It does a body good

She just finished her daily workout routine. After a 30-mile cycling trek across the county's winding roads, sophomore Kristen Holmes returns home satisfied, but exhausted. She unlaces her shoes and heads to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and retrieving a bottle of -- chocolate milk?\nNo, she didn't grab the wrong bottle. And she's not trying to make herself sick. What she is doing might actually be good for her, says IU Physiology Professor Joel Stager.\nIn a recent study, Stager and his team of researchers found that drinking chocolate milk between tough workouts can actually be good for the body. \nChocolate milk has high amounts of carbohydrates and proteins, and enough water content to replace fluids lost from sweat during a workout, explained Jason Karp, a doctoral candidate at IU who led Stager's team of researchers conducting the study.\nLike water, chocolate milk can be used to make up for the loss of fluids after a workout, but the carbohydrates and proteins present in the chocolate milk make it better for the body than water because it replenishes nutrients and rehydrates an athlete, Stager said.\n"(Comparing water to chocolate milk) is not a fair comparison," he said. "Chocolate milk is better on the substrate side. It's water plus a whole lot of other things."\nStager first informally tested his theory on Bloomington South High School swimmers practicing twice daily under his coaching.\n"Some of the swimmers were using (energy) products you can purchase online or at supplement stores," he said. "I had them bring them in, and I looked at the labels and went to the grocery store to see what was comparable. And I found the composition of chocolate milk is analogous to what they were paying lots of money for."\nStager worked with his team and had the swimmers drinking chocolate milk between practices. When the results seemed to conclude that chocolate milk was working, he decided to do a formal study. \nFor the study, a team of researchers tested nine cyclists with each of three different drinks: chocolate milk, Gatorade and a high-carbohydrate sports drink called Endurox. The cyclists worked out on bikes and were given one of the three drinks afterward during a four-hour break, Karp said.\nAfter the four-hour break, cyclists got back on the bikes and cycled again until they were exhausted. The team of researchers then compared data on how much work the cyclists were able to do, their heart rates, their blood lactate measurements and the amount of time they worked until exhaustion set in.\nThe results were positive, Karp said.\n"Chocolate milk is just as effective for exercise performance," he said. "It's just as good if not better than the other two drinks."\nReplenishing nutrients lost during a work out is crucial if an athlete plans on working out again, Stager said.\n"There is a critical time period of about an hour where, if you don't take steps to return muscular nutrients, the rate at which you can catch up is hampered," he said. \nBut high nutrient contents aside, many athletes wonder how drinking chocolate milk after a work out would make them feel.\n"I definitely had not considered (drinking chocolate milk) before," Holmes said. "It would be awesome, though. I'd enjoy it because I hate Gatorade."\nHolmes, who competes in IU's Little 500 cycling event was also a swimmer in high school and said she had heard of the milk theory during swim season but never gave it any credit.\nOthers echoed her sentiments.\nGraduate student Bob Hayes is familiar with two-a-day practices. He played football in high school and said the rigorous summer workouts drained athletes of energy and endurance.\n"If you drank milk in between practices, you were puking your guts out," he said. "I would be skeptical of these results (because) my first-hand experience shows it doesn't help."\nHayes said despite what research might show, he simply prefers water over all other drinks at all times. \n"I drink water. It hydrates you, and you can drink water before, during and after practice, which I (don't think you could say about) chocolate milk."\nThough neither Karp nor Stager argue against drinking water after a workout, they note that it lacks the nutrients an athlete will need if he or she will be working out again soon. And chocolate milk is better than many sport drinks, they said.\n"Chocolate milk has more carbs than Gatorade. To get the recommended amount (of carbs), you would have to drink a lot of Gatorade," he said, compared with just 16 ounces of chocolate milk needed each hour following a workout, according to the research-based recommendations for maximum recovery.\nStager insists chocolate milk can work, but only for athletes in intense training -- particularly those who have long workout periods, like swimmers, cyclists and long-distance runners.\n"This is not just for walking the dog. Chocolate milk might help other people do nothing more than gain weight," he said. "We can't generalize. It doesn't matter what activity it is, but it's not casual. (These results) are not for just a half-hour of tennis."\nHe also recommends milkshakes as an alternative to those who aren't particularly fond of chocolate milk.\nTen years ago, an IU basketball player told Stager he was having trouble recovering after practices in time for games. Stager told the player to run over to White Mountain Creamery after practice and get the biggest milkshake he could afford. After doing this for two weeks, the player reported it was making a huge difference in his performance, Stager told the Washington Interscholastic Nutrition News Forum.\nKarp also said chocolate soy milk would be effective for those who are lactose intolerant and cannot drink milk. He said it's the carbohydrates -- which are present because of the chocolate -- that are the key factor.\nCarbohydrates are essential to the body because they are the fuel that gives the body energy, a Harvard School of Public Health statement said.\nBut will athletes buy the conclusions and substitute something linked with eggs and bacon for drinks like Gatorade, Powerade and other specialty drinks available at nutrition stores?\n"A lot of people already drink chocolate milk, but Gatorade really has control of the market," Karp said. "I don't know if we'll ever get to the point (where milk has an edge in the market)."\nBut Stager said chocolate milk has a bright future in the market. He said he has received at least a dozen phone calls from people in the dairy industry interested in his findings.\n"This has been picked up at very high levels," he said. "This week alone I've gotten three phone calls from people in the dairy industry wanting to know about what we're up to. Now we just need to convince them we need money. Instead of advertising 'got milk,' we need the money to fund (our research)."\nStager and Karp presented their findings this summer at the American College of Sport Medicine Annual Conference in Indianapolis, and they are working on writing a manuscript to be published in an academic journal, Karp said.\n-- Contact business editor Brittany Hite at bhite@indiana.edu.