Per the American College of Sports Medicine[i], it is recommended that for endurance exercise lasting more than 1 hour that athletes consume between 30g and 60g of carbohydrate per hour.
This is quite a wide range, and so is intended as generalised advice, allowing each athlete to then experiment with whether they feel and perform better at the upper or lower end of this range.
Depending on how long the activity is, and if it is over 2.5 hours in duration, then an even higher intake of up to 90g carbohydrate per hour should be considered.
What does this look like in terms of drinks, food or gels?
Item/Product | Approximate Carbohydrate Content |
Luzozade Sport Orange 500ml | 32g |
Coca-Cola 330ml | 35g |
Medium Banana | 22g |
Dates 50g | 37g |
Typical Gel Pouch | 23g |
At the higher intakes of over 60g and up to 90g per hour then it is important that the source of carbohydrate is a mixture of different types of carbohydrate such as glucose and fructose. The reason for this is that these sugars need to be carried from the gut into the blood via “transporters”.
Think of this like a car that carries glucose from your gut into your blood. Generally speaking the car is only capable of carrying around 60g of glucose per hour maximum into your blood before it is overloaded.
What was later learnt in sports nutrition research was that you could also send a motorbike (fructose) and that could carry another load at the same time as the car. Or you could think of it as rather than moving furniture into a house only through the front door you could use the front door plus the window to get more furniture in quicker. You get the picture.
Some gels come pre-prepared with a blend of sugar types for this reason, and others only contain glucose (or maltodextrin…which will break down to glucose). Generally think of fruits as being a good food source of fructose.
The exact quantity of carbohydrate that is optimal will depend person by person and will also depend on absolute intensity of the physical effort.
Some people may struggle with ingesting larger amounts of carbohydrates as they are limited by their gut tolerance. While it is certainly possible to train our gut to tolerate larger quantities of carbs this assumes that we have a relatively healthy gut to begin with. For some people, imbalances in their gut flora/bacteria or lack of digestive enzymes can cause significant carbohydrate intolerance.
If carbohydrate intolerance is something you struggle with then it is going to impact your performance as you often cannot get enough fuel into your body to sustain the activity you are undertaking. Thankfully there are natural solutions available that can help with this. Feel free to get in touch for a free introductory call if you would like to learn more about how you can improve your ability to handle carbohydrates and thus improve your performance.
Paul Kinsella,
Registered Nutritional Therapist
BANT Registered Nutritionist
Copyright, 2023
www.optimal-health.ie
[i] American College of Sports Medicine, Sawka, M. N., Burke, L. M., Eichner, E. R., Maughan, R. J., Montain, S. J., & Stachenfeld, N. S. (2007). American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Exercise and fluid replacement. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 39(2), 377–390. https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e31802ca597
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