Electrolyte Report After Week One

 Electrolytes Follow Up After Week Number 1

As mentioned I started using some electrolyte powder in my drinking bottle at the Downs.  The one I bought is Dr. Berg's.  It's a modestly raspberry & lemon flavored powder.  It comes with a cute scoop and the recommended serving size is one scoop per 16 ounces of water.  (Ok, it's fluid ounces of water...)

The jar contains about 50 scoops of powder and it costs close to $50.  My cost is close to $2 a day to spike my water for PB, which is my water intensive activity.

The powder contains Mg, NaCl, K, Ca.  The dietary recommended amounts of these is 29%, 2%, 21%, and 6%. The amounts seem low to me, but reviewers have said that this formula has a lot of content that others have less of.  In theory, you would get all of these and more from your regular food intake.  Clearly you need more NaCl for example.  So what you eat is a big part of this.  Right now I'm eating a fairly restricted diet, so I thought I'd try this just in case I was missing something important.  And my dose is two scoops per cooler full.

Jigsaw, who advertises on the pickleball tournaments has the following for their powders: Na 90 mg, Cl 900, Mg 50, K at 800 mg.  Clever of all these folks to change units!  The Berg Powder has Na 40 mg, Cl 60, Mg 120, K 1200, and Ca at 75, which is not in the Jigsaw powder.  I'm happier with the Berg mix as NaCl I'm going to get when I eat my daily peanuts!  The Ca is an added bonus, but I eat a lot of cheese, so am not too worried about that.  Jigsaw stuff looks to be about 83 cents per serving when you buy the packets.  It's a bit less expensive when you get the jar of powder and scoop your own.  I'm not sure of shipping charges, so the prices are really close.  The Jigsaw powder is also sugarless if that's an issue.

So now we discuss how well this is working in the first week.  There are two muscle issues that are electrolyte driven and that is general muscular weakness, and then muscle cramps after working out.  And I suspected that I was having some of those symptoms.  I get sore in my back and even with a couple of days off, it never seemed to subside.  Also If I clenched my toes, my feet would cramp up easily.  And every now and then a thigh or calf would cramp and actually hurt a bunch.

I think that I'm feeling better.  I'm not thinking about how much my back aches and if I clench the toes, I'm not getting all of the cramping I used to.  There has been no thigh or calf cramps, but those were rare.  So I'll conclude that as far as I've gone with this, I'm feeling better.  So I've got coincidence!  I have also dropped a couple of pounds, which doesn't happen much and while I'm not aware that I'm eating differently, I'm guessing that it's not connected to the powder.

I'm paying $2 a day to not have a sore back.  Which is a bargain I think, and I'm saving some money on Ibuprofen to boot.  

The stuff does seem expensive to me and to others.  There are a lot of homemade recipes out there, you can make your own.  They use lemon or lime juice, some apple cider vinegar, some Himalayan salt and usually a keto friendly sweetener. I'm not sure I have the ingredient list compete, please look one up if you are interested.  Also bullion cubes seem to be popular as well as eating a lot of avocados.

Let's end the update there and I'll return to this in a week or so.  Basically, I think there is something going on and it's positive for me.