Jonathan Steedman (00:00.931)
Hey food groupies, we need to talk about electrolyte supplements. By golly, we need to talk about electrolyte supplements because they have become super popular to talk about. I'm sure you've probably seen your favorite social media person. well, I mean, that's obviously me and I haven't spoken about them. So, but if you happen to follow somebody else, I don't know why you would, but anyway, maybe you do. And you've probably seen them talk about it as well. And yeah, there's this big movement to just, I think make it seem like electrolyte supplements is something that everyone

should be doing or using rather, that for peak health and peak performance, you should be using an electrolyte supplement. Even down to, know, water does not properly hydrate you. I've seen crazy claims like that, which from a marketing perspective, the fact that they have managed to convince people that water does not hydrate you is phenomenal, like hats off to them, but it's also crazy depressing. And I guess like a lot of big wellness marketing,

They've taken a few kernels of truth and a few specific scenarios where yes, that is true, but then they have just applied that scenario to everybody. Right. So I will go through when you should use an electrolyte supplement, like who could stand a benefit from it. Cause there's definitely times where they're relevant. The risks of using them when you don't need them. Cause that's a very real thing that a lot of people don't talk about. It's not one of those things of like, well I'll have some

And if I don't need it, it's just a good insurance policy. No, it's not the case. So we do need to talk about that. And then I'm not going to really talk about what electrolytes are because I don't care. And that's not the point of this podcast, but they are calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium are the main electrolytes. They do lots of different things in your body. They are essential. So it's very important that you have electrolytes, but here's the big thing. You get them from your food, right? Electrolytes are found in, you know, like

Essentially, if you are following the quote unquote healthy diet, I don't mean perfectly, I just mean, you probably have a rough idea of what that's supposed to look like. Plenty of color, plenty of plants, good amounts of protein, healthy fats, all of these variety things, like all of that. If you're hitting that, you're almost certainly getting enough electrolytes from your food, unless you fall into, like I said, these kind of specific scenarios that we'll talk about in a second.

Jonathan Steedman (02:25.998)
And for most of the what I call general public and just so we're clear because I feel like general public people hear that and they're like, not me. I'm a unique snowflake. You're probably not. I'm not. I am absolutely general public. And I train pretty regularly and pretty hard. I would like to think, but I'm still absolutely general public when it comes to electrolyte supplements. Okay. So please just be mindful of putting yourself in a camp that you don't belong in. So if you are a

quote unquote, normal person, quote unquote, in the general public, then you will be getting plenty of electrolytes from your food. And then if you're drinking a reasonable amount of fluids each day, and I would count fluids as water, herbal tea, with no limits, water and herbal tea as much as you would like. And you can technically count coffee and diet soft drinks or soft drinks even as I guess they are, they're still hydrating, they're still fluids, but we don't want you like.

getting the majority of your hydration from those. And so you add up all your fluids that you're drinking in a day. And there's a rough guide again for people who aren't losing a bunch of fluid, which we'll talk about in second. Anywhere from one and a half to two and a half liters is probably going to be heaps. I've heard it described, you can kind of think of it a little bit as like two and a half to three mils per kilogram of body weight, if you want to get really particular. But essentially, if you are going to the bathroom,

and your urine is light yellow through to clear. So it's okay if there's a bit of color. It's actually, it's fine. You want to be somewhere between there. You don't want to be peeing clear all the time. If you're peeing clear all the time, you don't need more electrolytes. You probably just need to chill out on the water because you're drinking too much, which is something I'm going to talk about in a second. But yeah, if you are averaging those ranges of fluid intake and your urine is light yellow through to clear, you're hydrated. Please ignore the rest of this podcast. You're good.

Okay. So I have a bit of a theory that the electrolyte craze has come from one of two places. I assume they're cheap and easy to make, which would make sense as to why people want to sell them, right? Really big margins make a lot of money really easily. I think the second reason is there was that really big push for hydration a few years ago or a little while ago now. You know, everyone's carrying around those crazy four liter, like those gallon drums of water and drinking.

Jonathan Steedman (04:50.634)
four plus liters of water a day because again, coming at this more is better idea. And then if you do that, you go to the toilet all the time. But if you take electrolyte supplements, you actually kind of don't because you maintain and retain that water. But there's a reason for a lot of us that the body is getting rid of that water. You've had too much and it doesn't need it. If you force it to retain it by taking in more electrolytes, it actually increase your blood volume.

which can increase your blood pressure, which is not great, right? And so that's a good segue, which let's pretend I planned into some of the potential risks of taking electrolyte supplements when you don't need them. It's important to remember that like vitamins and minerals, with electrolytes, there's pretty much three levels of electrolyte intake. You can have not enough, you can have enough, and you can have too much. There's no like optimal where

if I have enough, but if I take more, I'm going to get even more of those benefits. You kind of have the benefits or you don't. And so again, if you're eating decent diet, drinking an okay amount of fluids, you will have the benefits. Adding an electrolyte supplement on top of that is not going to give you more benefits. And again, like I said earlier, it's not a case of, well, if you don't need it, it's not a big deal. It's a good insurance policy because one of the big issues is

High sodium intake through food, it used to be through food, but now for a lot of people, it's also via crazy high electrolyte supplementation. High sodium intakes increase your blood pressure, which can significantly increase your risk of the number one killer in the world. It can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, like so specifically heart attacks and strokes and things, right? And so a high sodium intake is very closely linked with that. And some of these electrolyte supplements, I won't name brands because I don't want to get sued, but you know.

They can have, I was going to try and be clever and infer one, but they can have like a thousand milligrams of sodium in them, which unless you have an insane, least specific niche hydration requirement, that is not what most people need. is a huge, that is virtually half of your daily recommended intake of sodium. Sure, if you're sweating a lot, then your sodium requirements go up a little, but they don't go up that much. And if you're getting a normal amount of sodium from your food and then you're putting it,

Jonathan Steedman (07:17.065)
thousand milligrams of sodium via an electrolyte supplement on top of that, I would be worried, right? Long-term about that increase in your blood pressure. Sodium also is linked with increased risk of stomach cancer as well. Like not to, I don't want to be the like scary person saying the electrolyte supplements are giving you stomach cancer. But if they're a supplement that's costing you money, not giving you a benefit and things you don't need with these potential risks, I would maybe think twice about using them. All right. So

Who should use them or when are there potential cases for them? Now, of course, as always check with your doctor or your dietitian before you jump on these, particularly if you've got blood pressure issues or blood pressure medication and those sorts of things. If you are losing more than two to 3 % of your body mass in an exercise session, that's largely going to be fluid, a little bit of glycogen like fuel burn up, but it's largely going to be fluid. You probably are going to benefit from rehydrating with a electrolyte supplement. That's not because

But basically what that does is it just speeds up your rehydration. So if you don't have an exercise, if you don't have another training session for at least 24 hours after that one, you also don't need to. If you go about the rest of your day drinking enough fluids, eating at a decent adequate diet, you'll rehydrate in plenty of time. Okay. But if you are backing up or you've done a really, really hard session that is completely obliterated your hydration, then I would rehydrate with a supplement. Again, I would check it. I would make sure you're not using one.

those thousand milligram of sodium ones, unless your healthcare provider has specifically recommended those. I think they're overkill for almost everybody. The other scenario where it might be beneficial is similar, guess, to the training, but maybe just work. If you are someone who works in really hot environment and you do sweat a ton and lose a ton of fluid, then rehydrating with some mild electrolyte supplements throughout the day is probably also a good idea.

The one other time, sorry, a couple of other times you could use them. So the reason they've sort of come about or they initially got marketed is for like gastro, which makes total sense. Cause again, you lose a ton of fluids in that scenario and electrolytes in that scenario. And so you want to replenish both and electrolyte supplementation helps with that. And then the last thing is going to be potentially having a mild electrolyte supplement first thing in the morning, if you're training in the morning, because overnight.

Jonathan Steedman (09:43.706)
even if you rehydrate, sorry, you really hydrate the night before and you eat good electrolyte supplementation, eat a good diet with electrolytes in it the day before, you've gotten mildly dehydrated overnight. And if you want to perform at your peak first thing in the morning, rehydrating with a little mild electrolyte supplement can just fast track that and make sure you sort of put your best foot forwards for that, right?

That being said, like those are very niche specific times. And if that's not you, and again, like I said, that's not me. I very, very rarely use an electrolyte supplement. I will do it if I've done a really hard long run in the heat and have lost like two liters of fluid. And if you're wondering how you calculate that, the easiest way to do it is to weigh yourself before you train and then weigh yourself straight afterwards. Not from a body weight, body fat, I'm trying to lose weight, messed up perspective, just that change in weight is

largely going to be due to hydration. So you can kind of do a bit of a back calculation there. But outside of that, I'm just, I'm really sick of seeing these supplements being pushed to people who don't need them, making people think that what they're doing is not enough. Water is not enough. Their normal diet is not enough. Encouraging them to spend money on expensive, unnecessary supplements that, like I said, could also potentially put you at a greater risk of certain things. So I hope that's helped. If it hasn't,

Let me know, we can fight about it politely in the DMs on Instagram. Otherwise, I'll chat to you guys next time.