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“Hydration is vitally essential to your total well being,” agrees Jennifer Hankenson, M.D., Yale Medication bodily medication and rehabilitation doctor and assistant professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at Yale Faculty of Medication. Along with water, your physique wants important minerals to manage fluid stability and regulate mobile processes within the physique. “These minerals are referred to as electrolytes and embrace sodium, chloride, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium,” Hankenson explains.
Basically, she says, “Electrolytes work as gatekeepers that regulate cell actions akin to muscle contraction, controlling pH stability and plenty of different essential bodily features.”
Jackie Newgent, RDN, CDN, plant-forward culinary nutritionist, provides that the human physique does an incredible job of naturally regulating electrolytes—however they’ll get out of whack when the quantity of water in your physique modifications. Per the U.S. Nationwide Library of Medication, it is best to goal to absorb the identical quantity of water you lose. Too little water will end in dehydration and an excessive amount of, overhydration. “When you expertise a extra severe electrolyte imbalance, whether or not too low or too excessive, it could have doubtlessly severe adverse results in your heartbeat, since your coronary heart is a muscle in spite of everything,” Newgent says.
Tara Collingwood, M.S., RDN, CSSD, LD/N, ACSM-CPT, a board-certified sports activities dietitian, provides that electrolytes are mostly misplaced by sweat, or when your fluid stability is off from different well being circumstances.
In a few of these circumstances, folks could require greater than only a tall glass of water. “That is as a result of while you’re experiencing dehydration, like from extreme sweating, it means you’ve an imbalance of electrolytes and physique fluid, not simply fluid,” Newgent explains. “Fluid-electrolyte stability is what’s essential for correct hydration.”
That is the place an electrolyte powder, which often is available in particular person packets prepared to combine with water or one other liquid, is available in. “It helps change the electrolytes we lose,”* Collingwood confirms.
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