When engaged in an intense workout routine, hydrating your body before, during, and after that workout is necessary to make sure you take care of your exhausted body. What then should you drink to make sure you get the best hydration? Over the past several years there has been a sharp increase in energy drinks available to exercise enthusiast. In the beginning, the mighty Gatorade energy drink seemed to dominate this market, but since then every other kind of flavor, color, shape and size of energy drink has hit the shelves all claiming to be the best.

The advertising of these so called energy drinks has been anything but subtle over the years, we have been bombarded from all areas of the media like television, health and fitness magazines, radio, and even movies. Yet over time there has begun to be a slight pulling away from energy drinks from those in the health and fitness community . The reason for this behavior is not complex, in fact if you were to just glance at the labels of these energy drinks you would find many artificial and non organic ingredients. To name a few of these ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, yellow number 5, or chemicals that you can’t even pronounce.

When analysis and research is done many in this fitness community seem to be going through a kind of fitness renaissance that is spreading to all like minded healthy people. They are putting the watermelon berry flavored drinks down and in turn picking up natures oldest and most trusted hydration drink- Water. Yes, it is for real, water the infamously boring good old fashioned H2O is making a grand come back on the world fitness and weight loss scene. Granted there are varying degrees of water from mineral water to sparkling, purified water, and even distilled, but the principle idea of H2O is always the same, no added ridiculous named flavors, colors or roots to trick me into thinking I will turn into superman overnight.

As this water revolution continues and we turn our attention back to the basics still others in the fitness community decided to dig a little deeper and do more research into what the best forms of water would be. What they have come to find is that not all water (h2o) is the same. It seems that most all water that is sold in grocery stores, or at the gas stations have lost many of the natural characteristics that it should have retained. Usually this loss is due to the filtering process like reverse osmosis, but it can also be attributed to long periods of time sitting, and the transportation methods used. One natural characteristic that water needs to maintain is having a neutral PH balance. If this is new to you, the PH scale runs from 14 (very alkaline) to 0 (extremely acidic) with 7 being neutral. Perfectly balanced water and subsequently the best for us to drink is a 7 or neutral, it is neither alkaline nor acidic.

Through the process of reverse osmosis, bottling in plastics, shipping, temperature shifts and sitting on a shelf for weeks at a time most bottled water begins the slow dark process of losing it’s original neutral ph balance and becomes acidic, therefore becoming almost as useless and dangerous to drink as all of those energy drinks we try so hard to avoid. This may sound like a conundrum but it is not. With a little research and you will find that PH balanced alkaline water is actually easier to come by than you think and is exactly what your body needs for real, proper hydration after a long intense workout.

Learn more about the best workout routines to help ypu lose weight. Stop by Paul Atkins’s site where you can find out all about power 90 and what it can do for you.

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