Sports drinks are now a multi billion dollar industry, with brands lining up huge advertising campaigns and signing up sports stars in an effort to get the edge on their competitors. However, if you're uneasy about washing down drinks with a long list of laboratory-sounding ingredients, or merely looking for a more natural alternative, there might be a way to fashion an alternative from things that are already in the refrigerator.

Of course there are many scientific studies showing that this or that drink outperforms water or some other drink, but it cannot be denied that a large amount of these drink's recipe for success is the high sugar carbohydrate content, in the form of maltodextrin, fructose glucose or some other form of sugar. This sugar content may provide a burst of energy for a short while, but mentally it also breifly picks you up, which is perhaps more important. On long distance runs, the general wisdom is that the sugar content should be around 4% in order to avoid the body overproducing insulin in response to the sugar intake. Hence a mixture of some kind of fruit juice and water can serve as an effective sports drink. Bearing in mind that fruit juice is also largely water, that would mean roughly a one part juice to two parts water mixture.

Over long periods of exercise, the body needs to replace electrolyte salts that are naturally sweated out, especially potassium; its absence can cause muscle cramping and delayed recovery time after exercise, and indeed many excercise drinks now contain small quantities of potassium. However, orange juice is a very good natural source of potassium, so you will not need to add anything extra to a juice based drink. Those who are running a marathon for distances over four hour will also need to add some source of sodiom to their drink. Some marathon race stations offer dulse seaweed, which has a concentration of all the electrolytes very similar to that found in the human body.

There are now a growing variety of recovery drinks which are usually taken immediately after a prolonged bout of intensive exercise to decrease recovery time. Protein intake is especially important to help any impact-damaged muscles and tendons begin the job of repair and recovery. It is also important to get energy back into the muscles, as well electrolytes to speed up the recovery process. A very simple recovery shake can be fashioned by blending some protein powder, banana and orange juice together - perhaps adding some algae flakes or mineral salts (obtainable in health food stores) for a complete mineral intake. On a cold winter's day, miso soup can also provide much needed protein and electrolytes, as well as putting some heat back into the body.