Athletes choosing Pedialyte in place of Gatorade

Courtesy of NY Times News Service

Between innings, pitcher Tom Glavine sips Pedialyte, a liquid sold alongside diapers in drugstores that is meant to quickly rehydrate toddlers experiencing diarrhea. The neon-tinted fluid that comes in grape and other child-friendly flavors contains electrolytes such as sodium, potassium and glucose, which happen to be the basic ingredients in most sports drinks.

Without an iota of marketing effort from Abbott Laboratories, the maker of Pedialyte, the over-the-counter remedy with a teddy bear on its label has developed a small and devoted following among professional and amateur athletes, a trend that long-distance runners seem to have started sometime in the 1980s.

"It'd be different if they were drinking formula," Brad Childress, the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings told The St. Paul Pioneer Press before last season about his players' pre-workout predilection for the baby elixir. "But Pedialyte is used in hospitals throughout the United States for hydration. It's different than just your regular sports drink."

"They say it's for babies," high school wrestling coach Gary Bannat said. "But I tell them forget the Gatorade. With Pedialyte, the kids can maintain a better electrolyte balance. The kids can work out harder and recover faster."

Although Abbott does not market Pedialyte as a sports drink or track its sales to athletes, the company is aware of its off-label use in locker rooms. Dr. Keith Wheeler, a divisional vice president for research and development at the company, says he has done enough research to know Pedialyte will work on the field.

"If you take a 300-pound NFL lineman and put him in 95 degrees with 75 percent humidity," Wheeler said, "he will dump a volume of electrolytes from his body through sweat that will be equivalent to a child with diarrhea." As best as most observers can tell, endurance athletes were the first to consume Pedialyte as an adult sports drink in the 1980s. Compared with original Gatorade, Pedialyte has more than twice the sodium per ounce and half the carbohydrates, and it sells for more than double the price.

In a phone interview, Wheeler of Abbott Laboratories said that Gatorade had too much sucrose, "the wrong kind of carbohydrate," to effectively hydrate athletes, a statement Murray said years of his company's research proved is untrue.