WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Healthy as a Horse: Episode 2

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Ella continues her conversation with Analise Hess, and they discuss practical advice for athletes.

I'm Mellon and this is Healthy as a Horse. In the first part of my discussion with Annalise Hess from the Holistic Health Club, we talked about her big ideas about holistic health. But now we move into some really practical advice for athletes. What are your opinions on products pushed to athletes like liquid IV, protein shakes and gatorade, and the ingredients in them? I get pretty frustrated sometimes because these companies, they kind of push. these things towards us as like a quick, easy fix for recovery. It's like, oh, you're sore, drink a Gatorade. But then you read the back of the Gatorade. And I don't think it's helpful. So, yeah, what are your opinions on this? And then what are some good replacements for those

types of things? I'm so glad you asked this. I personally think that Gatorade and Liquid IV are like the biggest marketing scams ever. Yeah, if you like flip it over, it's like red dye 40, like sugar, natural flavors, which are not natural. Who knows where they come from? And I think that I agree with you. Like they definitely like market it as something that will cure whatever ailment you're experiencing or you need electrolytes. So you need to drink this product. Otherwise you're going to like shrivel up and die. Yeah.

Great marketing plays. I'm a marketing major. They don't feel better after. And honestly, it's doing more harm than good. And obviously, especially if you're a high performing athlete, you do need electrolytes. You need to replenish the minerals in your body. All you can do is put like a pinch of Himalayan sea salt in your water in the morning when you go out the door and that's all you need to do and that costs less than a cent,

right? It's super cheap. And then if people like the liquid IVs because they have like that carb content in them too, like you just need to eat like a banana. Like it's that simple. I think the price is part of the problem too because we assume we have to spend all this money on these things that don't really help us in the end. Yeah. And it doesn't need to be expensive at all. Like I know we're all college students. We all have a limited budget that we're working with and you do not need to spend all of this money trying to pour into your health in a way that you think that you need to because of the advertising that you've seen. Like all you need to do is do like a simple like habit and just like put a pinch of salt

on your water like in the morning or eat whole foods. Like it's really easy. It can be like simple and it can just be like replacing a different habit that you have and that's a way that you can like replenish your health. Awesome. So moving more towards kind of your experience as a college student and how you've applied this yourself. How do you exercise? Yeah, I played volleyball all through high school and I started weightlifting towards the end of it. And so I've really taken that like weightlifting piece and I love to do it now. Cardio, like I love going walks with friends and like incline walk on the treadmill or like playing volleyball with friends when I can. But I love weightlifting. I think that strength training is super important, which you all know as athletes. And

building up that muscle mass because that's what's going to like really help with longevity in the future. Okay. Awesome. For your recovery, how do you focus on recovering? Yeah. Obviously, like I said, like electrolytes are huge. Magnesium is also really big, especially for athletes for like sore muscles. Taking magnesium before you go to bed or like you can even put it in your water bottle in the day. That's also super helpful. My mom has a spray. She puts on feet. Really? Yes. I'll also say sleep is so important. Like I'm a huge eight hours of sleep minimum girl. Okay. Like my housemates are like, oh, stay up with us. I'm like, no, I'm going to bed. It's 10 o'clock. So I will say a lot of college students, maybe you can speak into this more. I feel like they want to stay up late and do homework.

Yeah. But don't do that. Do homework during the day when you can in between classes, like really prioritize your time and just go to bed. I know a lot of people who are not athletes work and have other things going on during the afternoon, but we cannot get work done from 3 to 7 p.m. between going to practice, showering, eating dinner. So that does kind of make it challenging, but working between classes, working hard from 7 to 10, and then being done instead of kind of messing around. Right. I know that sometimes it's easy to work, quote unquote, for four hours when you could really get all of it. done in two and a half maybe. So yeah, even those little things like that can help mentally

and help you get more sleep totally. I definitely think people think it's so hard. But once you realize how good you feel, it actually is easier to live this way. 100%. Yeah. Well, that's all the questions I have. Thank you so much for being on the show. And maybe we'll hear from you again. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. I'm Ellen Malone and this has been Healthy as a Horse for Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.