Are Electrolyte Supplements Worth It?

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When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)

Any sports nutrition outlet will sell electrolyte supplements. Sometimes in the form of sports drinks that claim to be more hydrating than water, or tablets that can be dissolved in water to make the same. How do they work, and should we be drinking them?

What are electrolytes?

They’re called “electrolytes” because they are ionized particles (so, they have a positive or negative electrical charge, depending on which kind of ion they are) that are usually combined in the form of salts.

The “first halves” of the salts include:

  • Sodium
  • Potassium
  • Calcium
  • Magnesium

The “second halves” of the salts include:

  • Chloride
  • Phosphate
  • Bicarbonate
  • Nitrate

It doesn’t matter too much which way they’re combined, provided we get what we need. Specifically, the body needs them in a careful balance. Too much or too little, and bad things will start happening to us.

If we live in a temperate climate with a moderate lifestyle and a balanced diet, and have healthy working kidneys, usually our kidneys will keep them all in balance.

Why might we need to supplement?

Firstly, of course, you might have a dietary deficiency. Magnesium deficiency in particular is very common in North America, as people simply do not eat as much greenery as they ideally would.

But, also, you might sweat out your electrolytes, in which case, you will need to replace them.

In particular, endurance training and High Intensity Interval Training are likely to prompt this.

However… Are you in a rush? Because if not, you might just want to recover more slowly:

❝Vigorous exercise and warm/hot temperatures induce sweat production, which loses both water and electrolytes. Both water and sodium need to be replaced to re-establish “normal” total body water (euhydration).

This replacement can be by normal eating and drinking practices if there is no urgency for recovery.

But if rapid recovery (<24 h) is desired or severe hypohydration (>5% body mass) is encountered, aggressive drinking of fluids and consuming electrolytes should be encouraged to facilitate recovery❞

Source: Fluid and electrolyte needs for training, competition, and recovery

Should we just supplement anyway, as a “catch-all” to be sure?

Probably not. In particular, it is easy to get too much sodium in one’s diet, let alone by supplementation.And, oversupplementation of calcium is very common, and causes its own health problems. See:

To look directly to the science on this one, we see a general consensus amongst research reviews: “this is complicated and can go either way depending on what else people are doing”:

Well, that’s not helpful. Any clearer pointers?

Yes! Researchers Latzka and Mountain put together a very practical list of tips. Rather, they didn’t put it as a list, but the following bullet points are information extracted directly from their abstract, though we’ve also linked the full article below:

  • It is recommended that individuals begin exercise when adequately hydrated.
    • This can be facilitated by drinking 400 mL to 600 mL of fluid 2 hours before beginning exercise and drinking sufficient fluid during exercise to prevent dehydration from exceeding 2% body weight.
  • A practical recommendation is to drink small amounts of fluid (150-300 mL) every 15 to 20 minutes of exercise, varying the volume depending on sweating rate.
    • During exercise lasting less than 90 minutes, water alone is sufficient for fluid replacement
    • During prolonged exercise lasting longer than 90 minutes, commercially available carbohydrate electrolyte beverages should be considered to provide an exogenous carbohydrate source to sustain carbohydrate oxidation and endurance performance.
  • Electrolyte supplementation is generally not necessary because dietary intake is adequate to offset electrolytes lost in sweat and urine; however, during initial days of hot-weather training or when meals are not calorically adequate, supplemental salt intake may be indicated to sustain sodium balance.

Source: Water and electrolyte requirements for exercise

Bonus tip:

We’ve talked before about the specific age-related benefits of creatine supplementation, but if you’re doing endurance training or HIIT, you might also want to consider a creatine-electrolyte combination sports drink (even if you make it yourself):

Creatine-electrolyte supplementation improves repeated sprint cycling performance: a double-blind randomized control study

Where can I get electrolyte supplements?

They’re easy to find in any sports nutrition store, or you can buy them online; here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience

You can also opt for natural and/or homemade electrolyte drinks:

Healthline | 8 Healthy Drinks Rich in Electrolytes

Enjoy!

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  • The Science of Nutrition – by Rhiannon Lambert
    Get a clear overview of the science of nutrition in this book by a nutritionist. The only downside is the section on Intermittent Fasting.

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  • Thinking, Fast and Slow – by Dr. Daniel Kahneman

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    We all try to make the best decisions we can with the information available… Don’t we?

    Yet, somehow, a survival chance of 90% seems better than a mortality rate of 10%, and as it turns out, we as fallible humans are prey to all manner of dubious heuristics.

    Nobel Prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman lays out for us two sytems of thought process:

    • Fast, intuitive, emotional
    • Slow, deliberate, logical

    He makes the case for how and why we do need both, but often end up using the wrong one. He notes how the first is required for efficiency, or we would spend all day deciding what socks to wear… The second, meanwhile, is required for high-stakes decisions, but is lazy by nature, and often we don’t engage it when we ought to.

    Over the course of many diverse examples, Dr. Kahneman shows how again and again, the second system is slowly cogitating at the back of the class, while the first system is bouncing up and down with its hand in the air saying “I know! I know!”, even when, in fact, it does not know.

    For a book largely founded in economics (it’s a massive takedown of the notion of the rational consumer), it is not at all dry, and is very readable in style. It’s engaging throughout, and readers far removed from Wall Street will find plenty of ways it relates to our everyday lives.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to avoid making many mistakes in what you’d assumed to be rational decisions, this book is critical reading.

    Click here to check out “Thinking, Fast And Slow”, and enjoy the results of better decisions!

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  • Real Superfoods – by Ocean Robbins & Nichole Dandrea-Russert

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    Of the two authors, the former is a professional public speaker, and the latter is a professional dietician. As a result, we get a book that is polished and well-presented, while actually having a core of good solid science (backed up with plenty of references).

    The book is divided into two parts; the first part has 9 chapters pertaining to 9 categories of superfood (with more details about top-tier examples of each, within), and the second part has 143 pages of recipes.

    And yes, as usual, a couple of the recipes are “granola” and “smoothie”, but when are they not? Most of the recipes are worthwhile, though, with a lot of good dishes that should please most people.

    Bottom line: this is half pop-science presentation of superfoods, and half cookbook featuring those ingredients. Definitely a good way to increase your consumption of superfoods, and get the most out of your diet.

    Click here to check out Real Superfoods, and power up your health!

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  • Cottage Cheese vs Ricotta – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing cottage cheese to ricotta, we picked the ricotta.

    Why?

    Cottage cheese is a famous health food, mostly for being a low-fat, low-carb, source of protein. And yet, ricotta beats it in most respects.

    Looking at the macros first, cottage cheese has more carbs, while ricotta has more protein and fat. The fat profile is pretty much the same, and in both cases it’s two thirds saturated fat, which isn’t good in either case, but cottage cheese has less overall fat which means less saturated fat in total even if the percentage is the same. Because the difference in carbs and protein is not large, while ricotta has considerably more fat, we’ll call this category a win for cottage cheese.

    In terms of vitamins, cottage cheese has more of vitamins B1, B5, and B12, while ricotta has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B9, D, E, and K, so this one’s a win for ricotta.

    In the category of minerals, cottage cheese has slightly more copper, while ricotta has much more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc. In particular, 2.5x more calcium, and 5x more iron! An easy and clear win for ricotta here.

    Taking everything into account: yes, cottage cheese has less fat (and thus, in total, less saturated fat, although the percentage is the same), but that doesn’t make up for ricotta winning in pretty much every other respect. Still, enjoy either or both (in moderation!) if you be so inclined.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Is Dairy Scary?

    Take care!

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  • Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?

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    The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.

    The death toll was shocking, as were reports of chaos in nursing homes and seniors suffering from isolation, depression, untreated illness, and neglect. Around 900,000 older adults have died of covid-19 to date, accounting for 3 of every 4 Americans who have perished in the pandemic.

    But decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized. Today, most people — and government officials — appear to accept covid as a part of ordinary life. Many seniors at high risk aren’t getting antiviral therapies for covid, and most older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting updated vaccines. Efforts to strengthen care quality in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debate over costs and the availability of staff. And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of covid, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.

    In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to covid — a group that would fill more than 10 large airliners — according to data provided by the CDC. But the alarm that would attend plane crashes is notably absent. (During the same period, the flu killed an additional 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126.)

    “It boggles my mind that there isn’t more outrage,” said Alice Bonner, 66, senior adviser for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “I’m at the point where I want to say, ‘What the heck? Why aren’t people responding and doing more for older adults?’”

    It’s a good question. Do we simply not care?

    I put this big-picture question, which rarely gets asked amid debates over budgets and policies, to health care professionals, researchers, and policymakers who are older themselves and have spent many years working in the aging field. Here are some of their responses.

    The pandemic made things worse. Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but “it feels more intense, more hostile” now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University.

    “I think the pandemic helped reinforce images of older people as sick, frail, and isolated — as people who aren’t like the rest of us,” he said. “And human nature being what it is, we tend to like people who are similar to us and be less well disposed to ‘the others.’”

    “A lot of us felt isolated and threatened during the pandemic. It made us sit there and think, ‘What I really care about is protecting myself, my wife, my brother, my kids, and screw everybody else,’” said W. Andrew Achenbaum, 76, the author of nine books on aging and a professor emeritus at Texas Medical Center in Houston.

    In an environment of “us against them,” where everybody wants to blame somebody, Achenbaum continued, “who’s expendable? Older people who aren’t seen as productive, who consume resources believed to be in short supply. It’s really hard to give old people their due when you’re terrified about your own existence.”

    Although covid continues to circulate, disproportionately affecting older adults, “people now think the crisis is over, and we have a deep desire to return to normal,” said Edwin Walker, 67, who leads the Administration on Aging at the Department of Health and Human Services. He spoke as an individual, not a government representative.

    The upshot is “we didn’t learn the lessons we should have,” and the ageism that surfaced during the pandemic hasn’t abated, he observed.

    Ageism is pervasive. “Everyone loves their own parents. But as a society, we don’t value older adults or the people who care for them,” said Robert Kramer, 74, co-founder and strategic adviser at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.

    Kramer thinks boomers are reaping what they have sown. “We have chased youth and glorified youth. When you spend billions of dollars trying to stay young, look young, act young, you build in an automatic fear and prejudice of the opposite.”

    Combine the fear of diminishment, decline, and death that can accompany growing older with the trauma and fear that arose during the pandemic, and “I think covid has pushed us back in whatever progress we were making in addressing the needs of our rapidly aging society. It has further stigmatized aging,” said John Rowe, 79, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

    “The message to older adults is: ‘Your time has passed, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources, fall in line,’” said Anne Montgomery, 65, a health policy expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She believes, however, that baby boomers can “rewrite and flip that script if we want to and if we work to change systems that embody the values of a deeply ageist society.”

    Integration, not separation, is needed. The best way to overcome stigma is “to get to know the people you are stigmatizing,” said G. Allen Power, 70, a geriatrician and the chair in aging and dementia innovation at the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging in Canada. “But we separate ourselves from older people so we don’t have to think about our own aging and our own mortality.”

    The solution: “We have to find ways to better integrate older adults in the community as opposed to moving them to campuses where they are apart from the rest of us,” Power said. “We need to stop seeing older people only through the lens of what services they might need and think instead of all they have to offer society.”

    That point is a core precept of the National Academy of Medicine’s 2022 report Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity. Older people are a “natural resource” who “make substantial contributions to their families and communities,” the report’s authors write in introducing their findings.

    Those contributions include financial support to families, caregiving assistance, volunteering, and ongoing participation in the workforce, among other things.

    “When older people thrive, all people thrive,” the report concludes.

    Future generations will get their turn. That’s a message Kramer conveys in classes he teaches at the University of Southern California, Cornell, and other institutions. “You have far more at stake in changing the way we approach aging than I do,” he tells his students. “You are far more likely, statistically, to live past 100 than I am. If you don’t change society’s attitudes about aging, you will be condemned to lead the last third of your life in social, economic, and cultural irrelevance.”

    As for himself and the baby boom generation, Kramer thinks it’s “too late” to effect the meaningful changes he hopes the future will bring.

    “I suspect things for people in my generation could get a lot worse in the years ahead,” Pillemer said. “People are greatly underestimating what the cost of caring for the older population is going to be over the next 10 to 20 years, and I think that’s going to cause increased conflict.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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  • How To Reduce The Harm Of Festive Drinking (Without Abstaining)

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    How To Reduce The Harm Of Festive Drinking

    Not drinking alcohol is—of course—the best way to avoid the harmful effects of alcohol. However, not everyone wants to abstain, especially at this time of year, so today we’re going to be focusing on harm reduction without abstinence.

    If you do want to quit (or even reduce) drinking, you might like our previous article about that:

    How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    For everyone else, let’s press on with harm reduction:

    Before You Drink

    A common (reasonable, but often unhelpful) advice is “set yourself a limit”. The problem with this is that when we’re sober, “I will drink no more than n drinks” is easy. After the first drink, we start to feel differently about it.

    So: delay your first drink of the day for as long as possible

    That’s it, that’s the tip. The later you start drinking, not only will you likely drink less, but also, your liver will have had longer to finish processing whatever you drank last night, so it’s coming at the new drink(s) fresh.

    On that note…

    Watch your meds! Often, especially if we are taking medications that also tax our liver (acetaminophen / paracetamol / Tylenol is a fine example of this), we are at risk of having a bit of a build-up, like an office printer that still chewing on the last job while you’re trying to print the next.

    Additionally: do indeed eat before you drink.

    While You Drink

    Do your best to drink slowly. While this can hit the same kind of problem as the “set yourself a limit” idea, in that once you start drinking you forget to drink slowly, it’s something to try for.

    If your main reason for drinking is the social aspect, then merely having a drink in your hand is generally sufficient. You don’t need to be keeping pace with anyone.

    It is further good to alternate your drinks with water. As in, between each alcoholic drink, have a glass of water. This helps in several ways:

    • Hydrates you, which is good for your body’s recovery abilities
    • Halves the amount of time you spend drinking
    • Makes you less thirsty; it’s easy to think “I’m thirsty” and reach for an alcoholic drink that won’t actually help. So, it may slow down your drinking for that reason, too.

    At the dinner table especially, it’s very reasonable to have two glasses, one filled with water. Nobody will be paying attention to which glass you drink from more often.

    After You Drink

    Even if you are not drunk, assume that you are.

    Anything you wouldn’t let a drunk person in your care do, don’t do. Now is not the time to drive, have a shower, or do anything you wouldn’t let a child do in the kitchen.

    Hospital Emergency Rooms, every year around this time, get filled up with people who thought they were fine and then had some accident.

    The biggest risks from alcohol are:

    1. Accidents
    2. Heart attacks
    3. Things actually popularly associated with alcohol, e.g. alcohol poisoning etc

    So, avoiding accidents is as important as, if not more important than, avoiding damage to your liver.

    Drink some water, and eat something.

    Fruit is great, as it restocks you on vitamins, minerals, and water, while being very easy to digest.

    Go to bed.

    There is a limit to how much trouble you can get into there. Sleep it off.

    In the morning, do not do “hair of the dog”; drinking alcohol will temporarily alleviate a hangover, but only because it kicks your liver back into an earlier stage of processing the alcohol—it just prolongs the inevitable.

    Have a good breakfast, instead. Remember, fruit is your friend (as explained above).

    Want to know more?

    Here’s a great service with a lot of further links to a lot more resources:

    With You | How to safely detox from alcohol at home

    Take care!

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  • Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)

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    What does it mean, to flourish? And how can you do it more?

    In 2009, psychologists Diener et al developed the “Flourishing Scale”, or as it was more prosaically called originally, “Subjective Wellness Scale”. The name was changed later, as it was noted that it went beyond what was typically considered mere “wellness”.

    This scale was so useful, that colleagues scrambled to see if they could improve on it, such as with PERMA (2012), which looked at:

    • Positive emotion
    • Engagement
    • positive Relationships
    • Meaning
    • Accomplishment/Achievement

    While popular (despite the tenuous acronym, it is a very good list of things to foster in your life), this was studied and measured scientifically and found to not be an improvement on the Flourishing Scale / SWS, so we’re going to stick to the original version for now.

    We couldn’t find an interactive online quiz for the scale though (apart from this NY Times one, which is paywalled for NYT subscribers, so enjoy if you’re a NYT subscriber!), so here’s the source material, still hosted on the website of the (now deceased, as of a couple of years ago) author:

    Flourishing Scale (FS) ← it’s an eight-question, ranked choice scale

    How did you score? And…

    What are the keys to flourishing more?

    According to Jeffrey Davis M.A., of Tracking Wonder, there are five key attributes that we must develop and/or maintain:

    The ability to direct and re-direct your attention

    This isn’t just a task-related thing.This is about your mind itself. For example, the ability to recognize what your emotions are telling you, thank them for the message, and then set them aside. Or the ability to cut through negative thought spirals! How often have you worried about future events that didn’t transpire, or twisted yourself in knots over a past event that you can’t change?

    Action: check out our previous article “The Off-Button For Your Brain← this is a technique for switching off racing thoughts, and it’s really good

    Want more? We also did this:

    Healthy Mind In A Healthy Body: A Whole Scientific Toolbox Of Tips And Tricks For Psychological Wellbeing

    The tendency to shape your time with intention and for impact

    Time is an incredibly precious asset. How you use it is a very personal choice. You don’t have to maximize productivity (though you can if you want), but for example there’s a difference between:

    • Deciding to spend an hour watching a TV show you really enjoy
    • Wondering what’s on TV, browsing aimlessly, watching listlessly, just a distraction

    In the former case, you are enjoying your time. Literally: you are experiencing joy during your time.

    In the latter case, to borrow from Jim Steinman, “you were only killing time and it’ll kill you right back”!

    Action: do a time audit for a week, and see where your time really goes, rather than where you expect or hope for it to go. Use this information to plan your next week more intentionally. Repeat as and when it seems like it might be useful!

    The practice of constant improvement

    Fun fact: you are good enough already. And you can also improve. You don’t have to, but improving in the areas that are meaningful to you can really add up over time. This could be becoming excellent at something for which already have a passion… It could also be brushing up something that you feel might be holding you back.

    Action: do a quick SWOT* self-assessment. Then plan your next step from there!

    *Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. What are yours?

    The ability to communicate and listen to others

    A lot of this is about feedback. Giving and receiving feedback are often amongst the hardest things we do in the category of communication… Especially if the feedback is negative. How to decide what to disregard as baseless criticism, and what to take on board (and try not to take it personally), or the other way around, how to present negative feedback in a way that won’t trigger defensiveness.

    Action: check out our previous article “Save Time With Better Communication” for some tips that really make relationships (of any kind) so much easier.

    The commitment to positive experiences

    Many things in life are not fun. Often, we know in advance that they will not be fun. The key here is the ability to make the most of a bad situation, and seek out better situations by your actions. Not like a lost person in a desert seeks water, but like a chess player who employs a general strategy to make tactical advantages more likely to appear.

    Action: think about something you have to do but don’t want to. How could it be made more fun? Or failing that, how could it be made at least more comfortable?

    See also: Working Smarter < Working Brighter!

    Want to read more?

    Check out: What Is Flourishing in Positive Psychology? (+8 Tips & PDF)

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