Field Notes

Best Electrolyte Drinks: Ranked by What Is Actually in Them — engraved illustration
Best Electrolyte Drinks: Ranked by What Is Actually in Them
Nine bottled electrolyte drinks ranked by sodium per litre, Pedialyte to smartwater. Most of the shelf is potassium and sugar. Where our stick sits. Read more...
How to Rehydrate Fast: What the Evidence Actually Says — engraved illustration
How to Rehydrate Fast: What the Evidence Actually Says
Water reaches your blood in five minutes; keeping it is the slow part. Sodium, a little carbohydrate and pacing — the protocol, and how long it takes. Read more...
Liquid I.V. vs LMNT: What Is Actually in Each — engraved illustration
Liquid I.V. vs LMNT: What Is Actually in Each
Sodium, sugar, potassium, price and who each one suits — Liquid I.V. and LMNT side by side on one table, with our own label in the third column. Read more...
What Is Taurine? What It Does, and What the Evidence Says — engraved illustration
What Is Taurine? What It Does, and What the Evidence Says
Not a stimulant, not bull urine. What taurine does in the body, the evidence for exercise and longevity, the safety record, and why it is in our formula. Read more...
Do Hangover Supplements Actually Work? — engraved illustration
Do Hangover Supplements Actually Work?
Mostly not. Ingredient by ingredient, what has evidence, what does not, and where our own formula sits — written by a brand called Snake Oil, on purpose. Read more...
Sugar-Free Electrolyte Powder: What You Gain and What You Give Up — engraved illustration
Sugar-Free Electrolyte Powder: What You Gain and What You Give Up
Sugar-free mixes keep the minerals and drop the mechanism that moves water in fastest. Who they suit, what to check, and why ours keeps 5g of dextrose. Read more...
How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System? — engraved illustration
How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your System?
About one drink an hour, within a wide documented range, and nothing speeds it up. The arithmetic, detection windows by test, and the morning-after trap. Read more...
Best Electrolyte Powder: How to Actually Choose One — engraved illustration
Best Electrolyte Powder: How to Actually Choose One
Judge it on sodium first, then whether carbohydrate came with it, then what the label actually discloses. The criteria, and how our own label scores. Read more...
Does Alcohol Dehydrate You? What You Actually Lose — engraved illustration
Does Alcohol Dehydrate You? What You Actually Lose
Yes — alcohol suppresses vasopressin, so your kidneys excrete more water. What leaves with it, why it is milder than the story, and what it cannot explain. Read more...
Electrolyte Drink for a Hangover: What to Look For — engraved illustration
Electrolyte Drink for a Hangover: What to Look For
Real sodium paired with a little carbohydrate — the one combination with research behind it. Six things to check on a label, including the ones we fail. Read more...
Hangover Symptoms: What Is Actually Normal — engraved illustration
Hangover Symptoms: What Is Actually Normal
Fatigue and thirst almost universally, then fog, headache and nausea. What the validated scales include, what is known about each, when it is not a hangover. Read more...
Best Pre-Workout: What the Evidence Actually Supports — engraved illustration
Best Pre-Workout: What the Evidence Actually Supports
Only caffeine works the day you take it. Creatine and beta-alanine need weeks of loading, BCAAs do nothing, and the average tub hides 44% of its ingredients. Read more...
Theobromine vs Caffeine: What Each One Actually Does — engraved illustration
Theobromine vs Caffeine: What Each One Actually Does
One methyl group apart and less alike than that suggests. Caffeine peaks in an hour and wakes you up; theobromine peaks at three and, in trials, does not. Read more...
Recovery Drink Timing: Before Bed or Morning? — engraved illustration
Recovery Drink Timing: Before Bed or Morning?
Before bed, if you can manage it. Why the longest dry stretch of the day is the moment that matters, what morning can and cannot do, and the caffeine question. Read more...
Does Water Help a Hangover? What the Research Says — engraved illustration
Does Water Help a Hangover? What the Research Says
Not really. A 2024 review finds hangover and dehydration co-occurring but independent. What water does do, what actually drives the morning, and why we say so. Read more...
How Long Does a Hangover Last? — engraved illustration
How Long Does a Hangover Last?
Most of a day, starting when blood alcohol reaches zero — after a heavy night, mid-afternoon. What extends it, what does not, and when it is not a hangover. Read more...
Two-Day Hangover: Why You Still Feel Off — engraved illustration
Two-Day Hangover: Why You Still Feel Off
The things that make you feel bad after drinking do not run on the same clock. Sleep debt and an inflammatory response outlast the fluid loss by a day or... Read more...
Hangxiety: Why You Feel Anxious the Day After Drinking — engraved illustration
Hangxiety: Why You Feel Anxious the Day After Drinking
Your brain's calming signals rebound, you slept badly, and your blood sugar may be low. What is known, what is guessed, and the one study on who gets it worst. Read more...
The Best Drink for a Hangover — engraved illustration
The Best Drink for a Hangover
Ranked against the one benchmark that matters: 1,725mg of sodium per litre. Most of the usual list falls a long way short — and here is where we sit. Read more...
Hangover Food: What to Eat the Morning After — engraved illustration
Hangover Food: What to Eat the Morning After
No food has ever been tested against hangover outcomes in a trial. What is actually worth eating, and the claims repeated with more confidence than they earned. Read more...
Does Pickle Juice Help a Hangover? — engraved illustration
Does Pickle Juice Help a Hangover?
Salt water with an unusually good story attached. There has never been a trial, and the two studies everyone cites are both about something else entirely. Read more...
Does Hair of the Dog Work? — engraved illustration
Does Hair of the Dog Work?
It postpones rather than resolves — and the methanol biochemistry everyone cites for it was tested directly and came back at r = 0.011. Read more...
Do Hangovers Get Worse With Age? — engraved illustration
Do Hangovers Get Worse With Age?
Probably not. A study of 761 drinkers found severity goes down with age. What changes is how much alcohol the same drink puts in you, and the slack in your... Read more...
What to Eat Before Drinking — engraved illustration
What to Eat Before Drinking
A real meal with protein, fat and complex carbohydrates an hour or two ahead. Why it works, the greasy-food myth that does not, and what food cannot reach. Read more...
What Vitamins Does Alcohol Actually Deplete? — engraved illustration
What Vitamins Does Alcohol Actually Deplete?
Almost none of it is established for social drinkers. Every depletion finding comes from chronic alcohol use disorder — and our product contains these vitamins. Read more...
Does Alcohol Affect Muscle Recovery? — engraved illustration
Does Alcohol Affect Muscle Recovery?
At the doses studied, measurably — but those doses were four to twelve drinks. Nobody has tested one or two, and the gap is the whole story. Read more...
Post-Workout Recovery Drink: What Actually Matters — engraved illustration
Post-Workout Recovery Drink: What Actually Matters
Recovery has three jobs — rehydrate, refuel, repair. Most drinks do one and price themselves as though they did three. Including ours, and we show the scoring. Read more...
Electrolytes Before or After a Workout? — engraved illustration
Electrolytes Before or After a Workout?
Before, during or after? During is the highest-value moment for anything long or hot. What the evidence says, and when water is genuinely enough. Read more...
Does Dehydration Cause Muscle Cramps? — engraved illustration
Does Dehydration Cause Muscle Cramps?
Mostly no. Studies comparing crampers with non-crampers find no difference in hydration or electrolytes. What predicts cramping, and the part salt does play. Read more...
The Long-Day Playbook: Hiking, Running and Anything Past Three Hours — engraved illustration
The Long-Day Playbook: Hiking, Running and Anything Past Three Hours
There is no universal number. Sweat rates differ five-fold, sweat sodium ten-fold. How to find your own, what changes past three hours, and the one safety rule. Read more...
What L-Glutamine Actually Does — engraved illustration
What L-Glutamine Actually Does
The mechanism is textbook, the clinical evidence lives in intensive care, and the evidence in healthy people who train is thin. An honest map of glutamine. Read more...
What Are Electrolytes? — engraved illustration
What Are Electrolytes?
Minerals that carry an electric charge in solution. The seven that matter, what each does, how you lose them, why rehydration formulas have sugar, four myths. Read more...
The Real History of Snake Oil — engraved illustration
The Real History of Snake Oil
The original probably worked, the man who ruined the phrase was punished for the wrong thing, and the word did not mean fraud until a decade after his case. Read more...