Do You Need Electrolytes?
The answer to the above question is an important one to get right, and a great deal of confusion has been added to it thanks to various supplement companies and podcasts.
For some people under specific circumstances, electrolyte supplementation is important.
For most others, it will do more harm than good.
Therefore, the aim of this article is to explain the following:
What is an electrolyte?
What do electrolytes do in the body?
When should you supplement with them, and with how much?
What harm can be done from electrolyte supplementation?
What is an electrolyte?
The true definition of an electrolyte is any ionically bonded molecule that dissociates into its constituent atoms or molecules when dissolved in water.
Sodium chloride (table salt) makes the easiest example.
A sodium atom is electrically bound to a chloride atom when dry. When placed in water, the two atoms separate and are no longer bound.
It is this chemical feature that largely allows the nutrients known as electrolytes to exert the effect that they do.
The main nutrients that fit this bill include sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, and others.
What do electrolytes do in the body?
As you may guess, the answer to this question would be ridiculously long if we looked at every reaction that each electrolyte serves.
However, for our purposes the focus can be much simpler.
Generally, when it comes to electrolyte supplementation, the main player is sodium with potassium to a lesser extent.
The reason being is twofold.
First, sodium plays a big role in fluid balance. It is commonly said that where sodium goes, water follows. Therefore, your body uses sodium to influence its hydration status.
In other words, your body works best with a specific concentration of sodium in the blood, and your body will do what it needs to in order to maintain this concentration. Going too low can be problematic.
Second, sodium and potassium are the major electrolytes lost through sweat during exercise.
In states of excess sweating, hyponatremia (low sodium) or hypokalemia (low potassium) may occur; both of which bring with them a number of problems.
It is for these reasons that supplementation of electrolytes first became popularized in sports nutrition.
When should you supplement with electrolytes, and with how much?
As was just mentioned, electrolytes are lost through sweat; with sodium and potassium being the main electrolytes lost through sweat.
So, electrolytes are warranted in workouts where you produce a lot of sweat.
Typically, endurance training is where this is most of concern.
A common recommendation made in line with this is to supplement with electrolytes for endurance training sessions lasting 60 minutes or longer.
However, other factors may cause you to sweat to the point of requiring electrolyte supplementation, such as high heat or humidity.
Although, it’s worth noting that most workouts will not make you sweat to the point where this becomes an issue.
A normal ~60-minute strength training workout that is done indoors isn’t going to deplete you of sodium or potassium to the point where you need to supplement. This is why every endurance athlete is familiar with electrolyte supplementation but it is not common practice in powerlifting.
So, here are some scenarios where electrolyte supplementation may warranted:
a 90-minute treadmill workout
a 3-hour hike on a hot day
a 30-45 minute outdoor run in the summer
etc.
So, let’s say after reading this you decide you are going to invest in an electrolyte supplement and use it during your next workout. How much do you need?
Well, a good sports drink has the following concentrations:
460-690 mg of sodium per liter fluid (water)
78-195 mg of sodium per liter fluid (water)
To make this a more understandable number, let’s use a standard plastic water bottle as an example.
A standard plastic water bottle is 20 oz of water.
There are ~34 oz in 1 liter.
So, a standard water bottle, is 0.59 L.
Therefore, for it to have the right dose of electrolytes, it would need 270-400 mg of sodium and 40-120 mg of potassium. Normally, a good sports drink would have carbohydrate in it too, but that’s another discussion.
If you were using Bare Performance Nutrition’s electrolyte product, you would need 1/2 - 3/4 of a full scoop to hit this concentration.
A significantly cheaper, but not as tasty, way to hit this goal would be to add the following to a 20 oz water bottle:
1 pinch (using only index finger and thumb) of table salt
1/4 - 1/2 pinch of potassium chloride (salt replacement)
You should aim to drink this beverage at a sufficient rate to offset bodyweight losses as a result of sweat.
2% of bodyweight loss through sweat is considered the point where performance significantly drops and adverse health outcomes become more likely.
Of course, in order to know how much this actually equates to, you would need to know how much you sweat and how quickly you do; as people vary in this regard.
A common strategy to identify this is the following:
Take your bodyweight with minimal clothing right before beginning some sort of workout
Perform the workout without consuming any fluid
Take your bodyweight after the workout with the same amount of clothing used before (if sweat is trapped in clothing, then results will be confounded; this is why you need minimal clothing)
Then, identify what amount of bodyweight was lost and in what period of time
The answer you get from this tells you how much fluid you need to consume per that unit of time.
As you may infer, these results would only be reliable under the conditions they were tested.
To apply this in different settings, you could either redo the test in the different setting or adjust fluid intake up or down in accordance with the variable’s effect.
What harm can be had from electrolyte supplementation?
The harm that may come from electrolyte supplementation is not from them being “bad for you,” it is a result of them not being the right supplement for the individual at hand.
The only time you would need to supplement with electrolytes if you are are undergoing an activity that is causing an acute, rapid loss of electrolytes.
Specific forms of exercise as described above can have this effect, as well as some specific disease states.
If you are not undergoing any activity that is causing this acute & rapid loss of fluid and electrolytes, then there is absolutely no reason to supplement with electrolytes.
The sodium and and potassium you consume from diet will be sufficient to meet your body’s needs, and intentionally adding more in on top is likely to harm you health long-term.
Sodium is strongly associated with blood pressure increases; and both sodium intake and chronically high blood pressures are strongly associated with cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks.
The average American consumes ~3-5 grams (3000-5000 mg) of sodium per day.
Most authoritative bodies recommend less than 2.3 grams (2300 mg) of sodium per day; although sodium needs for most people are much lower. Furthermore, our daily needs for sodium are actually ~500-1000 mg per day.
In other words, the average american is consuming 6-10x as much sodium as their bodies need.
This high sodium intake maintained over long periods of a person’s life is one of the main reasons why the Standard American Diet (SAD) is considered causative of cardiovascular disease.
These sorts of individuals, who typically are not regularly performing activities that cause high amounts of sweat, do not need electrolyte supplements.
Many supplement companies that sell electrolytes base their marketing off the notion that the average person isn’t consuming enough sodium.
This isn’t just not reflective of the average person’s needs as far as dietary changes go, it’s a flat out lie.
It’s not just a fabricated problem with a pseudo-solution, it’s a step in the complete wrong direction in most people’s dietary behaviors.
Conclusion
My hope is that what you took from this article is that electrolyte supplementation is an important factor for specific populations under specific conditions.
If you are reading this article or regularly engage with my work, then it’s likely you are such an individual.
However, extrapolating this out to saying that EVERYONE needs electrolyte supplementation is a dangerous thing to do.
I wish the average American was regularly performing the sort of activities that justify electrolyte supplements.
The reality is, the average American is not doing so. Most people will spend their lives not meeting physical activity guidelines.
Maybe one day this will be the case. I’d sure as hell would love to see it. However, until then, electrolyte supplementation as a blanket recommendation is not a good idea.