Are Electrolyte Supplements a Scam?
Do you “need” supplements to be healthy? Can food alone meet all of your nutritional needs? Aren’t supplements just the stepchild of the pharmaceutical industry? Are electrolytes any different?
My first priority, in anything, is outcomes — is it working. The secondary question is sustainability, how long can those outcomes persist? The tertiary question is consequences, at what cost are we obtaining those outcomes?
Certainly “drugs” — recreationally obtained, legally prescribed, or purchased over-the-counter — have been pushed ad nauseam by a for-profit culture. Our “sickness industry” is more than ready and willing to sell you a cure-all pill or potion.
On the other hand it is certainly true that if you’re eating adequate bio-available protein, getting sun in your eyes and on your skin, moving your body, and abstaining from the center aisles of the grocery story; you’re probably doing alright.
However, nothing sells like outrage porn and black-and-white blanket statements. So, first let’s consider the intent of anything you see on social media. That content is made for mass appeal. It inherently lacks nuance and individuality. Even if someone is a doctor in real life, they’re not your doctor on Instagram!
The average America takes less than 5,000 steps / day (1). For reference, I tore my meniscus 8 days ago and am still walking more than that. To the credibility of the homeopathic folks above, if you’re walking less than 5,000 steps per day you’ve got bigger problems than electrolyte supplements.
Moving on, we lose fluid through urine, sweat, and even by breathing. It’s important to note that we don’t just sweat water either.
Sweat rates can vary dramatically depending on diet, ambient temperature, humidity, exercise intensity, and individual body types. The range is quite broad, all the way from 0.5 L/hour to more than 2.5 L/hour (2, 3, 4).
A simple experiment is to go to the bathroom, urinate, and weigh yourself (naked) before training. Assuming you do not eat or drink anything during the training session, you can weigh yourself (naked) again afterwards and know approximately how much fluid you lost.
One liter (L) of water weights about 1 Kg or 2.2 Lbs. From there you can extrapolate about how many L/hour you lost.
The “saltiness” of sweat also varies person to person and even season to season (5). However, the average is about 700-1,400 mg of sodium (Na) per L of sweat (6, 7). Similarly, there’s a range of potassium (K) and magnesium (Mg) concentrations in sweat as well. For K, the average is about 235 mg/L while it’s about 27 mg/L for Mg (8).
That gives us a Na:K ratio of about 4:1, which is what you find in credible commercial products:
LMNT (5:1)
Unfortunately, there’s not an easy way to measure the concentration of electrolytes in your sweat. So, you’ll start with some general averages and experiment from there.
From the literature then, if we sweat 0.5 - 3 L/hour at the above concentrations, we lose approximately the following electrolytes per hour of exercise:
0.5g - 1.5g of Na
0.125g - 0.75g of K
15mg - 90mg of Mg
Starting with a conservative (low concentration) estimate, let’s see what food sources can replenish the loss:
Conservative Estimate: 500mg Na, 125mg K, and 15mg Mg / hour
1C Whole Milk (24mg Mg, 322mg K, 105mg Na), or
4oz Pork Chop (25mg Mg, 392mg K, 54mg Na), or
4oz Ground Beef (22mg Mg, 307mg K, 76mg Na).
We can easily add salt to our food or water to make up the difference in Na, so that’s not an issue. Salt (NaCl) has about 2g (2,300mg) of Na per teaspoon (tsp). So, each of the above foods would need about 1/4 tsp of salt added.
It seems that with diluted sweat, a low sweat rate, and exercising one hour or less per day, you can make up your electrolyte needs from food sources alone. Next, let’s look at a more liberal example for heavy sweaters:
Liberal Estimate: 1.5g Na, 0.75g K, and 90mg Mg / hour
16oz Pork Chop (99mg Mg, 1.5g K, 218mg Na), or
20oz Ground Beef (107mg Mg, 1.5g K, 380mg Na), or
4C Whole Milk (98mg Mg, 1.3g K, 420mg Na).
Again, we could easily add salt, so sodium doesn’t appear to be the limiting factor — potassium is. If someone is eating a proper animal-based diet then 1-2 lbs of beef per day probably isn’t an issue. They can still likely get their electrolyte needs met by food sources alone, assuming (1) they have a physically inactive job and (2) exercise < 1 hour / day.
Unfortunately, that is a lot of people. But what about competitive athletes? Laborers? People who do both? Those sweat rates per-hour-of-exercise could easily be applied to someone who’s working in a field or an attic in July for an entire 8-hour shift.
Likewise, most folks accustomed to conventional fitness gyms can’t comprehend what happens in a serious CrossFit gym, or a boxing / wrestling practice. Think literal pools, not just puddles, of sweat on the floor and wringing your shirt out like a dish rag.
Are we then going to eat 8 lbs of pork chops or 1.5 gallons of whole milk every day? Speaking for myself, no. I’ll gladly pay ~$0.75 / serving for an ethically sourced, American-made, tasty commercial product.
Redmond Re-Lyte Hydration: per serving
$0.75 (tub), $1.30 (stick pack)
Na: 810mg
K: 400mg
Mg: 50mg
LMNT: per serving
$1.30 (stick pack)
Na: 1,000mg
K: 200mg
Mg: 60mg
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