Everything you need to know about electrolytes

Have you ever finished a run and noticed a thin layer of salt on your hands or forehead? This is evidence that your body is losing salt – or electrolytes – through sweat. Maintaining electrolyte levels is very important to your running performance, whether you are training or achieving a new personal best.

Research confirms that fluid intake and adequate hydration during exercise are essential, especially during long training sessions and competitions. The key role of fluid intake during running is to maintain hydration, body temperature and an adequate amount of plasma (blood).

So what are electrolytes?

Electrolytes are essential minerals (including sodium) that the body needs to stay hydrated. However, their role goes further – they also support important processes in the body, including muscle contraction, blood pressure and nerve signaling, to name a few.

Electrolytes help your body retain fluids during hard exercise when you sweat by helping to pump fluids into working muscles.

What happens when the body lacks electrolytes?

Ensuring that plasma volume and body temperature remain within the optimal range has a direct impact on performance. When your core temperature rises due to dehydration, your plasma volume decreases, causing your heart rate to increase, which in turn accelerates fatigue.

Dehydration also affects cognitive function, causing an inability to think clearly. The main symptoms of low sodium intake and dehydration are indigestion, nausea, flatulence, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and dizziness.

How to replace electrolytes?

There are various options for replacing lost electrolytes - electrolyte drinks, electrolyte tablets to dissolve in water, and salt capsules/sticks that you can take directly. They are often added to sports drinks in varying amounts.

Most runners sweat between 400 and 2,400 ml per hour of exercise, with the average value being around 1,200 ml per hour. This varies with age, gender, weight, exercise intensity and ambient temperature.

A sweat test is the easiest way to determine exactly how much sodium you're losing through sweat, but as a general rule of thumb, it's generally recommended that runners consume about 700 to 900 mg of sodium per 1,000 ml of fluid during long training and competition. This can be a mix of electrolyte tablets, electrolyte powders, energy drinks and whole foods.

But be careful about the formula you take. The problem with taking diluted electrolytes is that if you don't drink enough, then you don't get enough electrolytes. Therefore, only electrolytes are recommended, for example in a capsule, to get 300 mg of sodium and other minerals every hour. One capsule of Crown PRO SALT contains 310 mg of sodium, 54 g of potassium, 8 g of calcium and almost 6 g of magnesium.

When to take electrolytes?

Most of the time, whether or not you need to take electrolytes depends on the air temperature and what you're doing. The warmer it is, the more you will sweat and the more sodium you will lose.

You can buy Crown capsules PRO Salt and Crown capsules Magnesiumin the web shop VITALGO and get 30% discount with code VITALGO30. Discounts are not cumulative.