All Articles by Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD

Hyponatremia occurs where sodium levels in the blood become dangerously low due to excessive water consumption.  Blood sodium levels that drop too low can lead to seizures, coma, and even death.  To prevent hyponatremia usually occurs in endurance and ultra-endurance events follow these guidelines.

The calories burned during a soccer game, much less a two-day tournament, require soccer players to literally be eating all the time, so parents need to feed youth soccer players a high calorie diet for peak performance.

There is a general movement among many soccer players and other athletes to avoid salt. However, this is not always necessary; in fact, if your child or teen is a heavy sweater, or craves salty foods, he may benefit from the extra salt. 

Proper nutrition for athletes at away games and tournaments don't have to suffer.  Here are some travel team nutrition tips for sports parents, coaches and managers. 

Here's a recipe for a homemade sports drink with the same nutritional profile as an expensive store-bought sports drink but at a much lower cost.

Endurance sports athletes can improve performance by consuming a variety of carbohydrates during exercise and a balance of carbohydrates and protein after sports as part of a training and recovery diet.

If all the ads for sports drinks, energy bars, energy drinks, electrolyte replacers, and sports candies are to believed, they are a necessary part of a sports diet, particularly if a child is participating in endurance exercise such as training for a marathon or a triathlon.  While there is a time and a place for engineered sports foods (particularly among kids who train at a high intensity), in most cases sports-active children can get their needs met with a wisely chosen diet.

An easy way to assess whether your child is getting adequate, but not
excessive, protein in his/her daily diet is to use this rule of thumb:
consume daily 16 ounces (2 cups, or 480 ml) of milk or yogurt plus a
moderate serving of protein-rich foods at two meals a day.  This, along
with with the small amounts of protein in grains and vegetables, will
likely meet your child's daily protein requirement.  Of course, your
child will need to eat other foods to round her calorie and nutritional
requirements, and those foods will offer a little more protein, as well.

Do you know how many grams of protein are in the foods you serve your family? Here's a list.