Interesting article, fascinating branch of nutrition.
It's pleasing to see Noakes basically admit that he was wrong 25 years ago to advise people to "drink as much water as they could."
Noakes does something very strange in the article though: he equates drinking water with drinking sports drink and basically blames the sports drink industry for the problem of hyponatremia. This does not make sense to me. I think what he's trying to say is that there are two separate problems: 1) hyponatremia; and 2) drinking too much during exercise (whether water or other fluid). But it comes off pretty confusing to me.
Anyway, I like following this story. Nutrition is such a rapidly evolving science. I too remember the days when drinking water during soccer practice (or whatever) meant you were a wimp and you were going to get cramps. Fast forward 20 years and you should drink as much water as you can get down (I had a labmate in grad school who drank 6-8 liters(!) of water every day - no joke). Fast forward another 5 years and the story is changing again. Reminds me a bit of potatoes - first they were food for poor people, then they were healthy, "ultra-complex carbohydrates", now they're sugar in a brown skin.
