I’m normally a big water drinker. Occasionally I’ll have a soda or beer with food but I mostly only drink water.
Lately though it seems like Gatorade has been quenching my thirst better than water and I’ve been drinking a lot of it. About a quart a day or more.
Water is still the first thing I drink when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I drink before bed, but I just cannot get enough Gatorade.
How bad for me is this and how ill-advised would it be to continue the trend?
Naturally, I’ll preface this with the fact that I am NOT a MD or health care practitioner.
However, during my Wilderness First Responder training, they warned us never to give pure Gatorade, since it has a very high concentration of sugars. If we believed someone needed replenishment of electrolytes, we were told to dilute Gatorade to 1 part Gatorade for every 2 parts water.
If someone were dehydrated, we were told to give them water unless they were the Wicked Witch of the West. She was to receive whiskey until we could steal her flying broom. 
The only mention of electrolyte replacement drinks I could find is under the entry for Hyponatremia (a condition caused by excessive salt loss relative to water intake). Under “Prevention:”
, and under “Treatment of Mild/Moderate Hyponatremia:”
From Wilderness Medicine Handbook, 7th Edition, Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS, 2001, page 48.
As long as you still drink lots of water for your fluid replacement needs, I suspect the primary worry about drinking Gatorade is dental. Remember Gatorade may be great at providing you with sugars and salts, but it’s not giving you enough water.
If you’re sucking down Gatorade like a camel at an oasis, it might be because you live in Phoenix. My bet is that you don’t get a lot of salt in your diet, or that you haven’t increased your salt intake even though you are (more than likely) sweating like crazy. Since you’re still drinking water and not drinking Gatorade exclusively, you’re probably just following your bodies prompt to get a bit more salt.
Gatorade isn’t particularly bad for you, though the sugar content is high enough to cause cramps or nausea if you drink a lot of it while exercising and are succeptible to stomach upset. It only has about half the sugar of a normal soda, isn’t carbonated, and has a moderate amount of salts, so you could be doing a lot worse. Other people might be chowing down on chips or McDonald’s fries to get their salt fix.
Also, how active are you? Do you work out or run on a regular basis? The more you can say “yes” to that, the more I’d say “Keep on chuggin’!” But if you drink it while watching TV or something, I’d say switch to spring water.