Sport Drinks

Sports Drinks and Homeostasis

Gail B. Wortmann
Iowa Learning Online
2001 Iowa Teacher of the Year
Teacher Notes:
Sports Drinks and Homeostasis

Personal notes from the author: If you want students to have a rich discussion about a topic, the topic has to be “on their agenda.” Students need to have something from their past experience to contribute to make the discussion truly engaging. Most students have tried sports drinks at some time in their life, and therefore, have experiences they can assess and think about critically. The discussion about sports drinks and homeostasis is one of the richest discussions in my Anatomy and Physiology class because students bring previous knowledge into play. Asking student to then design an experiment (whether they actually do it or not is up to you and your timeline) to test the effects of sports drinks on exercise performance moves them toward higher order thinking using inquiry methods. The formality of the experiment will depend on the skill level of your students at this point in your course. Most students will have studied homeostasis in a previous science course such as Biology, before they take Anatomy and Physiology. For most advanced life science students, homeostasis is not a new concept. Connecting the study of homeostasis to sports drinks allows a chance to revisit the concept of homeostasis and apply it to a new situation.
Standards:
Standards for students: (referenced to the National Science Education Standards, National Resource Council) Unifying Concepts and Processes: Constancy, Change, and Measurement Content Standard: Understanding about Scientific Inquiry (Collection and interpretation of data.)
Standards for instructors: (referenced to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, specifically for “Adolescence and Young Adulthood/Science.”) Instructional Resources: select and adapt instructional resources to support active exploration Engagement: stimulate: interest and sustain participation by students Learning Environment: safe and supportive learning environment Science Inquiry: develop mental operations which support scientific inquiry
Purpose:
The purpose of this lesson is to move students toward higher order thinking in evaluating information and applying it to new situations. Students will think critically about sports drinks and their effects on homeostasis.
Timeline:
This lesson usually takes 2 class periods for students to complete.
Reasoning Level: Moderate to High
Process skills required: Observing, comparing, interpreting data, inferring, identifying and controlling variable, hypothesizing
Materials:
Internet access is necessary for students to do this activity. The lesson should begin in a computer lab or like facility which allows the students to do the WebWalk. The lesson can then move to an environment conducive to writing a short paper and an experiment. If you want the students to work digitally, they should stay in the computer lab.
Objective:
By the end of this lesson, students should be able to • Discuss personal experiences with sports drinks and connect that to exercise performance • Apply the concept of homeostasis to the effects of sports drinks • Write an experiment to determine the relationship between sports drinks and exercise performance
Teaching Strategies: If students can access the Student Handout for this lesson digitally, the websites become hotlinks and they can just click and go, rather than trying to type in the web addresses which takes typing time and allows for possible errors. The students are also able to type responses onto the Student Handout and hand it in electronically, if that is possible in your school.

Sample Experiment Example:

|Sports Drinks Experiment |
|Independent variable |Drinking Gatorade |
|Dependent variable |Homeostatic levels during exercise (as determined by observations of muscle soreness, cramps, |
| |energy levels, overall well-being, etc.) |
|Problem statement |How does drinking Gatorade effect homeostasis during exercise? |
|Hypothesis |If I drink Gatorade during exercise, I predict I will feel less muscle soreness, more energy, |
| |fewer cramps, and a better sense of overall well-being. |
|Control |Exercise without consuming Gatorade |

Other Web Connections: To help differentiate instruction within your classroom, other web connections could be used to increase the challenge or extend the assignment:

Homeostasis and Transport (Challenging reading), Frederick High School, Frederick, Oklahoma www.sirinet.net/~jgjohnso/homeostasis.html

Sport Drinks: Dehydration and Rehydration, Sports Coach http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/drinks.htm

Absolute Sports Nutrition Short scientific study abstract about sports drinks (recovery drinks) experiments: www.asnutrition.com/r4-clinical-trials.asp#trial1 (Effects Of Recovery Drinks After Prolonged Glycogen-Depletion Exercise in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise)

Student Handout:
Sports Drinks and Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the relative consistency of your internal environment. Your survival depends on your body maintaining relatively constant conditions within the body. You have many mechanisms in place that work to insure your body stays within fairly narrow limits. When you exercise, one way to help your body stay within limits is to drink sports drinks.

What is a WebWalk?

A WebWalk is a set of instructions laced with internet sites relevant to the topic under discussion. A required link is accompanied by helpful hints that you should read before you open the link. The “Go To:” command tells you to click on a link. Once you have completed the work at that link, return to these instructions for your next link. You should take notes as you move along the WebWalk. (Taking notes digitally is good practice, as well as good preparation for your future in higher education institutions.)

The Sports Drink and Homeostasis WebWalk has been carefully constructed to lead you through the development of a concept. Be sure to go to the sites in order and follow all instructions given.

Sport Drinks and Homeostasis WebWalk

1. Go To: pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HOMEOSTA.html (Homeostasis: Resistance to Change - Principia Cybernetica Web) for a description of homeostasis. Note the different ways homeostasis can be applied (biologically, socially, etc.). 2. If all the water were removed from a human body some 30 kg of assorted salts would remain. Despite the impression given by TV's Start Trek or the movie Red Dwarf where dried people are represented by a tiny pile of salt crystals, 30 kg is a lot of material -- imagine 66 pounds of salt poured all over the floor. Go To: physioweb.med.uvm.edu/bodyfluids/fluid1.htm (Fluid Compartments in the Body, University of Vermont). The human body is 60% water. This site shows how that 60% is compartmentalized into several major divisions. You will not be expected to remember the divisions, but you will be expected to remember the main idea. 3. Sports drinks have been the subject of much recent scientific study. Read the article, "Play Harder, Longer" by the University of North Carolina Medical School's Dr. Don Kirkendall as he explains new findings. Go To: 69.94.64.50/poweringmuscles.com/article.php?article_id=62 to access the article. 4. As a result of such studies, bodybuilding.com reports on a new sports drink called Accelerade. Accelerade is not being promoted here as a product. Rather, you are to Go To: www.bodybuilding.com/store/end/acc.html and critically look at the description and marketing of this product by Endurox that claims to "speed more energy to working muscles-faster!" To further investigate the claims, look at Accelrade's comparison chart to other sports drinks (Go To: www.bodybuilding.com/store/end/acc1.html). 5. Consider the following questions: a) Have you ever consumed a sports drink? If so, why? b) Did you think about its effects scientifically? c) What do sports drinks have to do with homeostasis?
Writing Assignment:
1. Write a one page discussion about the scientific effects of sports drinks on homeostasis. (HINT: What do sports drinks have to do with maintaining homeostasis during exercise? Give details from your personal experience if possible.)
2. If you were to test the effectiveness of sports drinks, how might you design an experiment during your exercise activities or sporting practices or events? Here is a table to help you organize your experiment.
|Sports Drinks Experiment |
|Independent variable | |
|Dependent variable | |
|Problem statement | |
|Hypothesis | |
|Control | |

Other Web Connections:

Homeostasis and Transport (Challenging reading), Frederick High School, Frederick, Oklahoma www.sirinet.net/~jgjohnso/homeostasis.html

Sport Drinks: Dehydration and Rehydration, Sports Coach http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/drinks.htm

Absolute Sports Nutrition Short scientific study abstract about sports drinks (recovery drinks) experiments: www.asnutrition.com/r4-clinical-trials.asp#trial1 (Effects Of Recovery Drinks After Prolonged Glycogen-Depletion Exercise in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise)

"Homeostasis" is derived from the Greek words for "same" and "steady." The term refers to ways the body acts to maintain a stable internal environment in spite of environmental changes. Both the brain and the body have multitude feedback mechanisms that help to keep things in equilibrium. Homeostatic stability is necessary for water-balance, temperature-control, hormonal balance, and the regulation of blood sugar levels.