More SALT, Not Less | Wellness Force #Podcast

Somewhere along the line, hydration became synonymous with water. It is not, if you look in a textbook of medical physiology, hydration is water and electrolytes, and the electrolytes in kind of specific ratios. Most people will be familiar with, like going hiking. And they drink water. They drink water and they're sweating. They've got a backpack on, so you're sweating. Like, even if it's cool outside, you're sweating like crazy. At that interface between the backpack and and your body, what do your hands do? They swell like crazy. And it's because virtually no one supplements with sodium. We are actually getting into a hyponatremic state. And when our sodium levels are low, we will tend to get edema and swelling. This is where the feet will swell, the hands will swell, and the brain will swell. People can get sick and potentially die because the potassium levels get out of balance with the sodium. And we start getting water infiltrating into the tissues, and this is where we get edema. So in that high sweat scenario, a sauna, exercise, ruck, marching, stuff like that, you need to mainly focus on sodium. This is where, like, over the time course of a week or a month, yes, we need sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphates, bicarbonate, all of the electrolytes. But in that time course of, like a hard physical event or sauna, the main problem is the rapid and significant loss of sodium. So that is another reason why you really have to target that, Sam.