Let’s take for example sugar free Gatorade, or pedialyte. That in itself, is it effective at hydrating you?
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Those products contain vital salts which your body sweats out during exercise or vomits out during illness. The fluid itself won’t enter your cells as quickly as pure water, but maintaining homeostasis under duress is about more than that. If you just drink pure water during extreme exertion or illness, you could start having neurological problems as your nerves become unable to communicate, cellular processes which require salts could shut down, and you could even die. Which is what sports drinks and therapeutic hydration solutions like pedialyte are intended to prevent.
Most people won’t have this problem though. Unless you’re a professional athlete practicing in hot weather, doing hard labor under the sun for some reason, or have been vomiting everything up for over a day, none of these things are medically necessary.
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