Wellness Bite: Do You Actually Need Electrolytes?

So today, we're gonna ask: Do you actually need electrolytes every day? First, let's talk about what an electrolyte actually is.

They are minerals that carry an electrical charge when dissolved in fluid.

We're talking about things like sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, and calcium, and they are doing some very important things.

Your nervous system uses electrical gradients to send signals.

Your muscles need electrolytes to contract, including, and very importantly, your heart.

And electrolytes help your body regulate where water actually goes because hydration is not just simply water enters mouth, hydration accomplished, big thumbs up.

Unfortunately, [chuckles] there's a little more to this.

Your body has to absorb that water and distribute it appropriately between different fluid compartments.

This is where sodium becomes really interesting.

Now, when we think about sodium potassium, we tend to lump them together, and there, there's a reason for it.

There's actually a little molecular machine sitting in our cell membranes called the sodium potassium pump, and I think this is really, really cool because it uses ATP, which is our cellular energy, to pump three sodium ions out of the cell and two potassium ions into the cell over, and over, and over again, and this helps create an electrical gradient across the cell membrane.

And once again, that gradient is fundamental to things like muscle contraction, fluid balance, nerve signaling, and even helps transport systems involved in moving nutrients such as glucose and amino acids.

This is where when someone says sodium is bad, I say, "Well, actually, we do need sodium to literally help create and maintain this gradient in our cell membrane." But you'll hear the simplified expression that while sodium takes waste out of the cell, while potassium brings nutrients in, it's not quite how it works.

A lot of times they work together to really maintain the gradients across our cells, and this allows a tremendous amount of cellular physiology to happen.

So they do work in lockstep.

Now, we hear a lot about sodium because there are some Americans that already consume plenty of it, and where do we get the vast majority of sodium is actually our processed foods.

They add a lot of sodium, a lot of that table salt to make it taste honestly good.

Now, a lot of times potassium intake [chuckles] can be low by comparison.

So when you're looking at an electrolyte packet or product, don't automatically assume that the packet with the biggest sodium number is therefore the quote, unquote, "best electrolyte." Context matters.