I know gator-aid and its like advertise that they have lots of them. And I know sometimes I feel bad if I sweat a lot and just drink water. But are they just advertising… salt? Are there different kinds of electrolytes, and if so are they interchangable?
Effectively, yes. “Electrolytes” is a collective term for the ions that help move stuff into and out of your cells. These are primarily sodium and potassium, although calcium also plays a role. Sodium is the most important of these for sports drinks, because it is the one you most lose through sweat.
Unfortunately, most sports drinks don’t really contain enough to balance out heavy sweating, because sodium salt (aka normal salt) tastes, unsurprisingly, salty. If a drink had the right balance of sodium, it would be noticeably salty. Gatorade has one line of drinks that do that, and Pedialyte is specially made for the correct balance. Sports drinks really jack up the sugar to help hide the salt taste.
Most sports drinks, rather than having the sodium you need to replace sweat, instead jack up the potassium (think Prime and it’s advertised 843mg of electrolytes, 700mg of which is potassium). This doesn’t really replace the electrolytes you need, but it also doesn’t make the drink nearly as salty.
When you see “electrolytes”, you should flip around to the nutrition label, which must list the actual amounts of sodium and potassium. This will tell you if it will actually help you recover from activity, or if it’s just more sugar water and advertising.
Edited to add:
why is sodium so important? Because your cells use a mechanism called “osmosis” to move water back and forth. Water molecules naturally move from areas of high concentration to areas of lower concentration. In the cell, this means that water will go in to the cell if the inside of the cell has more sodium than the outside, and leave the cell when the outside has more than the inside.
When you sweat, two things happen: you lose water and you lose sodium you lose more water than sodium, so your blood becomes saltier. Water moves from inside your cells to your blood; this is what it means to be “dehydrated”. To counter it, you need to dilute your blood and increase the amount of sodium in your cells. Hence, drinking water with sodium can help replenish both and speed recovery from dehydration.
Sodium is also used for all the electrical activity of our body (such as thinking and moving and living…), and is fundamental in adsorption of nutritions in digestion. Sodium, potassium and calcium are so important that it is difficult to even list all processes they are involved.
Edit. To add context our cells spend between 30 and 70 % of their energy to move around sodium and potassium ions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium–potassium_pump A good chunk of what we eat is to move them around
bold of you to assume
💀
Maybe, but do you really think you could keep that down?
I’ll practice with a smaller banana to train my gag reflex
That sounds horrible. Can you share the link?
Our diets are already rich in sodium. Because it makes food more tasteful.
You really don’t need any additional sodium
Fantastic ELI5, excellent response. Thank you!
This is an awesome ELI5, thanks for helping me to better understand this!
Is it easy to make such a drink yourself? And at least a bit drinkable?
I buy this and add it to my water. Use a little less than a ‘serving’ first time at it can activate your gut - maybe from the magnesium? Buying it by the bag makes it much much cheaper than liquid iv.
https://www.bouldersaltcompany.com/shop/
So would you say 500-510mg Na to 370-380mg K is a good ratio for a drink additive? Trying to figure out where liquid IV (or is it Liqvid IV? Lol) stacks up.
I’m a bit curious in this too. I don’t have an answer for you but totally anecdotal, I do notice I feel noticeably better even just halfway through a liquid IV which I’ve never noticed with any other sports drinks.
Funnily, I actually just recently watched an episode of Kurzgesagt that explains how osmosis and diffusion work in cells. Pretty cool stuff!
Link to the episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1KkQrFEl2I
Great eli5! Thank you!
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Pedialyte or Gatorlyte are both balanced sports drinks and I’d say they’re “better” than standard Gatorade if the goal is hydration exclusively, but they taste like salt water with flavoring added
Myself and the 3 others living in my house just all got e. Coli infections and the Gatorlytes were recommended by the Dr.s over regular ones or water due to the sheer amount of liquid loss experienced
Back in high school I had some friends tour an NFL stadium. They got to see the field and locker rooms and all. I didn’t get to go with them, so while they were in the locker rooms they stole a bunch of these powdered electrolyte drinks they had out for the players and brought some back for me. I remeber trying them and they tasted like straight sweat. It makes sense, but they were gross. Same flavor as licking someone’s forehead.