Should Athletes Drink Sports Drinks? When? Why?

These Teacher Notes present questions and information for a class discussion of when and how the consumption of sports drinks can be beneficial or harmful.  This discussion provides the opportunity to review or teach some basic concepts related to mammalian temperature regulation, osmosis, cellular respiration, mammalian regulation of water and salt balance, and mammalian circulation.  If your students are not familiar with basic aspects of all of these topics, you can introduce a topic briefly as part of the discussion or you can modify the questions or decrease the amount of detail you include in the discussion.

The attached file has the questions and background information for this discussion activity.