to back off a little bit. And then I think that that could undo their performance. So it's kind of complicated, but I would say that, as stated in the obvious, hydration is such a huge component of racing in the heat. And especially if you're someone who has a high sweat rate or has a high level of salt loss, then it's an area that you need to be nailing before you go and try and do your best in a hot race.

12:46
And Andy, obviously, I'm talking to you today as an expert in hydration and electrolytes. We're going to go through the details. At the time when you were figuring it out, who did you turn to? What information was available for you? So the first port of call for me was the internet, the early internet. It was actually ultrarunning forums on the internet. So this is where...

13:12
I obviously did a lot of Google searching. I've still got some of the folders of stuff that I found back then. A lot of the people that were chatting about electrolyte balance and hydration were people who were running 100 miles. I remember jumping into some of the early Western states 100 forums and hearing stories of people that resonated with me. There seemed to be this controversy, which there still is about.

13:40
Some people need loads of salt, some people don't. Some people swear blind that it's not a thing. Some people think it really is a thing. That you can ask 10 people and get 10 different answers on it. But I was in a desperate position where it's like, well, I've got to try something. So I started reading this. I started taking more salt tablets and things. And then in parallel, I talked to a friend of mine who was a doctor, a heart surgeon, and he obviously has a...

14:09
massive amount of knowledge about electrolyte balance in the body. And he looked at the symptoms I was suffering and looked at some blood test results and said, and looked at my clothing after the races, which was caked in salt and said, look, all of what you're describing is consistent with like massive fluid and electrolyte loss. And we did a very simple spreadsheet, like what are you taking in, what are you losing? There's a massive delta between those two. We just closed the gap, which essentially boiled down to like me taking more salt.

14:38
and drinking less water, a little bit less water. Yeah. And so Andy, can we do like a bit of a 101 on sweating on electrolytes just to bring people up to speed? I mean, I know it seems pretty rudimentary, like, surely athletes will know this stuff. And I think there's obviously some base knowledge, but I think that, you know, the way that you describe it, it just, it's a lot more nuanced or there's a little bit more to it than what I think we've seen.

15:05
we might think it is or the importance, particularly as you say, you talk to 10 different people, you're going to get 10 different answers as to the importance of it. So first, just the physiological process of sweating. How does it impact an athlete's performance? Sweating is your body's response to a rising core body temperature. So your core body temperature, there's lots of things in the body. I'm sure most athletes are familiar with the term homeostasis.

15:35
So homeostasis is your body trying to keep certain physiological parameters within certain ranges. So your blood sodium levels are one that we will probably talk about in a bit and your blood glucose levels might be another. Your core body temperature is one that operates in a really narrow range. So usually it's about 37 degrees Celsius. If it drops significantly below that, you go hypothermic and if it goes significantly above that, you become hypothermic, but the range is small.

16:03
If your core body temperature is below 35, you're in trouble. And usually if you're above 39 and a half or 40, you're also in trouble. So when your hypothalamus in your brain detects a rise in your core body temperature when you exercise, and the reason your body temperature goes up when you exercise is because exercise is quite, muscular contraction is quite inefficient. You don't produce a lot of power compared to how much heat you produce. I think it's like,

16:31
23% efficiency for a cyclist. And that and cyclists are very efficient. So it's not actually a good system in that respect. So all this excess heat is being thrown off and you've got to offload that to the external environment. Otherwise you're going to cook yourself. And so what happens is the hypothalamus detects a rising core body temperature. It sends neurotransmitters down the chain to your sweat glands, which are at the surface of your skin all over your body.

17:00
and tells them to produce sweat. And the sweat is drawn from your blood plasma, from the capillary bed. It goes onto the skin and evaporates away. And that evaporation is what cools you down. And the simplest way to think about how effective that is, is that feeling that when you jump in the sea or in a swimming pool, even on a baking hot day, when you get out and a little breeze comes past, you feel instantly quite cold. And that's because that water's evaporating off. And that's the effect that your body's

17:29
taken advantage of when you exercise and sweat. And so although sweating can be seen as a bit of a bad thing or an Achilles heel for athletes, without it, we wouldn't be able to exercise in the heat. Which is why if you take your dog for a run in the winter, it'll kick your ass. But if you take it for a run in the summer, you'll leave it standing because it can't sweat and thermoregulate in the same way that we can.

17:59
a high sweat rate. I actually think I have quite a low sweat rate. I remember being on a treadmill doing a lactate threshold test maybe 15 years ago. The coach that I was working with at the time, he's like, you're not sweating. It was super hot. There was no air con. I didn't have a glow on, but it certainly wasn't what he was expecting. Obviously, there are individual variations with sweat rate for people.

18:29
Definitely, and they can be quite substantial. So the biggest sweating athletes we deal with, not exclusively, but they tend to be the bigger athletes. It kind of fits, doesn't it? They're a bigger body size, you're going to produce more heat and you've got more fluid to lose, so you're going to sweat more. So we've seen elite tennis players, six foot six tennis players sweating four or five litres an hour, which is pretty incredible. We also see small and often it is female athletes, there seems to be a little bit of a discrepancy. Although

18:59
Female athletes can sweat as much as male athletes. There's an overlap in the middle. The lower sweat rates that we see tend to come from female athletes and the higher sweat rates tend to come from male athletes. So you kind of fit in the bill as a smaller female athlete. Maybe it's not entirely unexpected that your sweat rate would be on the lower end, but it is kind of super individual. And...

19:23
We also deal with problems at both ends of that spectrum because although if you don't sweat very much, it is kind of good for conserving fluid. It can hold you back in hot conditions if you're not able to cool adequately. At the same time, the guy that I mentioned who's got like a four or five litre an hour sweat rate, he was actually a South African tennis player, Kevin Anderson, who's a Wimbledon finalist. And he would typically really struggle in the heat because he couldn't keep up with his fluid losses.

19:52
So he had heat stroke, he collapsed a couple of times, he had lots of problems with cramping and stuff because he lost, he just, you can't physically drink four or five liters an hour. He was impressive in that he could probably drink two, two and a half liters an hour. But even so, that's still, it doesn't take long for a big amount of fluid loss and electrolyte loss to compound and leave his body in a lot of trouble. Yeah, for sure. And I, you'll likely be familiar with.

20:19
well, actually, I don't know, Jim Cotter in his work. Yeah. And so I recall, because I studied for Zed at the same time, well, he was just coming into the department, and I think in a couple of my final years. And as I recall, his group reanalyzed hydration data as it related to performance. And so up until this point, we thought that

20:43
a certain level of dehydration was, and it was quite a very small level of dehydration would be detrimental to performance, but his analysis of it suggested that the way that we looked at the data prior to his group doing it, and I don't know if it was just his group, but in fact, it wasn't, it was the way we were analyzing it sort of gave us skewed information about the relationship between hydration and performance.

21:12
To what extent does dehydration impact negatively on performance? Like how dehydrated do you have to get? That's still kind of like the million dollar question because it's more complicated than we, you know, people love a simple answer to what sounds like a simple question like, okay, so the human body, we must be able to tolerate X amount of dehydration before we suffer Y decrement in performance. And it's just not that simple an answer.

21:41
quite motivated. It was funded in such a way that it was quite motivated to prove without doubt that dehydration was catastrophically negative for performance. There's been a lot of stones thrown at some of the earlier work that people at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute did because they were funded by sports drink and obviously the aim is to sell more sports drinks. So how can you do that? Well, with the marketing people that are holding the data, they want to say dehydration is it.

22:10
a real negative, you need to drink, drink, drink. And a lot of Tim Noakes wrote a whole book about it called Waterlogged to try and correct all of this. And there were some – the way studies were done, for example, I think one of the things that Jim and his group maybe critiqued was some of the studies would forcibly dehydrate people and then get them to exercise. And that's not very representative of what really happens. You don't sit in a sauna not drinking even though you feel thirsty and then go for a run. I think we all know that if you do that.

22:39
your performance is going to suffer. However, it's a different dynamic if you start a run well hydrated, but then incrementally dehydrate because you're not drinking during that run, maybe your body treats that situation differently. Maybe it has different physiological consequences. So if you forcibly dehydrate someone by two or three percent and then get them to exercise, you're going to see a drop off in performance. If you see someone drop their body weight by two or three percent throughout an exercise bout,

23:09
maybe you're not going to see that same level because the body can kind of cope with it. But I would also say, you know, I'm out here in Spain at the moment working with the cycling team and they're doing some very interesting heat training protocols out here. So one of the things they're doing is they're doing a five hour ride outside in moderately temperate conditions, 15, 18 degrees. They're coming straight back and they're putting all of their winter clothing on and sitting on a trainer.

23:37
indoors and spinning on for another hour with no fan, with only a limited amount of fluid. And they're trying to create a heat training stress adaptation to boost blood volume and that kind of thing. But they're playing around with their hydration protocols because if they don't drink enough on that preceding five hours, if their body weight drop starts to become too severe.

24:01
they immediately can see it in that final hour, that they can't complete the hour, that their heart rate gets out of control, that they feel absolutely terrible. And even a small amount of additional drinking actually enables them to perform that hour in the heat to a much more comfortable degree, and they can perform better. So I think, as one example there, maybe you can suffer a bit more of a...

24:28
a percentage of body weight drop in colder conditions where there's not quite so much pressure on your cardiovascular system to provide cooling. But when you're exercising in the heat, I think dehydration can be quite catastrophic. So I actually wrote a blog for our website which might be worth sharing with you if people are interested in this topic. It basically says how it's called how much dehydration can you tolerate before your performance suffers. And it tries to dig into it.

24:55
I guess the punchline is, it's probably somewhere between like one and four percent or so, maybe five percent for some people, but it's not necessarily a fixed solid number. It's something we've all got to learn by trial and error for ourselves. Yeah, for sure. And I'm thinking about, you know, there are differences in the type of athlete as well, and not necessarily just body size, but you mentioned genetics.

25:22
as a potential reason for why some people might sweat more or less. I'm just thinking about world record performances by marathon runners. Obviously, these guys and females are out there a whole lot less time than your average marathoner. Maybe it's a time thing, so they don't have the time to get quite as dehydrated. I don't think they're drinking a whole lot from the research that I've seen. But do you?

25:52
Could there be something genetic about those individuals that means that they don't suffer the impact of dehydration to the same extent that someone else might have under a similar condition? Yeah, I think like you, my sense on this is that there's numerous genetic factors that give elite athletes the potential to do the performances the rest of us can only aspire to do. Probably it is true.

26:20
I've never seen any research or I don't know what those factors might be relating to the ability to tolerate dehydration. But I'm pretty certain that like in other ways, maybe they can either produce less or tolerate lactic acid or recent lactic acid better or carry oxygen better and deliver or expel waste gases better. There's got to be loads of different incremental things that come together. I think some of the papers that have looked at Elite Marathon runners dropping a huge

26:50
what they don't necessarily articulate is the fact that, you know, the famous one is about Haile Ghebrey Selassie, I think losing about seven or eight percent, maybe even 10% of his body weight at the end of a marathon where he ran like 204, which at the time, 204 is still a world-class time, but at the time it was like close to the world record. And, you know, when I would almost be certain that when that guy stood on the start line for that race, he's not at his normal baseline

27:19
He's well hydrated. I used to stand on the start line of a race two or three kilos heavier than what would be a standard training weight. Because if you really do aggressively carb load and take on some additional fluid and salt beforehand, although you are starting a bit heavy, you are packing a reservoir of energy and fluids and salts that you're gonna burn through in the race inside, and so it's beneficial. And it...

27:45
whilst he dropped maybe, let's say, 8% of his body weight or whatever it was, is that a true representation? Is that 8% the same as blows in 8%? I would argue potentially not. And so I think that's one factor that doesn't get discussed. The other thing that you've already pointed out is actually these guys at the sharp end, a marathon is an endurance event for anyone, but it's only two hours for the faster men and it's only just over two hours nowadays for the faster women.

28:13
That's a whole different proposition to someone who's going for three or four or five hours. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And Andy, you mentioned sex difference briefly when I was just talking about my sweat rate and you said, you know, smaller female, et cetera. Are there any other known sex differences that might change how we approach hydration in a meaningful way? I mean, sex differences in a meaningful way that actually would, would we have to consider?

28:41
I know a lot of people talk about it. Yeah, honestly, I feel like at the moment, the evidence sort of suggests that the answer is no, not really. I think, you know, the physiological demands on men and women doing endurance in the cardiovascular aspects that are most affected and heat management aspects that are affected aren't really affected by male-female sex difference too much.

29:11
You know, it's like there has been talk and a lot of papers written about the difference in fluid retention and fluid loss at different times in the menstrual cycle. But a lot of the summary of all of that, and again, Abby, one of the sports scientists who worked for us at PF&H wrote an article about this because we got asked the question a lot and looked at all the evidence and kind of came out on the side that, look, there are maybe some slightly statistical differences in the way women's bodies handle fluid.

29:39
at different times in the month compared with men who are obviously more stable in that regard. But does any of this really add up to like a substantially enough difference to affect the way you hydrate for performance? Well, not really. The biggest difference is you as an individual, if we took your data and didn't know your gender, whether we just know your sweat rate and we know your sweat sodium concentration and we know the same for a guy, we could...

30:08
we could give you a hydration plan that is compatible with that. It doesn't matter what, whether you're a man or a woman. Yeah, yeah. No, that's as I understood it as well, which is reassuring. Andy, you've mentioned obviously we talked fluid loss and we've mentioned a couple of times, obviously sodium. So can we just have a brief chat about the role of the electrolytes, particularly? I mean, sodium, obviously.

30:37
But if I'm looking at a sports drink, I'm also going to see magnesium and potassium. People sometimes get a little bit hyper-focused on those nutrients, as opposed to, as I understand it, sodium, which is the one that might almost matter. But I might be wrong about that, so it'd be good to chat about those electrolytes. All electrolytes are really critical in the body, and you have to ingest them because you can't manufacture them.

31:05
they all perform different roles. A lot of them are to do with electrical conductivity, nerve impulses, balancing of potential around cell membranes and communication and that sort of stuff. So when you get electrolyte imbalances, all sorts of catastrophic things happen. If you get a really big imbalance in potassium levels, it can affect your heart, for instance, because when they do a heart operation, the way that they stop the heart beating is they infuse a load of potassium.

31:35
into it. So you have to be super careful when you're messing around with electrolyte balance. The reason that sodium gets so much air time as an electrolyte that matters to athletes is because your sweat comes from your blood plasma and the predominant electrolytes in your blood plasma are sodium and chloride, table salt. And whilst you do lose some potassium, magnesium and calcium, you lose those.

32:02
electrolytes in relatively small amounts. Even in ultra-distance activity, it's arguable that you're not going to lose them in amounts that become physiologically significant. But sodium and chloride, sodium in particular, you can lose enough of even in two or three hours if you're a heavy sweater that can put your homeostasis out of whack and cause

32:30
Tau'ut is the most important one for athletes and that is true. All of them are important, but as long as you're eating a balanced diet most of the time, sodium is the one you wanna be looking for on sports nutrition products because it's the one that might help you maintain your performance if you're losing a lot of sweat. Yeah, okay. And you mentioned that you were a salty sweater and this was indicative, a lot of salt on your exercise gear, indicative of the fact that you're

32:59
dumping a lot of sodium, therefore you need more. Whereas one of the things that I've heard is that if you're dumping a lot of sodium, you don't need the sodium. So you know, I think there are a lot. So how does that, yeah, what's the deal? What's the go with that? Yeah, most of the sodium regulation that goes on your body is done at the kidneys, not through sweat glands. So you sweat out sodium, and there are genetic reasons why some people sweat more sodium out than others. They're not.

33:28
fantastically well understood, but they have been doing biopsy studies and things where they've looked at the structure of sweat glands. Some people have more channels for reabsorption of the sodium and chloride ions than others. Some people, the hormonal factors control a little bit how much sodium gets reabsorbed. In an extreme case, people with cystic fibrosis have a genetic condition that doesn't allow them to reabsorb a lot of sodium at all, so they're salt.

33:57
their sweat is incredibly salty. And so there's this big range of difference between how much people lose and what we found with our testing, and we've done a lot of sweat testing now, is that that number for you is relatively stable usually. So my sweat is and always has been extremely salty. Other people we test only lose a small amount. And whilst I've heard the argument before that you are wasting salt if you're sweating it out,

34:27
I'm not going to say that that's not entirely, you know, it's not implausible that by taking in more salt you might see more on your clothes, but more often than not in conversations with athletes that we have, and it was certainly the case for me, it's like it doesn't matter how much salt I do or don't take in, my kit is encrusted with salt. You know, I've literally come on to talk to you having walked off doing a sweat test with a professional Tour de France rider who's been riding in the Pro Peloton since 2007,

34:57
He did a sweat test for the first time today and he said, look, after every race, my jersey will stand up on its own. It's like so crystal crystal, I have cramps, I have problems in the heat. I've learned to combat this by like taking more salt, having more electrolyte drinks and he's really curious to know what's the deal. Well sure enough, we sweat test him. His sweat sodium score is like double the average. Wow, yeah. And he's learned that.

35:25
dismiss what you're saying that there may be cases where some people, if they're taking loads of extra salt, there may be a mechanism by which some of that ends up getting leached down in their sweat because it does end up in your blood and yada yada. But at the same time, I would caution against the blanket like, well, if you're taking too much, if you're taking, if you're seeing salt on your skin, it's because you're taking too much salt. I've seen way too many compelling cases that would completely refute that.

35:52
Yeah, no, that's great. That's really good to know. And I think there's the, and I want to talk to you about the cramps as well, because I mean, you're in the trenches looking at athletes every day and thousands of athletes. And I think there's real value there. Whereas if we're just looking at literature or other indicators of the importance of electrolytes or how people sort of lose fluid and electrolytes, then you can miss.

36:17
That's your only evidence that you're sort of drawing on as your evidence base. I think you can miss a lot of real life stuff. Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned your cardiologist friend talking about blood markers of electrolytes. And I have actually seen a couple of papers over the last couple of years talking about athletes who appear to have lower levels of magnesium and potassium sort of blood markers. Is this another way to sort of,

36:46
athletes to look at their electrolyte requirements or are they a little bit too generalized as opposed to getting a sweat test when you're in that exercise setting? Yeah, they are potentially very useful, but they are also categorically kind of two different things because what we're measuring when we do a sweat test is we're trying to model what you...

37:11
are going to lose from your body over the period of time that you're racing and training. So we're interested in modelling your sweat rate, how many litres of sweat per hour, and we're interested in modelling how much sodium is in that sweat. So if we keep the numbers simple and say, Mickey, you're losing one litre of sweat per hour with a thousand milligrams of sodium per litre, that means every hour, roughly, you're going to lose one litre of fluid and a thousand milligrams of sodium. Extrapolate that up, and you can, for a five-hour race, it's five litres.

37:38
of sodium that you're going to lose. When you look at blood markers, that's kind of downstream, that's internal. The body's trying very hard by a homeostasis to keep your electrolyte levels in balance. And so if you do a blood test and show up as being low or deficient in magnesium, potassium, there's probably something along the lines of like a dietary insufficiency and inability to absorb it.

38:06
maybe you're wasting some of those electrolytes for some reason. It could be medication you're on. It could be a medical condition. And so the upshot of that might be that you address that with more dietary intake or supplementation, but it's not necessarily going to be that you're deficient in that because you've sweated it out. Yes, makes sense. And it's probably more, it could well, or it's more likely probably to be a more chronic thing rather than an acute thing because sodium and fluid loss during exercise is a very acute

38:36
you can have no problem and then three hours later, you can have a massive problem. Whereas low magnesium is more likely to have come on over a long chronic period of time. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And speaking of obviously the testing, which is what I want to chat to you about, I will be honest, Andy, like as I've heard of sweat testing for like the last, I don't know, 15 years, and I've always been skeptical. I've been like, well, you're sitting down.

39:03
I'll get you to talk me through the process actually, because I don't actually know about it as much as what I probably think I do. I probably have this idea and I'm completely wrong, but I'm like, how can a sweat test determine someone's losses and an athlete's losses at one point in time if, for example, they are out doing ultramarathons in hot environments or they're doing Ironman in the freezing cold or an Olympic distance.

39:32
different events, different environments. So I was skeptical of the value of a one-time sort of test. But can you talk me through the process because I have different feelings about it now after listening to you on other podcasts. So I'd just like to have the conversation. Yeah, I think it's always kind of healthy to attack this from a skeptical point of view. If I rewind to tell my story in a bit more detail, just to start with, like,

40:02
When I sat down with Dr. Jutley, my cardiac surgeon friend, he said to me, look, there's a test we can do to see how much salt you lose in your sweat. It's very well medically validated. And he said, I bet you, you will be like super high on that scale. So I was like, okay, well, I've got nothing to lose here. He's gonna hustle me in the back door of a hospital and get me a free test of my sweat. So we sat down at the hospital, did put electrodes on the arm.

40:29
stimulated the sweat glands, they took a sweat sample, ran it through a machine. Sure enough, the guy goes, that's really high. That's 1800 milligrams of sodium per liter, which is like double what the average person loses. And Dr. Jutley is there, or Smug takes the fiber off me, or whatever, and wins the bet, sort of thing. But the reason that the sweat test is, the sweat sodium test is potentially very useful as a one-time test is it's quite...

40:56
like I said, it's quite static within individuals. We do occasionally see cases where maybe the number moves around over time a little bit, but they're rare. And we've tested and repeat tested a lot of people. We've also more recently done a lot of back-to-back testing with sweat collected during exercise and sweat collected during our stimulated analysis. And the two numbers converge really nicely.

41:24
Case in point, the athlete that I just mentioned, this cyclist that I've just been working with today, the reason he came for a sweat test with us is not only because of all the symptom history he's got, but also because the cycling team did some sweat testing on him earlier this week. His numbers came out super high, and they were like, mm, that's interesting. We wanna verify that. We wanna get another data point on that, and sure enough, our test married up pretty well with their on-the-road exercise test. So.

41:53
That's not uncommon. We see that all the time. And so measuring your sweat sodium concentration, we liken it to knowing what your t-shirt size is. It's like you don't need to know exactly because it's a physiological variable. It's going to be a little bit different one day to the next. But if you know whether you're a small, medium, a large or an extra large, or in this case, like a low, a moderate, a high or very high, then that gives you a really interesting data point to then plug in against also your sweat rate.

42:22
also the weather conditions, also the intensity of the exercise, the duration of the exercise. And you start to be able to say, because I would say if you start at the extremes, like categorically you would say someone who has low sweat sodium, who has a low sweat rate, who's doing a short distance event in cold conditions, does not need electrolyte supplementation or even a lot of fluid supplementation. Let's go all the way to the other end. Someone who's got very, very high sweat sodium.

42:51
who has a high sweat rate, who's competing in a long race in the heat, and who's also very fit, so they can push themselves very hard, they need a shitload of fluid electrolyte supplementation to keep them on track. And if you bookend everyone between those two scenarios, clearly we're all on that spectrum somewhere. And so this is what drives me insane with the argument around sweat testing, electrolyte supplementation, whatever it's like.

43:19
There's a lot of very clever people out there who can't seem to accept this premise that this is a spectrum. For some people, we can say, no, you don't need anything. For other people, we have to say, yes, you need, you really, really need a lot of everything. I can't tell you how mentally it drives me that there are people that will just, oh, well, no, the sweat test is a waste of time because we can just put, everyone just needs a bit of sodium or the extremists who are like, no, no one needs to replace sodium. And it's like, well.

43:49
There's just too much evidence which you are willfully ignoring that suggests that this is a spectrum. It does amaze me how dogmatic it's become. Maybe rightly in the past that I've been accused of obviously banging the drum for the benefits of sweat testing, the requirement for sweat testing. For me as an individual, I have to recognize my own biases. It was insanely useful for me and it's incredibly helpful for me.

44:17
And therefore you kind of, yeah, you want it to be useful and helpful for everyone. And maybe it isn't, but also let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's not that it's not useful for anybody. You know, like some of these people that are banging on it regularly in the sort of sports science coaching, nutrition media at the moment about how sweat testing or sodium supplementation is a waste of time.

44:44
they are effectively denying that I exist, you know, in terms of not me as a commercial entity, but me as a human individual. And what has been gratifying over the years is a number of elite professional and amateur athletes who appear to suffer with the same problems have gravitated to us, have asked us the questions, had the tests, followed the protocols, and quite often have outstanding results as a result. And so, you know, it's

45:13
Yeah, I've probably gone on about that enough, but that's a real sore spot for me in how the dialogue around all of this is being perceived in the media at the moment. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And as you were describing, it might be a one-time sort of test, or not a one-time test, but you're in a certain environment where you do the test. Then, of course, my logical brain kicked in as soon as you started talking. I went, of course, of course you're just then going to go, well, this is what I'm like in this sort of static environment.

45:43
it's going to play out slightly differently if the environmental conditions are different. That makes perfect sense. For sure, Andy, I've come around to your way of thinking much more than what I was maybe 10 years ago or even five years ago around the utility of knowing your sweat rate. Because of course there's sweat rate, but there's sodium loss as well, and they can uncouple, right? So you can be a low sweater, but actually lose quite a bit of salt within that.

46:13
Is it right? Definitely, yeah. So you could look at it like a quadrant graph like that. So on the bottom left of the graph, you've got people with a low sweat rate and a low sweat sodium concentration. And above them, you might have a high sweat rate but a low sweat sodium concentration. In the other corner, you've got a low sweat sodium concentration but a high sweat rate. And in the top right-hand corner, you've got the people like me who've got a high sweat rate and a high sweat sodium concentration.

46:43
plot you onto that graph somewhere. And then further you skew towards the right and the upper right, the more attentive you're gonna need to be about your hydration. So I keep talking about it because it's very relevant to me at the moment, but here with the cycling team, they've got a beautifully simple system for doing this. They sweat test everyone. They look at their sweat rates and their sweat sodiums. They categorize them as kind of low, moderate, or high requirements for fluid and electrolytes.

47:10
Then on the bike in races, they have three bottles available. They have a blue cap bottle, which has water. They have a white cap bottle, which has carbohydrate drink. They have a red cap bottle, which has a carbohydrate plus electrolyte drink. The nutritionists, just based on the weather conditions, the length of the race, the likely intensity, they program it in for the riders that the saltier, heavier sweating guys will need more bottles and more of

47:40
high proportion of electrolytes along with carbs. Then the cooler the conditions, the lower the sweat losses, sodium losses, those guys will drink more of the white top bottles, carbohydrate only. Then the water is used to supplement as of when. Sometimes you just need a bit more water and they'll use it like that. But they get so many of their calories and carbs from their liquids that it's kind of mainly a binary decision of like, are you a guy who needs exclusively

48:10
electrolyte carb bottles? Do you need a mixture of carb, electrolyte and carb only, or do you just need carbohydrate only because you don't have a high requirement for salt at all? Do you see many of those athletes, Andy, like the ones that legitimately could run a 30K trail event, not worry at all about salt? Yeah, we definitely see some people. We've tested someone here this week with really, really low sweat sodium concentration.

48:39
We literally have seen both ends of the spectrum. And that guy was a guy who's like a podium rider in the Tour de France. And he's like, well, I don't worry too much about salt intake. It's just not a thing for me. And sure enough, his sweat test score shows he loses like literally less than half of what the average person loses in their sweat, sodium wise. So for them, accumulating.

49:07
So your loss is just not a big problem in races, whatever the sports nutrition they're taking and food they're eating is obviously balancing it out. It's a non-issue. So you just, you don't worry about it. Yeah. And then is there any detriment to taking salt if you don't need it? Like what is the potential pitfall? As I understand it, when I talk about salt with people, I'm like, well, you're going to know if you don't need it because you're going to need to go to the bathroom pretty quickly because salt can have that.

49:36
like too much sodium can have that effect on some people. But like should, you know, if you were just taking salt tabs because you've been told, but for example, if you didn't need them, would there be anything, what would be the downside of that? The big chat in the cycling teams, and we've seen this with some riders, is that if you go like in this pro cycling world, the Vuelta a España is in

50:05
relatively hot part of the year in August, September, it can be scorching race like 40 plus degrees. Guys that are recommended to take more salt and do so unnecessarily, like they don't lose a lot of sweat and salt, they can gain body weight because sodium helps you to retain fluid. That's one potential detrimental side. The other thing as well is that salt is controversial and there are different opinions about it, but too much salt in anyone's diet is seen and deemed to be a bad thing.

50:34
So it could, it's like anything, anything to excess is usually bad. So when we recommend certain people take a large amount of salt, it's not actually what I would determine as being in excess, it's just to meet their higher requirement, they have higher requirements is to meet those needs. Um, would you advise someone to just go crazy with the salt, you know, whatever? Like probably not. It's not, it's not a good idea. I do. And I have been on record as saying, you know,

51:03
in many circumstances, I would say racing in the heat, sweating a lot, a little bit more salt than you perhaps need, rather a little bit less. I see there being less downside and more potential upside, but I'm also aware that encouraging athletes to take more of something is a dangerous game because as soon as you tell athletes that more of something is going to help them, some athletes will double it, some will triple it, and then there will be one out there who will ten times it.

51:31
You've just got to be real about that. When I say a little bit more, it's like, it is a little bit more, not a multiple of. Yeah, yeah, sure. And you mentioned that one of the cyclists you were working with, they did their own sort of sweat testing out in the field and they wanted another data point, so they came to you. What was the exercise test? Was it the simple sort of, they weighed themselves, they jumped on and rode for a while and they accounted for their?

51:58
consumption and then they weighed themselves again. Is that the sort of field test for testing your sweat rate? 100%. Yeah, that's what they do. Real simple. Just do it accurately and do it repeatedly so that you get an average of data. Nice. That's good. That's what I tell my people to do. I'm glad that we agree. Andy, you mentioned cramps and this, I see this a lot. I've got friends who are sodium deniers.

52:27
and other people who swear by it for cramps. Because as I understand the state of the literature, you can't look at the literature and conclusively say, yep, it's an electrolyte, no, it's a sodium or a salt loss issue. However, what I see with some clients is that unless they're taking a lot of salt, they're either gonna get cramps or they do get cramps. And of course, if they get cramps and they take salt,

52:55
cramp resolves. So in your sort of clinical experience, is it, is what you see different to what I might read in the literature about the importance of replacing sodium? Like how does that sort of sit? Yeah, I'd say the literature in the last, I don't know how many years, but probably the last 20 plus years has swung to being way more conservative or even in denial of the association between electrolyte and cramps. Kevin Miller at the University of New York

53:23
who's based in Texas has written some more, very recently written some more balanced papers, I feel, on the kind of multifactorial aspect of cramping, being honest in the fact that no one really understands cramping that well and that multiple different reasons and remedies seem to exist. From my clinical experience and my own personal experience, I would be fairly confident in saying like, look, with endurance athletes, especially those competing in the heat.

53:52
somewhere between 70 and 80% of cases seem to either be helped by or resolved by taking more salt. And in the absence of any, like, there isn't a really strong rationale for exactly why that might be. But there's also like hundreds of years of history of people using salt effectively to reduce cramping.

54:19
people working in mines and people stoking boilers on ships and on trains and in people in the military, in American footballers in the US and in lots and lots. You talk to old school endurance athletes and they'd be like, oh, you're cramping, take more salt. It's like a thing. Whilst it is good to be skeptical and question things, again, it's a bit like the whole, do we need sodium?

54:45
period question. There's always people in sports science crusading through to make their name and a great way to make your name is just coming with this, everything we knew before is wrong, now it's this. I always say to athletes, if you suffer with cramps, let's have a look at your foot in electrolyte intake as one part of the equation. Also, let's try it. Let's try playing around with those values because it's effectively close to free as an intervention or like...

55:15
very, very low cost, extremely low risk. And if it works, you probably solve your problem. And in a really simple way, like if it doesn't work, okay, let's look elsewhere. But let's try the simple stuff first, you know, because a lot of people say, I've tried electrolytes and then you look at what they've tried, they've tried dropping one electrolyte tablet into a liter of water and dissolving it and diluting it to the point of it being ineffective, you know.

55:44
there are ratios and dosages and we've got, again, I keep referencing them, but we've got a great blog on our website about cramp and the kind of protocols to follow. And I think if people are honest and if they follow those protocols, we, we get honestly into the business each week, we probably get half a dozen, 10 emails from people who are so ecstatic and over and over the moon that using the stronger electrolyte products has relieved their cramps or resolve their cramping.

56:13
And of course, like I was as an athlete, you find a problem, if you're a persistent cramper, you find a problem that solves it, you're gonna stick with it. This always reminds me of that famous story in biology or physics or whatever it is around the bumblebee that can't fly, because the scientists have worked out that the body weight and the way it flaps its wings and everything like the bumblebee can't fly, but no one told the bee and it kind of just flaps its wings and takes off and you know.

56:41
Like we don't know how and why taking more salt and it influence potentially helps with cramping. But a lot of people, a lot of athletes fortunately seem to not care too much about what those scientists are saying and are willing to try it. And for some of them, all they needed to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for sure. And I would say as an athlete and a clinician, like the problem of

57:11
a lot about that either, which is one of the most common things that occurs. And you've got like 18 different ways with which you can resolve it and probably 27 ways with or sort of reasons for why it occurred. But you know, it could be any number of them on any sort of given day. It's just one of those sports science mysteries. Exactly. Andy, so what do you do with a SWIT test then? And are they available? And I understand they're in Australia.

57:38
New Zealand, do we have precision hydration gear here? Yeah, you do. You've got a couple of people doing sweat testing actually. Russ Smith's one of them. The details are on our website. If you go onto precision fuel and hydration, search for Sweat Test Centre near you, or just email our squad at hello at prec We can put you in touch with a nearby test centre. Sweat testing.

58:04
every week or month at the moment we're installing more sweat testing machines in more places. So it's available fairly globally now. It's a very simple test. If you do it our way, you sit down, we put some electrodes on your arms, stimulate the sweat glands, take a sweat sample and we can tell you the electrolyte composition of your sweat. So the end-to-end, the actual physical part of the test takes 15 to 20 minutes. It's probably a 45-minute appointment with the practitioner who can then talk you through the results.

58:34
And then as well as being able to talk to that practitioner, you get some decent emails from us about the results, what they might mean, and a direct line of inquiry to talk to our sort of squad in the UK. We have a sports science customer service help team in the UK, and they're always on hand for emails, free video calls to talk you through the results and try and see what we can learn about improving your performance with this element of your physiology.

59:03
Super interesting. So from that test, part of the consultation would cover how you then take that information and put it in this particular training session or that particular training session. And you also have salt tabs, don't you? I'm so ignorant. I'm so sorry. But is it the like below 500? You talk me through it. Is it 250, 500? Exactly. Yeah, we have four different strengths of electrolyte drinks. So like a 250, which is super light.

59:33
500, which is kind of regular strength, 1,000 milligrams a liter, which is strong, and 1,500, which is super strong. And then we also do a carb drink now, which has electrolytes to the concentration of 1,000 milligrams a liter. So that's called carbon electrolyte drink mix. And yeah, the idea with all of those is that you can tune your electrolyte intake based on your physiological needs, based on the demands of the event, your sweat rate, the weather conditions.

01:00:02
Not that you need to be tweaking this like all the time. It's not like fine tuning, but it just means that unlike basically all of the sports nutrition brands out there, this gives you the ability to pull on this lever and adjust it to suit your needs. Yeah. And Andy, do you have any opinions on like some of it? Because I, there are a number of companies now that are coming out with higher sodium.

01:00:28
options like sugar-free higher sodium options for not just athletes, but just people in general. So, there's like element would probably have been one of the first that I've seen. But now, particularly in New Zealand, like they've just the same formulation or, you know, just complete rip-offs. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but like, it seems like they've just taken that formula and just run with it. I've seen a number of these products. Do you have opinions on that or? It's based on, most of those products are based on.

01:00:58
roughly based on the World Health Organization's oral rehydration salts mix, which has been around since the 70s, 80s when it was discovered that if you put sodium and glucose together in a drink, you can actually, in that case, it was for rehydrating people who'd had diarrhea and sickness usually due to cholera or something pretty nasty.

01:01:25
and it was just shown to be so much more effective way of rehydrating. So it's kind of a lot of these companies go with the medically proven marketing tagline or whatever, because it's essentially kind of based on that. I think that they're very popular because companies like LMNT have done fantastically well in something that you something that you take every single day is a great subscription.

01:01:51
business model. If you can say to people, right, you need to take one of these packets every day, sign up, we'll send 30 of them to you a month and have at it and it will make your life better by being optimally hydrated, then there's a beautiful simplicity in that and it kind of works commercially. The products definitely aren't bad, I would say in general. The science is right, but

01:02:19
It's a very generic approach to be saying to people, you know, you just need to take one of these a day and everything will be better. Like I'll use out here in Spain when I'm getting up really early in the morning, doing some training myself, I'm on my feet all day, it's warm and dry, we're living in air-conditioned life, I'm using quite a bit of our product just on a daily basis. When I'm at home, if I have a day off training and I'm not doing a lot of that, I don't start the day with a liter of electrolyte drink, you know, it's just like unnecessary. So

01:02:49
the nuances missed, but I can see why they're becoming popular. And yeah, it just, it does seem to be a bit of a trend. It's a bit of a thing, you know, like, and, and I think we're, we're falling back on this general perception. The public still has a general perception like hydration is good. I'm probably dehydrated most of the time. So maybe rather than like thinking about it any more deeply, I'll just buy one of these throughout my water and get on my day.

01:03:15
Yeah. And I think as well, a pushback to the likes of Gatorade and those other sports nutrition products, which historically have had lower sodium and it's sugar. And a lot of people who might not necessarily need a sports drink would pick up something like that from a hydration perspective. So I suppose that these other companies, and I will admit to being a complete fan of Element, just...

01:03:44
they just taste so delicious. And also have to admit, I've never tried a precision hydration product. I'm so sorry, Andy, I've never come across it before. But anyway. We can correct that. That's easy. Okay, great. But yeah, a bit of a pushback to those other companies. Albeit, you mentioned the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. I think that's, I can't recall actually what they're

01:04:13
But I think there is a lot of good information on that website, Gatorade or not. Absolutely. They just got a bit of a bashing in the early days for, I mean, they're a proper sports science institute. They do some great work. But there was a phase, I think, perhaps in the 80s, maybe the 90s, when they appeared to exert a sort of outsized amount of influence on organizations like the ACSM because they were funding a lot of that and they were pushing this message that, you know, hydration is all that matters.

01:04:43
famously, I think it was in 96, the ACSM guidelines kind of basically said athletes should drink as much as they can tolerate. And then you get all these cases of hypernatrium, you get people over drinking, there was no kind of ceiling put on it. And that's what that was the what Tim Noakes and some of his colleagues and kind of there was a few people that really called that out. And I think that was a good thing. But one what's annoying about that is they they went so far as to like rubbish the idea of sports drinks and and

01:05:13
hydration and Tim notes his message was basically, just drink water when you're thirsty, you'll be fine. It's like, well, maybe for 90% of the population who aren't particularly competitively active or doing a decent amount of sport and exercise, that's probably okay advice. But for some of us, it's downright dangerous advice.

01:05:42
Yeah, your thoughts around that. So I'm mindful of the time. And so can we just finish up, Andy? So obviously, I'm going to link to your website and a couple of those blogs that we've talked about throughout, because I think that they will be super helpful and interesting. And also, I'm pleased to hear Russ Smith and someone else in New Zealand, and the fact that precision hydration is global.

01:06:09
not particularly expensive as I understand it as well as far as testing goes for athletes. No, I think a sweat test. I don't actually know what the price is in New Zealand dollars, but it's going to be around about a couple of hundred New Zealand dollars to get a sweat test, I'd imagine, based on our pricing in the UK. Actually, one race that you're probably aware of the Tarahumara Ultra Marathon. Oh yeah, doing the 50. Russ is going to be there doing sweat testing, I believe, because he's...

01:06:36
at the expo and we'll have some of our products there and stuff so maybe we can connect to you to go and see them there and have a chat and if anyone's listened to this before that event and is in the area you know that's a chance to go down and connect with someone who knows a lot about the brand. Oh that is awesome and so we'll definitely make sure we publish that prior to Tarawira that would be great. Andy where can people find you in precision hydration?

01:07:06
all over our socials, you know, Precision Fuel and Hydration, just search us up on Instagram or wherever. I think the most valuable resource we have is the Knowledge Hub on our website, which is prec or prec both of those URLs take you to the right place. And if people have got questions or they want to, you know, they've listened to this and it's sort of stimulated some questions, I would say go onto our website and contact us through our email system. It's hello at prec

01:07:35
hydration.com. We all emails get an answer by human. There's no kind of bots or AI or things that just get ignored. And we actually really love talking to people who've got problems to solve with their nutrition and hydration. That is awesome. Thank you, Andy. And probably the most important question to finish off with, who do you support in the football? Well, I grew up in Leicestershire. So I was a Fox's fan when I was younger, used to go to Filbert Street quite often.

01:08:04
I can't really claim to have stayed loyal. I live down in Bournemouth now and I actually, I can say this because there's no way he'll be listening to it. My just son, I've just got him tickets to go to one of the next Bournemouth games because we're trying to support the local team. They do use precision fuel and hydration products, so it's hard not to support somebody using their stuff.

01:08:27
Yeah, no, nice. Nice one, Andy. Well, I'm glad we got all the way to the end of the podcast before me asking you that because my husband edits this podcast and he's a huge Arsenal supporter. So yeah. Oh yeah. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that, but you know, I'm sure he's lovely in other ways. Andy, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate that. Lovely talking to you. Thanks, Mikki.

01:09:05
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. It was a real fun conversation from my end. And you know, I was obviously very ignorant as to where you can find sweat testing and precision hydration, but we outlined that in the show for you guys here in New Zealand. And all going well, I may be getting myself a sweat test this weekend at Tatawera. Next week on the podcast, I speak to Dr. Gil Lander, and he's from InsideTracker.

01:09:33
So we do a bit of a dive into blood biomarkers and particularly looking at athletes, but also just healthy individuals. Until then though, you can catch me over on threads, Instagram and Twitter @mikkiwilliden. Head to Facebook @mikkiwillidennutrition or my website mikkiwilliden.com and you can send me an inquiry or book a one-on-one call with me. All right, team, you have the best week. See you later.