Dextrose: One of the Best Post-Workout Sugars for Recovery
So you worked out hard, drained your stored carbohydrates (glycogen). What’s next? Your body is now ready to actively take the nutrients you ingest immediatly after your workout and use them to start repairing muscles, and restore glycogen levels in your “starving” muscles.
There are lots of sports drinks. Each one seems to make great promises. However, one of the most important steps is to provide your body with fast absorbing protein (whey) and simple sugars. This will put a stop on breaking down any more muscle, and switch your body into repair, rebuild and recovery mode. What’s critical is that you get an easy to absorb simple sugar that is safe and ready to help drive nutrients via an insulin spike activated by a simple sugar. Our first choice is dextrose. Taking in dextrose immediately following your workout can help maximize your gains and drive nutrient uptake.
There are lots of reasons to take dextrose post-workout, here are 3 great reasons.
Dextrose is a fast-digesting, simple sugar
Every time you train, your body uses stored glycogen as fuel. Glycogen is made of long chains of glucose molecules that gets broken down to fuel everything from your brain to muscles to organs. In muscles where much of it is stored, glycogen functions as an immediate reserve source of glucose for muscle cells.
Following intense workouts, we drain much of our reserves. However, the refueling is necessary after your tank is drained. The fastest way to refuel your glycogen after workouts is to use a simple sugar such as dextrose. As a simple sugar, it’s fast digesting and is ready to be absorbed since its fast digesting. Dextrose is a readily absorbed isomer, also known as D-glucose.
Dextrose helps drive nutrient uptake in cells
Dextrose has another great impact on sports nutrition. Following hard workouts it’s critical to get the needed nutrients and fuel to the muscles. In order to repair and refuel, lots of nutrients must be moved around the body.
Insulin is famous for its many roles in the human body. As a hormone, Insulin serves in the transportation system of nutrients. In a sense, it helps nutrients from the bloodstream to the muscles to start the recovery and rebuilding process. The nutrients in the bloodstream are going to build up your muscle tissue and the insulin is the involved in the transportation from the bloodstream to improve your performance!
Because dextrose is a fast-digesting simple sugar, it helps to raise blood sugar (glucose) levels quickly, causing a fast spike in nutrient-transporting insulin into the bloodstream. It’s important to remember, high glucose levels from snacks throughout the day will cause insulin spikes. If the spike is from unhealthy eating, you will drive nutrients into fat cells as well.
Remember, dextrose speeds up nutrient absorption, whereas a slower digesting carbohydrate would not help shuttle nutrients as fast. Athletes need to start the rebuilding and refueling as soon as possible, and dextrose gets the job done.
Natural, affordable, safe and pure
Most post-workout drinks get to be expensive and filled with chemicals, such as colors and preservatives, and labeled with promises that too good to be true. Why Dextrose? It’s specific type of simple sugar that easily digested and causes a rapid insulin spike compared to other sugars such as sugar
Dextrose is very affordable compared with so many other supplements. You can typically find a 10-pound tub of dextrose, from places like Amazon for around $25. Plus, you know you are buying a simple compound that has the research to back it up. It’s a natural sugar that works, Period!
How much should I consume
Dextrose is a great post-workout supplement. Suggested use is about is to add it to your shake, 1.5 -2 times the grams of protein. If your post workout whey protein is 20 grams, you would need about 35-40 grams of dextrose. If you use a natural whey product, that is unflavored, it also adds a touch of sweetness for an easy drinking, post-workout drink made for improved recovery and performance.
