Do you even hydrate, bro?

Sleep, diet, and hydration form the holy trinity of training, and a lot of people seem to want to forget that. But that’s what I’m here for. We’re going to dig into what it means to be “hydrated” and what you can do to make sure you’re a hydrated beast in whatever you do.

Water is the stuff of life, and for good reason. Adult humans are about 55-60% water, and people with more muscle require more water. Marginal dehydration – think 2% of bodyweight in water lost – can cause massive decreases in endurance, power, and strength. All pretty important things, right? You can easily lose water while sweating (duh), and through breathing. However, water isn’t the only thing you lose when you sweat. Because the main source of water for sweat is from blood, many of the constituent salts (a.k.a. electrolytes) in your blood get taken with that water and excreted by your sweat glands. The amount of salts that you lose is directly tied to your sweat rate: the more you sweat, the more salt you lose!

But why is it so bad to lose these salts? Well, here is where we dig into why they’re called electrolytes. That name makes it sound like they have something to do with electricity! In a sense, they do. You see, all of those salts are kept in the body in the form of ions, or atoms with a relative electrical charge. That’s why you always see them referred to as Na+ (a sodium ion) or K+ (a potassium ion), and so forth. In the body, these salt ions are absolutely critical to how your nervous system and muscles function.

Your body uses pumps to create what is called an ion gradient, where (for example) you have a ton of sodium outside a cell and very little inside the cell. In nature, ions want to establish an equilibrium, where there are basically the same amount of ions on both sides of a membrane. Your body uses this imbalance to create action potentials, which is what happens when we talk about nerves “firing”. Action potentials involve all of those imbalanced salts rushing to establish an equilibrium, allowing nerves to function and control things they need to control, like your muscles.

Ok, so now we know why salts are important, and how easily we can lose them, but how do we get them back? A classic answer is “sports drinks” like various different -ades you might find in a grocery store. However, those drinks often have a TON of sugar in them, and very little of what you actually need. That’s where Elixir electrolyte packets come in. These convenient, easy to use packs are formulated with no sugar, and more sodium and potassium than the average sports drink or hydration formula. That’s simply because your body loses sodium and potassium more easily than other salts, like calcium. Get Elixir and get control of your hydration with no extra sugar in your diet.