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Eliud Kipchoge drinks a Maurten hydrogel beverage
Eliud Kipchoge is one of a long list of marathon stars who swear by Maurten's hydrogel products. (Photo: Courtesy Maurten)
Sweat Science

Finally, Evidence that Maurten鈥檚 Hydrogel Drink Works

A new study suggests that hydrogels enable you to down more carbs with less digestive distress, and race faster as a result.

Published: 
Eliud Kipchoge drinks a Maurten hydrogel beverage
(Photo: Courtesy Maurten)

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Back in 2019, I wrote an article titled 鈥The World鈥檚 Hottest Sports Drink Faces the Evidence.鈥 The Swedish company Maurten鈥檚 hydrogel-carbohydrate drink had swept through the endurance sports world like a highly transmissible viral variant鈥攂ut the first few independent studies had failed to find any performance benefits compared to plain old carbohydrate sports drinks.

That was still the situation until last month, when Henrik Wingstrand, one of the company鈥檚 co-founders 鈥淚t’s here!!!!! The data we have been waiting for since we started Maurten five years ago.鈥 The object of Wingstrand鈥檚 enthusiasm was by of Leeds Beckett University and his colleagues, and it more or less confirms everything that Maurten (and its many elite-athlete fans, ) claimed over the years. Are there caveats? Sure. But the new study is impressive enough to revise my view of the evidence.

Let鈥檚 get the first question out of the way right from the top: the study wasn鈥檛 funded by Maurten. Back in 2017, after Eliud Kipchoge鈥檚 first Maurten-fueled sub-two marathon attempt, Rowe got in touch with Maurten to ask how they made their hydrogel. He wanted to run a study that would precisely track how and when the ingested sports drink was burned in the body, which involves labeling some of the carbohydrate with a special carbon isotope. That meant he couldn鈥檛 just use over-the-counter Maurten. But the company was still in the process of securing patents for their technology, so they wouldn鈥檛 give him any details. Instead, Rowe told me, he spent six months in the lab churning through 178 prototypes until he came up with a hydrogel recipe that mimicked Maurten鈥檚. (There鈥檚 enough published data on the drink鈥檚 behavior to get a reasonable match, even if it鈥檚 not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison.) The company had no role in the study, and didn鈥檛 see the results until they were released publicly鈥攚hich explains Wingstrand鈥檚 delight.

The main goal of a hydrogel beverage is to enable you to drink lots of carbohydrate during exercise without triggering gastrointestinal symptoms. For more details on how that works, check out my previous article, but the gist is that surrounding the carbohydrate with hydrogel allows it to exit from your stomach into your small intestine more quickly, reducing the chances of GI upset and speeding its absorption into the bloodstream where it can be used as fuel for your muscles.

That鈥檚 the theory; the question is why previous studies鈥攁 half-dozen of them, according to co-authored last year by Rowe along with and 鈥攄idn鈥檛 see it happening. There are a bunch of possible reasons. Probably the most important is that most of the previous studies simply didn鈥檛 trigger very many GI problems, even in the non-hydrogel groups. It鈥檚 hard to improve something that doesn鈥檛 really need improving. Rowe鈥檚 study used running, which is more likely to jostle the stomach than the cycling or cross-country skiing protocols used in the majority of previous studies. It also used a faster pace for the exercise test, close to marathon race pace (68 percent of VO2 max) for two hours followed by an all-out 5K time trial. And it used a more concentrated 18 percent carbohydrate drink, compared to about 16 percent for the strongest Maurten drink. As a result, more than half the subjects had problems like bloatedness, cramps, and flatulence with the non-hydrogel version of the drink.

The nuts and bolts of the study: 11 experienced male runners completed the two-hours-plus-5K protocol three times. In one of the trials, they drank Rowe鈥檚 custom hydrogel drink at a rate of 90 grams of carbohydrate (a mix of glucose and fructose) per hour, which is pretty much the most you can possibly absorb. In another trial, they drank an identical carbohydrate drink without the hydrogel ingredients, and in the third trial they drank an artificially sweetened placebo. The blinding was good enough that only 3 of the 11 subjects correctly guessed what order they鈥檇 done the trials in. (The hydrogel doesn鈥檛 turn into a glutinous gel until it reacts with the acid in your stomach.)

The big result, from a performance perspective, is that the runners were 7.6 percent faster in the 5K with the hydrogel than with the placebo鈥攁nd, more relevantly, 2.1 percent faster than with the non-hydrogel carbohydrate drink. The runners had roughly the same frequency and severity of GI symptoms with the hydrogel and the placebo, but more with the non-hydrogel drink. That suggests that the high dose of carbs (in combination with the particular exercise protocol) did cause digestive issues, and that the hydrogel could reduce or eliminate them.

Thanks to the carbon isotope labeling, there鈥檚 a whole bunch of data on exactly what types of energy the runners burned, and from where. The most important point is that the runners burned more 鈥渆xogenous鈥 carbohydrate (meaning from the sports drink rather than from the body鈥檚 internal stores) when they drank the hydrogel drink: 68.6 grams with the hydrogel drink compared to 63.4 grams with the non-hydrogel drink. This fits with the idea that the hydrogel enabled the sports drink to exit the stomach and get into the bloodstream faster.

You don鈥檛 necessarily want to fall into the trap of saying 鈥淗ey, this one positive study trumps the other six negative ones.鈥 Assuming these results can be replicated in other labs, the next question will be figuring out which variables made this study different from the others. Does hydrogel only matter above a certain intensity or beyond a certain duration? Does it only help for running and not cycling? Is it only useful if you鈥檙e pounding down very high amounts of carbohydrate like 90 grams per hour? Or is it useful in a wider range of contexts, but the effects are only big enough to be obvious under these specific circumstances?

Rowe notes some other lingering questions. Are the effects different in women, who by some accounts are more likely to report GI problems during exercise? Can you tweak the hydrogel recipe (which is made from pectin and sodium alginate) to alter the effects? Could hydrogels also help non-athletes deal with chronic GI conditions? In other words, this study isn鈥檛 the final word on hydrogel research. It鈥檚 more a beginning than an end. But it鈥檚 a solid enough study, in my view, to shift the wild popularity of Maurten among endurance athletes from the 鈥渨ishful thinking鈥 column most of the way over to the 鈥渟eems reasonable and has some evidence behind it鈥 column.


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