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Do you use sports drinks when you exercise?

There are a lot of rules for sports drinks for sure.

They must be sugary.

They must taste good.

And they must have some weird colors made possible by food colorings that we probably shouldn’t be consuming.

But ideally a sports drink should help the muscles get oxygen.

It should reduce the breakdown of muscle.

The entire point of a sports drink is to help reduce muscle damage after exercise.

When you exercise, want to increase muscle — not reduce it.

Vigorous exercise causes oxidative stress.

Sports drinks should reduce this stress on the body.

It turns out that there is a great difference in different sports drinks and their effect on recovery and exercise.

Some work better than others.

But what if there is a better sports drink?

There is a sports drink that is fully natural and proven to be better than all the other sports drinks put together?

There is.

And you’ve probably enjoyed it your whole life.

In this study, researchers put trained athletes through three trials.

The trials involved having them do aerobic exercise to deplete their glycogen.

Then they would continue training to failure — to complete exhaustion.

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Researchers found that there was one thing that athletes could do that increase their stamina a great deal.

They could drink chocolate milk.

Now, this study was partly funded by Mars, which makes chocolate.

So it may not be completely objective.

But there are many other studies that show the same results.

They all conclude that chocolate is a superior alternative to all the other so-called sports drinks out there.

Participants cycled 51% and 43% longer after ingesting chocolate milk than after ingesting caloric replacement or fluid replacement drinks [for example, Gatorade].

So let’s look at one more study to see if there is some true magic to chocolate milk.

Is it the chocolate that creates the benefit, or is it just the milk?

Is there really anything better about chocolate milk than any other sports drink?

What makes this kind of interesting is that the subjects all did vigorous exercise and consumed different beverages.

And all off the beverages were fat-free.

Subjects randomly consumed Ready-to-Drink fat-free chocolate milk or a beverage containing 74 grams of sweetened grape-flavored drink mix prepared in bottled water.

Beverages each had 296 kcal.

The chocolate milk contained 16 g of protein but the grape drink had no protein in it.

The carbohydrate content of the grape drink (74 grams, 296 kcal) was greater than that of the chocolate milk. (58 g, 232 kcal).

Neither beverage contained fat.

The results are quite striking.

The major findings in this study were elevated kinetic measures of skeletal muscle protein synthesis and suppressed whole-body protein breakdown from milk consumption.

That’s an awfully good thing.

If you want to build muscle, stopping the breakdown of proteins is important.

The carbohydrate drink didn’t have this effect at all.

The milk actually prevented the destruction of protein that can happen during exercise.

And milk also actually increased the oxidative phosphorylation during exercise.

This means milk increased respiration and oxygen supply to the muscles.

The carbohydrate drink did not do this.

Stopping protein breakdown led to much less muscle breakdown during exercise.

But there is still the big question.

Is it the chocolate, the milk, or both?

Milk contains a load of calcium and potassium.

Those are very important minerals during exercise.

And, milk contains protein and carbohydrates, which are also quite important.

Chocolate contains high amounts of magnesium and certain vitamins.

And these may be the key to chocolate milk working better than just chocolate or just milk by itself.

To sum up, the next time you want to exercise, consider drinking chocolate milk before you begin to exercise.

And have some more after!

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Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.