My muscles are still shaking as I open an app on my phone to assess my workout data. I’m not about to find out how my heart rate or how many calories I’ve burned in my 53-minute weights session, but how much sweat and sodium I’ve lost (750ml of sweat and 508mg sodium, “similar to eating one large pretzel,” if you’re interested.)
The hydration tracker I’m wearing might not be glamorous but feels weirdly on trend in this summer of World Cup hydration breaks and never-ending heatwaves. How much we’re drinking, and sweating, seems to be on everyone’s mind.
Which is good, says sports medicine consultant Dr George Bownes, founder of sports clinic Citius Health, given many of us don’t drink enough water – a problem compounded by air-conditioned offices and shops, which might offer relief but reduce humidity and therefore increase water loss from the body. A 2023 study of 1,112 adults found that 40 per cent were inadequately hydrated. Dehydration affects every aspect of our physical and mental health, from energy to muscle function.
“Every cell in the body has water in it. If your cells aren’t full of water the chemical reactions in them can’t happen as efficiently,” says Bownes. “You can’t focus in the same way. Your likelihood of upper respiratory tract infections increases. To optimise our health, we need to stay hydrated.”
In an age of optimisation, this has given rise to gadgets offering to track our hydration levels, from sticks that analyse urine, to stick-on patches that measure the rate of sweat flow, or wearables such as the £179.99 hDrop hydration monitor I have clipped to a strap on my arm.
Track your electrolytes
The size of a large square of chocolate, it has a rechargeable sensor that connects to an app on your phone via Bluetooth and reveals how much sweat you lose and at what rate and your temperature – all of which you can monitor while exercising, along with sodium and potassium levels.
These are two of our key electrolytes – minerals that have an electrical charge when dissolved in liquid, which help muscles contract and the heart and nervous system stay healthy – and they get lost through sweat.
My son calls me a lizard, he thinks I drink so little water; I exercise most days and find it hard to concentrate. So I’m intrigued to see if the hDrop picks up a problem with my hydration.
Bownes says that for elite sportspeople such as footballers and tennis players analysing sweat can be “helpful” in terms of adjusting training and nutrition. While laboratory testing of blood and urine have been around for years “testing is more popular now in terms of what’s commercially available. People planning to run ultra marathons ask me how they can test.”
But he believes that for the average exerciser, gadgets like these aren’t required. “If you’re exercising for under an hour you probably won’t be sweating enough to appreciate the deficit you get yourself into.” And, he adds, “as with other wearables I’m not sure how accurate [these] gadgets are”.
hDrop Technologies Inc, which launched its sensor in 2023, says its data is at least 85 per cent accurate, citing a study in the journal Physiology that found “no significant difference” between sweat loss estimated by the hDrop and laboratory measurements.
Bownes believes the rise in popularity of hydration trackers is tied to the increasing buzz around electrolyte supplements. Last month, Sainsbury’s reported a 333 per cent increase in searches for “rehydration sachets” over a year, and social media is filled with fitness influencers singing their praises.
However, although low electrolyte levels can lead to fatigue, dizziness and muscle cramps, most of us get adequate levels through our diet. In fact, most of us already consume more than the recommended maximum of 6g salt in our diet, which effectively serves the same function as sodium.
“You don’t have to reach for expensive electrolytes,” says Bownes, who concedes, though, that in this unprecedented spell of hot weather, taking them in supplement form “could be helpful in maintaining hydration levels for heavy exercisers or those who sweat a lot.”
Discover your sweat zone
hDrop calculates a sweat rate “baseline” for users – a score of zero to 100 which puts you into one of three “sweat zones” – concentrated, with more salt and less water, a sign you’re not drinking enough; the target zone, which means the concentration of salts are balanced; and diluted, where the salts in your body are diluted and you might need more electrolytes.
At 61, my baseline puts me in the target zone. Whether spinning, running, or lifting weights, I lose around 750ml sweat loss an hour, which, the app says, is average, but makes it easier to appreciate just how much fluid I’ve lost – around three mugs of tea’s worth – and how important it is that I replace it.
When I lift weights, the sodium concentration in my sweat is 20mg per oz (below average) but during a half-hour spinning session, it’s 35mg per oz (above average). Fluctuations are normal, depending on the weather, and how hydrated you are to start with, so I’m not worried.
Keen to find out how the heatwave affects hydration when I’m not exercising, I wear the tracker for 10 hours, largely sitting at my desk on a 35°C day – during which time I sweat about the same amount as I do during an hour-long workout, lose 363mg sodium (around three packets of crisps), and lose 66mg potassium (around three slices of banana).
Given I often wake up covered in sweat, I’m also keen to wear it overnight. But the sensor flashes a green light, and my husband protests.
In short, my vast array of data seems to tell me that my sweat quantity and quality are normal. As Bownes puts it: “I’m not saying trackers don’t work, but are they something the average person would need, other than just being educated on staying hydrated?”
Analyse your urine
I take another test by health analysis company Vivoo, that assesses my hydration by analysing the specific gravity of my urine (£16 for 30 tests). When dehydrated, kidneys conserve water, making urine more concentrated. You download the Vivoo app, urinate on a patch on a stick and then match the colour the patch turns to the closest of seven colours on the app.
Mine, a yellow, classes me as dehydrated. To be in the optimum range it would need to turn turquoise. Vivoo stresses its test is not intended for medical diagnoses and “if it’s helpful for someone to get their head around where their hydration’s at, fine,” says Bownes, whose advice, however, is much simpler. “Just use your urine as a way of monitoring your hydration levels. It should be clear or very light-straw-coloured. If you wake up in the morning and you’ve got very concentrated looking urine you know you’re dehydrated.”
We should produce at least 0.5ml urine per kilo of body weight, per hour, he says – so a 60kg woman should produce at least 720ml urine every 24 hours. The water we need depends on variables such as the weather and activity levels, but the European Food Safety Authority suggests women need around two litres a day and men about 2.5 litres a day, including water from food.
Get water from food
But it should be water, stresses Bownes. “Tea and coffee are diuretics, pulling more water out of your tissues that you’re then passing out of the body. So they’re actually dehydrating you.” So too, he adds, are lemonade, cola, squash and even apple juice.
While chugging back water before bed will probably result in a disrupted night, “a large glass of water first thing in the morning is a good thing,” says Bownes. “Carry water with you and keep water at your desk.”
Fruit and vegetables can be a helpful way of increasing intake – strawberries, courgettes and tomatoes all contain over 90 per cent water, while spinach, 90 per cent water, is high in potassium.
Don’t wait until you feel thirsty to drink, says Bownes – by this time, you’re probably already dehydrated. Bottles with hourly drinking goals and jaunty messages (9am “keep going!” 4pm “never give up!”) sound gimmicky, but help remind me to drink water. Which is the crux of the hydration trend, of course – and completely free.
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