Why consume carbohydrates during exercise?

Regular carbohydrate intake during exercise has several beneficial consequences for performance:

• Carbohydrates provided during exercise are consumed as a priority, they help to preserve the body's sources of carbohydrates (muscle glycogen and liver glycogen).

• Numerous studies demonstrate that carbohydrate intake during exercise allows an improvement in endurance performance by allowing the same effort to be maintained for longer but also by increasing the number of repetitions of interval training.

• Blood sugar is maintained at a constant level allowing optimal functioning of the brain (which only consumes glucose) and thus helps to reduce the feeling of fatigue, errors of judgment and coordination defects resulting from fatigue.

• The ingestion of carbohydrates during exercise allows both to maintain digestive circulation and to nourish the enterocytes (intestinal cells) by providing them with carbohydrates. This helps to limit the local production of free radicals and limit the risk of damage to the intestinal wall (leaky gut type).

• Intake of carbohydrates during exercise helps to limit immune depression following intense exercise and therefore reduce the frequency of viral respiratory illnesses (which are more common in endurance athletes than in sedentary people).

• Furthermore, intake of carbohydrates helps to limit muscle damage from exercise: once their glycogen stores are depleted, muscle cells must find energy by calling on a supplementary source. Without an external supply, supplementary energy is produced from the breakdown of the proteins that make up muscle fibers.
  So, when carbohydrates are lacking, the body is forced to destroy muscle tissue, a phenomenon whose consequences on the athlete's performance and progress are easy to imagine.

Sports drinks represent the best solution because they provide water, sodium, and carbohydrates (non-exhaustive list). They are therefore the "all-in-one" solution.

Several studies confirm the effectiveness of sports drinks on endurance performance. If compared to a placebo (sweetened water), sports drinks allow you to maintain an effort at a constant moderate intensity for longer, but also to increase the number of repetitions of an intense effort (type of interval training).

You can also read "What is the glycemic index?"

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