TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Athletes Go Gaga For Pedialyte

ADVERTISEMENT

By ALLEN SALKIN, The New York Times

Published: September 17, 2007

When Tom Glavine, a star pitcher for the New York Mets, earned his milestone 300th victory on a hot and humid August night, he had a secret weapon.

It was not illegal. It was so safe a baby could use it. In fact, many babies do.

Between innings, Glavine sipped Pedialyte, a liquid sold alongside diapers in drugstores that is meant to quickly rehydrate toddlers experiencing diarrhea. The neon-tinted fluid that comes in grape and other flavors contains electrolytes such as sodium, potassium and glucose, which happen to be the basic ingredients in most sports drinks.

Without an iota of marketing effort from Abbott Laboratories, maker of Pedialyte, the over-the-counter remedy with a teddy bear on its label has developed a small, devoted following among professional and amateur athletes. Long-distance runners seem to have started the trend sometime in the 1980s.

Athletes are always looking for an edge so if there's a secret formula to victory - and if it's legal - athletes will try it.

'It'd be different if they were drinking formula,' Brad Childress, coach of the Minnesota Vikings, told The St. Paul Pioneer Press about his players' pre-workout predilection for the baby elixir. 'But Pedialyte is used in hospitals throughout the United States for hydration. It's different than just your regular sports drink.'

From the beverage cart on the Anaheim Ducks' team flights during the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs to the training camps of National Football League teams, Pedialyte has found its place in the kit bag of professional athletes.

Wrestling Team Drinks It

The baby stuff has its converts among amateur athletes, too. Gavin Bannat, 42, wrestling coach at Wayne Valley High School in New Jersey, discovered Pedialyte last winter when a stomach flu left him dehydrated and wandering a convenience store looking for relief.

The wrestlers' parents say it's for babies, Bannat said. 'But I tell them forget the Gatorade. With Pedialyte, the kids can maintain a better electrolyte balance. The kids can work out harder and recover faster.'

Keith Wheeler, a divisional vice president for research and development at Abbott, says he has done enough research to know Pedialyte will work on the field.

'If you take a 300-pound NFL lineman and put him in 95 degrees with 75 percent humidity,' Wheeler said, 'he will dump a volume of electrolytes from his body through sweat that will be equivalent to a child with diarrhea.'

Monique Ryan, a nutrition consultant and the author of 'Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes,' said, 'Probably the ironman competitors and the ultra runners were the first ones to use the product. People started using it when there were fewer products on the market for athletes to choose from to replace sodium.'

By the late 1990s, Pedialyte had become a sports-drink rage among National Hockey League players. Other sports followed. After Korey Stringer, a 370-pound offensive tackle for the Vikings, died from complications brought on by heatstroke in 2001 during training camp, the NFL team added Pedialyte to its roster of products to help players stay properly hydrated.

Pedialyte Vs. Gatorade

Athletes often praise Pedialyte for possessing a sugar content lower than original Gatorade. It has 24 calories per 8 ounces, and a 24-ounce bottle costs $7.50. But whether it is better able than Gatorade or any other sports drink to add a few miles an hour to anyone's fastball is still a matter of debate.

'Pedialyte is certainly better for diarrhea than Gatorade,' said Bob Murray, director of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in Barrington, Ill. 'But for on the field, when people are hot and sweaty and want to get the most out of their bodies, Pedialyte is going to fall short.'

The main problem with Pedialyte, Murray said, is that it does not contain enough carbohydrates to help feed working muscles.

In a phone interview, Wheeler of Abbott Laboratories said Gatorade had too much sucrose, 'the wrong kind of carbohydrate,' to effectively hydrate athletes. Murray said years of his company's research proved that statement is untrue.

The scientific debate might be impossible to settle, but Amy DeFelice, an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, who regularly prescribes Pedialyte, said it is, at the least, safe for athletes as long as they have normal kidney function.

Abbott has no plans to make Pedialyte Endurance or to pitch product to athletes, no matter how many testimonials athletes give.

Even if Abbott did change its strategy, Pedialyte would likely be a tough sell to consumers concerned not only with performance, but also with taste - which is not, Bannat conceded, one of Pedialyte's strong suits:

'It tastes like chalk dust.'

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT