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With the summer heat bearing down, athletes should be especially mindful of proper hydration. During strenuous exercise in extreme heat, your body can lose up to two liters of fluid every 30 minutes, and you need to drink two to four glasses of water for each hour of physical activity.

This shouldn't be surprising when you consider that on average, a man's body weight is 60 percent water, and a woman's approximately 50 percent. Since muscle contains more water than fat does, the percentage can be as low as 40 in an overweight person and 70 in a muscular person.

Nothing affects endurance, strength and performance more than dehydration. It can decrease your cardiovascular system function and aerobic power and throw off your body's ability to regulate its temperature. It can also contribute to gastrointestinal discomfort and overall fatigue, making it nearly impossible to be at the top of your game.

Dizziness, headaches, profuse sweating, nausea, weakness and visual disturbances may indicate the onset of heat exhaustion from dehydration. Drinking water and electrolytes at the first sign of these symptoms may help you avoid painful cramps. Ignoring the symptoms, on the other hand, could put you in serious trouble with heat stroke, possibly leading to seizures and even death.

According to a study published in June 2013 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), extreme heat contributes to more 650 deaths each year. From 1999 to 2009, 7,233 people in the United States died from heat-related conditions.

For prolonged physical activities like marathons, triathlons and tournaments, athletes absolutely need to replace fluids. After 60 minutes of strenuous exertion, you should also replenish energy-stoking glucose stores along with the salt that you lose when you sweat. Sports drinks with added electrolytes may be helpful.

Most sports drinks on the market today—think Gatorade—typically contain 14 to 18 grams of carbohydrates in the form of glucose per 8-ounce serving, as well as a blend of muscle-friendly electrolytes like sodium and potassium. One 24-ounce bottle can give your body all it needs to replenish itself after an hour of intense training in high temperatures.

Active women should drink at least two liters of water every day, and men should drink three liters. If you're working out for more than an hour in the heat, add sports drinks to your fluids, too.

How to Prevent Summer Dehydration

Here are guidelines for athletes to avoid dehydration-related "bonking" (hitting the wall), as well as more serious heat-related illness:

Williams, Melvin H. Nutrition for Health, Fitness and Sport: 8th Edition. McGraw-Hill. May 2006.

Colleges are beginning to put more emphasis on students' shut-eye

As college students return to campus, they're showered in the usual handouts of coupons, condoms and credit cards. But some schools are also giving students what a growing body of research reveals could make a huge difference in their college careers: ear plugs, sleep shades and napping lessons.

College health officials are finally realizing that healthy sleep habits are a potential miracle drug for much of what ails the famously frazzled modern American college student: anxiety, depression, physical health problems and – more than most students realize – academic troubles. Some studies have found students getting adequate sleep average a full letter grade higher than those who don't.

But adolescent biorhythms make it hard enough for college students to get the sleep they need, a recommended nine hours. On top of that, campus life turns out to resemble a giant laboratory experiment designed for maximum sleep deprivation: irregular schedules, newfound freedom, endless social interaction, loud and crowded housing, late-night exercise and food washed down by booze, coffee and energy drinks. Campuses pulsing with energy at midnight by mid- afternoon resemble Zombie U, with students dozing in library chairs, on yoga mats and even in coffee shops.

Technology isn't helping, with wireless Internet adding to the 24/7 distractions and students sleeping with their smartphones on. That likely helps explain data showing college students got about eight hours of sleep in the 1960s and '70s, seven by the '80s, and, according to more recent surveys, closer to six these days.

Campaigning recently, even President Barack Obama told some students at an Ohio State University diner that he assumed "you guys have arranged it so you don't have really early morning classes."

No such luck.

"Actually, I failed that," one student replied, telling the president he had one at 8 a.m. the next day.

Now, some counselors and health officials are trying to get the message out in creative ways. At tiny Hastings College in Nebraska, student peer educators plop down a bed in the middle of the student union, dress themselves in pajamas, and talk to passers-by about sleep. Macalester College in Minnesota publishes a "nap map" listing pros and cons of various campus snooze sites. And many schools offer seminars on napping (basic lesson: short naps work best).

The University of Louisville is even planning a campus-wide "flash nap" – think of a flash mob but with sleeping, not dancing – later in the school year. ("We have to arrange in it advance so our public safety folks know it's not an epidemic of something," said director of health promotion Karen Newton).

Still, given the scope of sleeping problems, what's surprising is that such efforts are exceptional. Major, campus-wide campaigns appear rare or nonexistent. Experts say professors (and doctors) aren't always good sleep role models. As for deans and administrators, many seem hesitant to tell parents who've just dropped $50,000 on tuition that the big push on campus this year will be for everyone to sleep more.

While awareness is growing, at most schools sleep efforts amount to a few posters on campus or perhaps a few lines in a quickly forgotten talk during orientation week. While about three-quarters of college students have indicated occasional sleep problems, the latest National College Health Assessment found about the same proportion reported receiving no information from their school about sleep (though it's possible, in their sleepiness, some forgot).

"The average student is functioning with a clinical sleep disorder," said Lee Ann Hamilton, assistant director of health promotion and preventive services at the University of Arizona, describing research conducted on students there. They average about 6 1/2 hours per night (though students tend to over-report in such surveys).

But sleep time and quality measurements declined over the course of the academic year, while anxiety, depression and conflict with family, friends and roommates all rose.

Hamilton's office has been sending students a "Snoozeletter" with sleep tips.

As described by junior Sara Campbell, residence hall life at UA makes it hard even for students trying to sleep – constant late-night chattering, visitors coming and going, early morning cleaning crews. She aims to be asleep by 12:30 a.m. or so, but was dumbfounded to find girls on her hall regularly pulling all-nighters for papers and exams – basically academic suicide, the research shows.

"Not to speak bad of them, but a lot of them are freshmen and just decided to wait 'till the last minute," she said. Her big challenge was managing with a roommate who tries to keep earlier hours; this year the pair are moving off-campus together where they'll have separate bedrooms.

Still, Campbell is applying what she's learned about sleep as a psychology major. This year, she's arranged her schedule to have classes and work start at 8 a.m. every day of the week. That will be tough, but commits her to avoiding the destructive pattern that traps many college students – getting up early one day, then sleeping late the next.

"Regularity is key," Campbell said. "You can pick a schedule here and have a different time to get up every day, but going to bed at a different time every night, it wears on your body."

College mental health professionals are increasingly asking students about sleep right away, finding it's often the low-lying fruit for helping students with a range of issues.

"When you find depression, even when you find anxiety, when you scratch the surface 80 to 90 percent of the time you find a sleep problem as well," said University of Delaware psychologist Brad Wolgast.

Many students who think they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are often just sleep-deprived. Some simple steps to improve "sleep hygiene" are usually far preferable to prescribing drugs. (Wolgast is also seeing more students who've been prescribed sleeping pills, which he says usually harm sleep patterns more than help).

"On a campus they're dealing with alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, Ritalin abuse, sexual assault," Wolgast said. In comparison, sleep "looks like a small problem. But the truth is if I could wave a magic wand and change everybody's sleep, there would be fewer problems with pretty much everything else."

But Wolgast and others don't have a magic wand, and have concluded that nagging students, or fighting the campus culture, is hopeless. Running napping classes – pitched as ways to help students maximize their sleep – has proved a more effective pitch.

Students also happily accept earplugs. Hastings, with just 1,200 students, orders them in bulk from a manufacturing supply company and hands out thousands, said Beth Littrell, director of campus health services.

The guru of the college sleep crusade is James Maas, who over 48 years taught more than 65,000 students in Cornell University's most popular class – a sleep-focused version of introductory psychology. Maas evangelized to his students and experimented on them as well, asking them to wear sleep-monitoring headbands and showing them magnetic-resonance images of the brains of sleep-deprived college students.

"You can see that nothing is going on in their brains," Maas said. "Literally nothing."

Confronting students with such photos, along with hard data on how sleep undermines academic performance, is the most effective way to change behavior, Maas said. Still, he'd like to see colleges do more: ending early classes, sound-proofing and air-conditioning dorms, putting sleep education into the curriculum.

The people most receptive to his message on campus are usually coaches. A few years back, he made his pitch to Cornell's basketball coach, who stopped morning practices. The next year the Big Red became the first Ivy League team since 1979 to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Sleep efforts have paid off at a number of boarding schools. After Maas spoke at the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 2007, the school moved the start of classes from 7:55 to 8:30 a.m., cut sports practices and homework expectations 10 percent each, and got students back into dorms earlier at night.

The results? Twenty percent fewer student visits to the health center (in a bad flu year); 17 percent more students taking time for a hot breakfast, and a record increase in GPA. Also, several Deerfield sports teams enjoyed unexpectedly good years, thanks to late-season surges.

Of course, boarding schools have more control over students than colleges. But Deerfield Headmistress Margarita Curtis said that's no excuse for higher education. She said Deerfield's efforts worked because students bought into them.

"You need to appeal to their intellect," she said. "They responded because they saw that correlation. They saw if you get that extra hour of sleep, this is what happens in your brain, what happened to that athlete."

	Kim Mueller	Chris Leigh

Athlete Description	28-year-old competitive female age-group triathlete and runner with no history of muscle cramping.	31-year-old Australian pro triathlete, who is a two-time Ironman Triathlon champion, winning the 2000 Ironman California and the 2004 Ironman Coeur d'Alene. In 1997 during the Hawaiian Ironman, Chris experienced the extremes of dehydration, including vomiting, diarrhea and severe stomach cramps that led him to collapse just 50 meters from the finish. Shortly after, he had surgery to remove one third of his large bowel, as it had died as a result of dehydration (his body stopped supplying oxygen and nutrients to his large bowel so that blood could continue flowing to his heart, lungs and muscles).

Exercise Protocol	1 hr treadmill running at 9.1 mph in a chamber with a constant 76 F temperature and 70% humidity.	4 hrs of stationary cycling and treadmill running in 88 F and 71% humidity.

Total Fluid Loss	1.15 liters	8.8 liters

Hourly Fluid Needs	39 fluid ounces	74 fluid ounces

Total Salt Loss	840 mg	12,953 mg

Hourly Salt Needs	840 mg	3,238 mg

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An Athlete's Guide to Late-Summer Dehydration

How to Prevent Summer Dehydration

Colleges are beginning to put more emphasis on students' shut-eye

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