|
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Scotland
Posts: 1,425
S/C/G: 128/127/110
Height: 4'11"
|
Electrolytes - how much do we need?
Who's keeping an eye on their electrolytes, and if so, how are you handling it? We're always told that everyone's eating too much salt due to processed food, amongst much worrying about the nation's blood pressure, but salt is in fact essential to life, and not all of us live on processed food or have high blood pressure!
I've got severe ME/CFS, often diagnosed as fibromyalgia if you're in the US (they're very similar conditions which largely overlap, and actually I've been diagnosed with both by now), and most of us with ME need to have a lot of fluids and a lot of salts in order to avoid dizzy spells, fainting and such due to dysautonomia. If you have ME/CFS, fibro, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, low blood pressure, or anything in that area, it's worth getting your blood pressure checked and generally looking into this, especially the dysautonomia side of things. My friend's ex-partner who had ME actually died suddenly due to lack of enough salt in his body, so it's serious. He hadn't managed to eat properly for a couple of days, had been avoiding salt because everyone tells you to, tried to get his fluids up by drinking water, and I don't think he drank all that much, but he went into a coma and died within the next two days, officially of water poisoning (which is when you have too little salt compared to water in your body). Obviously he was ill and thus more susceptible to this, but he was only 28.
I use a mixture of electrolyte drinks, salting my drinking water (I'm lucky, most people can't stand the taste) and salting my food heavily. For my drinking water, I make up a mix that's about half ordinary salt and half low-sodium salt, so that I get some potassium in there too. The electrolyte drinks are Nuun tablets, now annoyingly hard to get hold of and expensive in the UK, but they're sugar-free, the sweeteners don't seem to cause me any trouble, they taste good, and they have a couple of mildly caffeinated ones which are handy when I need some caffeine.
If you're doing sports, you might need more electrolytes, especially if you're eating at a substantial calorie deficit, and it's also something to bear in mind if you are drinking an unusually great amount of water, or if you've moved to a diet with no added salt. Blood pressure is easy to check, as are the symptoms of low electrolytes and dehydration. If you know you have high blood pressure and need to avoid salt, good, but don't assume that without checking! Similarly, there's a trend amongst dieters to drink really enormous amounts of water. Be careful with that, and check with your doctor. My cardiologist put me on 3 litres/100 oz of fluids a day, and considered that to be a lot for someone my size (4'11 and maybe 120lb at the time). I've seen people here aim for a lot higher than 100 oz without medical supervision.
A friend of mine who's a doctor mentioned that a lot of people with high blood pressure are told to avoid salt, so they switch to low-sodium salt. We're in the UK, where the low-sodium salt sold is partly sodium chloride and partly potassium chloride, but in the US you can also get no-sodium salt which is pure potassium chloride. Anyway, she says that these patients think that low-sodium salt is absolutely fine, keep salting their food at the same high level, and now they're getting far too much potassium instead, which is still bad for the heart. There's a reason why potassium tablets can only be sold with very small amounts of potassium in them. So if you are using low-sodium or no-sodium salt, be careful of that. And if you're relying on potassium tablets to get enough potassium, remember that the dose per tablet is really low, about 5% of your daily potassium requirements, and generally be careful with how you approach this.
Most electrolyte drinks have sugar in them, and certainly all of the medical rehydration ones do. Sugar helps absorption of electrolytes, apart from anything else. Do you need the extra sugar? It depends what you're using it for. If you need to rehydrate because you have severe vomiting and/or diarrhoea and can't keep food down, then yes, you do. If you are doing heavy sports and losing a lot of sweat, you may, though opinion seems to be divided on that. If you're not sweating heavily, chances are you're probably getting enough sugar from your food and don't need to add extra. Either way, if you're using electrolyte drinks or sports drinks, it's worth checking the sugar content, in case you'd been taking in a lot more sugar than you'd realised. The ones with sweeteners are rarer, and you may only find one brand where you like the taste and don't get side effects. One friend of mine who uses electrolyte drinks due to ME has managed to find the High Five ones cheaply and likes them, for instance, another friend who uses them due to sports finds that the High Five ones give them diarrhoea, and personally I find the High Five brand tastes bitter.
There are some foods that are naturally high in electrolytes and can work as mild electrolyte drinks, such as milk or tomato juice. You may be able to add extra salts to them. I don't drink milk and I found that tomato juice was too acidic for me if I was swigging large quantities of it, but it works for some people. Miso soup is one that I like occasionally.
Sodium and potassium are the main electrolytes you need. You also need other minerals, particularly calcium and magnesium, but the amount of those you get in electrolyte drinks is pretty low, and it's important to make sure you get good sources of them in your food, with tablet supplementation as well if needed.
Whether you are making them yourself or buying electrolyte drinks, compare the doses carefully, as they vary enormously and it can be hard to work out equivalent amounts. Some will claim that they are refurbishing various essential minerals but neglect to mention that the dose of all minerals except sodium is so low it's insignificant. This is true of any of the fancy types of ordinary salt, such as grey French salt or pink Himalayan salt (better known as the salt used for gritting the roads!). You'll get sodium out of there in useful quantities, but you will not get remotely significant amounts of any other mineral. If you consumed enough pink Himalayan salt to get a useful dose of magnesium, you would be dead of salt poisoning long before you got there. So beware of dodgy marketing.
I'm still not sure how this relates, but when I was losing weight in 2011, back before I knew about the need for electrolytes when you have ME, I always noticed that some people here would say they bloated and/or experienced a weight loss stall after eating a salt-heavy meal. I was very puzzled by this, because I lost 1lb/week without fail, with daily weighing, and it made absolutely no difference how much salt I ate. I now suspect that the people who experience problems of that sort after eating more salt than usual are the ones who need to be eating less salt in general, and those of us who don't get that sort of problem at all don't need to worry about eating too much salt and may even need to be adding more of it. But it's only a guess. What have other people found?
As a general rule, if you are having episodes of dizziness or even fainting, look into this. Check your blood pressure, at home if you think it's likely to be raised by stress when you're at the doctor's. Ignore anyone who says "there's no such thing as having blood pressure that's too low" (nonsense, if your blood pressure drops too low you die) or "well, aren't you lucky not to have high blood pressure!", and if you're used to hearing that and/or "that can't be right" when doctors take your blood pressure, definitely look into it. I had years of those three comments before I started checking this out, and bear in mind that I am someone whose blood pressure reading is likely to be higher due to stress when a doctor is checking it, so the real readings must have been even lower.
Also get your iron levels checked in these cases, including ferritin (iron stores), as anaemia commonly causes this, and your B12 levels. Be aware that calorie restriction uses up your stores of nutrients as well as your stores of fat, and that VCLDs (Very Low Calorie Diets, 800 cal or lower) can completely wipe out your iron stores in a few months, as well as messing up your electrolyte levels. The RDA of iron is about 11% of the dose of iron needed to treat anaemia, so ordinary vitamin pills won't treat it, and no one should be taking the therapeutic dose of iron without checking that their iron levels are low first, as too much iron is also bad for you. 25% of cases of Restless Leg Syndrome are caused by anaemia, by the way, so if you have RLS, get that checked, and get the numbers for your ferritin. Research has found that in people with RLS, your ferritin level should be above 75, which is higher than what most countries (except Japan) set as the minimum "normal" level. This was the case for me, and I'm so glad it was so easily fixed once we learned about the anaemia connection, as RLS is horrible.
Electrolyte drinks are also popular for treating hangovers, as electrolyte depletion is a big part of those! My partner finds that ever since being put on blood thinners, he is prone to migraine the day after drinking even a pint of beer, so he always makes sure to drink a pint of electrolytes before going to bed if he's had any beer. They definitely seem to be a factor with migraines.
|
