I watched a YouTube video on various electrolytes the other day. I was interested in the video as it was talking about water consumption during exercise.
One of the issues is that whatever electrolytes you have in your system, you might be diluting them just by drinking water.
I'm a bit skeptical about all of this, but I was wrong about carb consumption and so I don't feel I can condemn it out of hand.
Part of the video was what the electrolytes are and what they do. Some of them provide muscle contraction and others muscle relaxation. An unbalance might cause some muscle cramps. Others might cause general skeletal muscle soreness.
Without imparting too much personal info, I would be happy to have less muscle soreness and less cramping. I'm not sure I have big problems in these areas, but there are some issues.
So I went to look for some electrolyte powder with the intention of using it in my water bottle that I schlep to the Downs every day. I can keep adding the powder as I drink it down and this might be a large portion of the water that I drink every day.
About powders, some of the sports drinks have a fair amount of sugar or maltodextrin in them. As I am trying to avoid carbs, I wanted a powder that didn't have that. The stuff I found has a touch of Stevia in it to provide a bit of sweetness, but no insulin reaction.
The stuff is not cheap, a touch over $2 per ounce usually. I bought the stuff from Dr. Berg directly from his web site. It is available at about the same price on Amazon. His was the cheapest in price and I liked the Stevia in it. He has a lot of YouTube videos, if you are curious.
I will try this and see what happens and pass along the results.
The electrolytes are magnesium, potassium, chloride, sodium and calcium. There are others, but I think these are the biggies in re muscle issues, etc.
That's the introduction. I'll start in on the powder when it gets here and maybe check in on a weekly schedule.
I look forward to your evaluation of the product. I occasionally get cramps but that happens when it is very hot outside otherwise I usually just have muscle soreness. I have used a product at home that helps with cramps. If you feel the cramps coming on or have them, I just spray it on and it seems to work. Don't know if it is psychological but I'm sticking with it. I don't know the policy for naming products so I'll not name it here unless asked by Rich.
ReplyDeleteHi Todd, this is Rich. I've looked into this some more and I'll generate an update early next week. I'll have a week's worth of using it at this point. But let me say a couple of things. What I've been told is that one of the electrolytes, maybe magnesium but I'm not sure, is required at a certain level or you will get muscle cramps. Electrolytes work at a cellular level as I understand it, so I'm thinking that a spray on product would not be the solution to an electrolyte being unavailable when the muscles need it. But it may be that heat or something is your problem and the spray might be cooling, for example. But now I'm guessing a bit. I'll try and get some harder information for the update post.
DeleteI'm mixing a powder from Dr. Berg. He sells it directly or on Amazon. It's not cheap, but others cost more. His powder is well received in the keto community as there is lot of electrolytes in it and no sugar or calories. More info next week.