By Brian Frank
Hammer Nutrition is constantly innovating by developing ground-breaking new products and updating our existing products to make them even better. Of late, ginger has become popular in the ultra scene, and it's finding its way into many endurance athletes' "tool kits," if not into their fuels and supplements, as an ingredient to combat nausea. However, consuming large amounts of a good thing isn't necessarily wise - and that certainly applies to ginger. This is exactly why our new Endurolytes Extreme contains a reasonable amount (10 mg) of natural ginger root extract per capsule, and the updated Endurolytes formula will contain 5 mg per capsule.
If you avoid fueling with "candy," however, you will likely never have to deal with nausea in the first place. The anti-nausea claims come from a few studies that showed it to be nominally better than a placebo in reducing nausea associated with sea sickness, chemotherapy, and morning sickness related to pregnancy. Much anecdotal feedback from athletes also indicates that it helps settle an upset stomach. Why so many athletes are experiencing upset stomach and nausea during extended periods of exercise is a topic that certainly warrants more discussion, and I'll touch on that briefly below. Hint: it's about sugar and citric acid intake.
Several new products on the market are touting their ginger content. Not coincidentally, most of these products also contain sugar and citric acid - so it's probably a good idea that they do include ginger. What you might not realize, though, is that too much ginger also can upset your stomach and/or give you a burning sensation in your throat and stomach, so don't overdo it.
Knowing that many athletes who use Endurolytes also use non-Hammer products that contain sugar and citric acid, I decided to formulate a small amount of ginger, 10 mg per capsule, into our new Endurolytes Extreme. We even updated our 18-year-old original Endurolytes formula by adding 5 mg of ginger per capsule. The latter will show up in our direct-to-consumer channel early this fall and trickle into distribution and retail outlets shortly thereafter.
However, there is another way that you can avoid experiencing exercise-related nausea and digestive upset altogether. Yep, put down the candy fuels, and stick with complex carbohydrates during your longer training and racing efforts. For more than two decades, we've been helping athletes effectively address these sugar-related side effects by teaching them to fuel with the right type of calories and in the right volume. But by adding a reasonable amount of ginger to our two electrolyte replacement products, we've got you covered either way. HN
