Published 3rd December 2024
Do you need to drink electrolytes every day?
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Electrolyte water and electrolyte drinks have grown in popularity. With their sciencey name, they’ve captivated many social media wellness peddlers.
But what are electrolytes? And do you need to consume these drinks every day to “optimize” your health and ensure you live to 180?
As with most wellness information on social media sites, there’s a lot wrong with this trend. Although drinking electrolytes is important in certain very specific situations, you don’t need to do it daily.
For most people, these drinks won’t do much harm (or good), if you have them every day, but for others, they might cause problems.
Below, we’ll explain what electrolytes are, why they really are essential for health, and why you shouldn’t waste your hard-earned money on daily electrolyte drinks.
What are electrolytes?
Technically, electrolytes are minerals with a positive or negative charge when dissolved in water. And they’re vital for your health. In fact, the survival of all multicellular life depends on them.
Some of the most common electrolytes in your body are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and chloride.
They help nerves carry messages around your brain and body, maintain healthy blood pressure, ensure your blood doesn’t become too acidic, and much, much more. You literally couldn’t move or think without them.
Like many aspects of health, balance is key. It’s not that more is always better, in the same way that megadoses of vitamins can harm your health.
Electrolytes need to be in the right places and in the right amounts. Thankfully, your body is incredible. So, as long as you’re in good health, it seamlessly manages this balancing act.
If your electrolyte balance is off, however, it can cause trouble. For instance, muscles need electrolytes to work properly: calcium, sodium, and potassium in particular. If their levels are out of whack, they won’t function right.
As an example, if you have too little potassium, you’ll experience muscle cramps and twitching. And if you have too much potassium, you’ll experience muscle weakness.
When you consider that your heart is essentially a huge muscle, it’s clear why your body needs to maintain the correct levels.
So, we clearly need electrolytes. Now, we’ll explain why drinking them daily isn’t necessary:
Your kidneys are great
As we mentioned, your body is excellent at maintaining the correct balance of chemicals, which includes electrolytes.
Two of the main players in this balancing act are your kidneys. As fluids pass through these wonderful organs, electrolytes can either be shunted back into your blood to move around your body (reabsorption) or pumped out in urine (excretion).
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But how do they know whether to reabsorb or excrete? This process is controlled by hormones. For instance, sodium levels are regulated by aldosterone, a hormone that’s released from your adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys.
These glands can detect levels of electrolytes in the blood. In response, they increase or decrease aldosterone release, which then controls whether sodium is released or recirculated.
It’s a similar story for other electrolytes. Your body has evolved a suite of complex hormonal signals that ensure they’re always kept within a healthy range — well, almost always…
When electrolyte drinks are a great idea
If you eat a healthy, diverse diet, you’ll always have enough electrolytes. But in some situations, you might lose a bunch in a short amount of time, so an electrolyte drink can help you replenish them quickly.
Intense exercise and heat stroke
As you sweat, you lose electrolytes. So, if you’ve just completed a very intense, prolonged exercise session — an hour or more — electrolyte drinks can help you replenish them quickly.
However, if you’ve just done a standard workout and got a little sweaty, they’re unnecessary.
Also, if you’ve spent too long in the sun or been particularly active in a hot climate, you might develop heat stroke. Drinking electrolytes is often part of the treatment.
Vomiting and diarrhea
When you experience a bout of vomiting and/or diarrhea, you’ll lose a lot of water and electrolytes.
Electrolyte drinks can be useful here, because you may not want to eat anything, and your body needs its electrolytes and water replenishing.
Can drinking electrolytes ever be bad for you?
For most people, occasionally consuming drinks that contain electrolytes won’t cause any issues — if you consume more than you need, your kidneys will deal with it and excrete any excess.
However, if you have a problem with your kidneys, and they’re not quite working as efficiently as they should, you may end up having more electrolytes than your body needs, upsetting the delicate balance.
Also, because one of the main electrolytes in these drinks is sodium, if you’re salt-sensitive or already have high blood pressure, it’s best to avoid these drinks outside of the situations outlined above.
It’s also important to mention that many of the electrolyte drinks available at the grocery store are ultra-processed and contain a raft of additives, like, colorants, flavorings, and artificial sweeteners.
Electrolyte drink recipe
Thankfully, if you genuinely need an electrolyte drink, you can quickly and easily make them at home.
To make 1 liter (around 4 cups), you simply mix together the following:
1 L of water
6 level teaspoons of sugar
1/2 level teaspoon of salt
Then, stir until the sugar dissolves.
What about salt water?
Some TikTok accounts claim that drinking salt water every morning will “aid digestion” and keep you in tip-top shape.
As you can see from the recipe above, salt water is essentially an unsweetened form of electrolyte drink.
So, everything we’ve covered in this article applies to salt water, too. It can be helpful if you have lost a lot of electrolytes, but for most people, it won’t provide any benefits at all.
Summary
Certain wellness influencers and drink manufacturers might say otherwise, but electrolyte drinks are simply unnecessary for the vast majority of people.
Unless you have heat stroke, have been vigorously exercising for more than an hour, or have experienced vomiting or diarrhea, you don’t need them. And for some people, they may even carry risks.
