DEHYDRATION can make top athletes and performers lose their competitive edge,
says a leading British sports dietician. Her answer: a pee chart that enables
people to tell from the colour of their urine whether they鈥檙e drinking enough
fluids.
Avoiding dehydration before an event can make the difference between failure
and success, says Ann Price, who works with Britain鈥檚 Olympic gymnastic,
badminton and equestrian teams. Athletes are more likely to strike gold if their
first pee of the day is pale yellow, she says. Her chart is also used by Arsenal
football team and the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
鈥淚t鈥檚 difficult to quantify the impact,鈥� says Price, who is presenting her
results this week in Harrogate at a meeting of the British Dietetic Association.
鈥淏ut at levels of 1 per cent dehydration, you could expect a 5 per cent drop in
performance,鈥� she says.
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Dehydration is defined as the percentage of normal body weight lost, as sweat
for example, without being replaced. Even a small impairment in performance
could be vital in events where microseconds count鈥攕uch as
sprinting鈥攐r where concentration and reaction time are crucial.
Working with other dieticians, Price developed a laminated credit-card-sized
鈥減ee chart鈥�. This allows athletes to compare the colour of their early morning
pee with eight colours displayed on the chart. 鈥淭hey range from pale, creamy
yellow to a dark, browny colour,鈥� says Price.
鈥淚f you produce lots of pale urine that doesn鈥檛 smell, you鈥檙e hydrated
properly,鈥� says Price. Athletes are advised to drink more if their urine falls
in the darker range.
Dehydration is measured by looking at the concentration of solutes, such as
urea, in urine. This normally requires complicated equipment. But Lawrence
Armstrong of the University of Connecticut has shown that there is a correlation
between urine colour and solute concentration, and Price based her chart on his
work.
Lucozade, a British soft drinks company, makes the pee charts and distributes
them to top sports teams.