Attendees of the Active Nutrition Summit, set to take place in Amsterdam this October (9-11), will discover how top scientists in the field are developing tech with health benefits for elite athletes and active consumers across the board.
Liam Brown, GSSI Scientist, will present the science behind several innovations including the Gx Sweat Patch, created to allow athletes and their nutritionists to personalise fluid intake around individual sweat levels.
In a preview of this presentation, he tells NutraIngredients: “GSSI have done a lot of research and we’ve found there’s variations between sweat levels and compositions in different individuals so we can provide general recommendations on hydration but, when working with elite athletes with high performance goals, focusing on specifics becomes important.”
He notes that over-hydration can be just as dangerous as under-hydration, so it’s not as simple as encouraging people to drink as much as possible.
“In some events where there is the ability to consume too much water, such as in marathons, this can be extremely dangerous. Drinking too much water, and excreting a lot of salty sweat means the sodium content of your blood may become diluted. This is called hyponatremia and it can have serious health consequences.”
He explains the traditional way of analysing sweat rate has been through the use of an absorbent patch on the arm which is then squeezed into a vessel after training for the fluid to be analysed. Not only is this is both time and energy intensive, but it doesn’t allow the user to see how much they are sweating throughout their training session. GSSI therefore developed the Gx Sweat Patch, a sticky patch that measures fluid and sodium loss in real time, with colour coded lines to visualise these losses.
These patches are commercially available in the US and have been used by athletes across the globe including Manchester City Football Club and Brazil Women’s Football Club as well as with Elite Female Match Officials.
To add to this service, the GSSI team also created the Gx bottle, which can remotely track fluid consumption in real time.
“This allows someone who isn’t with the athlete – such as their nutritionist – to see how much they are drinking at what time point and helps them to develop more appropriate plans for fluid consumption.”
Providing a presentation at the Active Nutrition Summit, Brown will provide further insights into the development of these solutions, the research conducted and the data gathered, and some new an exciting opportunities involving the use of AI to assess health status.
Registration is now open for the Active Nutrition Summit, with discounted Early Bird Tickets available until the end of July 2023.