As the summer heats up, many athletes begin looking for ways to get their exercise despite the heat, but that is easier said than done.
On those super steamy summer days, getting up before the sun won’t even help. But, the thing that will help is a favorite summertime treat. Ironically, a delicious Slush Puppie might be your answer to staying fit through the summertime months.
Why is it so hard to exercise at higher temperatures?
The reason that staying in shape and getting in your endurance workout is so tricky when the weather is hot is that cooling your body down requires the blood to work overtime. Since the blood is being used to calm the skin, the muscles cannot get all the blood they need.
As your body heats up, it needs more and more blood. This process can make it more difficult to make your muscles work hard when it is hot outside. That is why we feel sluggish when it heats up out.
Scientists hypothesize that other reasons for this problem include; the brain overheating or even that the heart can’t keep up with the demand and sends a signal to the brain telling it to slow things down. Regardless of how or why, the point is that if you are hot enough, your body cannot function at optimal levels.
The only way that researchers have found to try to help the muscles thrive when it is hot is to pre-cool the body through the use of cooling vests or a cold bath.
The problem is that these methods are not comfortable or practical. They are just plain expensive! Fortunately, an endurance exercise specialist in New Zealand discovered a surefire way to defeat the heat and tested it on athletes.
Does a Slush Puppie help you beat the heat?
A study was done to see if drinking a Slush Puppie before you exercise is an effective way to pre-cool the body. A researcher asked young male athletes to drink an ice slushy right before they hopped on a treadmill in an overheated room.
What he found was that those who drank a cold Slush Puppie could run an average of fifty minutes before giving up. But, the ones who he gave just ice-cold water with syrup flavor could only run an average of 40 minutes before their body’s said “no more” and quit.
The study was limited in its findings because it took place indoors but it does give hope to some athletes wanting to go a little harder and longer this summer without having to hop into a cold bath.
Since the treadmill was indoors, there was no way to measure how much the cooling effect of a breeze on the skin would help or hinder. Also, there was no way to tell if pre-cooling methods would work in the same manner under the same conditions.
Even though it did affect them in the short-term, many insist that drinking a slushy would not be enough to make it through the grueling nature of a long workout much less a marathon. It does, however, lend hope to those who want a little boost to make it through 50 minutes of exercise.
Why the Slush Puppie?
The reason that the New Zealand researcher, Dr. Laursen thought to use a Slush Puppie machine, is that previous studies showed that they help to lower the temperature of swine’s brains over cold water. When researchers were testing how to prepare a pig before surgery, they fed them the delicious tasty treat and found that a Slush Puppie could substantially cool down the entire body of the swine.
So, although drinking a Slush Puppie might not help you to run a marathon on a one-hundred-degree day, it might be your magic tool to make it through your regular five-mile run even when the temperature starts to soar into the 100s.
The critical factor is drinking it immediately before you exercise. It has a short shelf life to cool you down, so you will want to maximize its effects by gulping it down (Look out for brain freeze!), and then making good use of your time.
For all those health naysayers who think that a Slush Puppie is nothing but sugar and water, there is now proof that it might just be the key to keeping your fit and healthy throughout the summer.
Article Submitted By Community Writer
