Hydration and Electrolytes

By Patrice Jones, CPC, CWDS

Dehydration is the net water loss from your body. In winterguard, members sweat out 4-6 grams of sodium a day during all-day rehearsal and competition days and lose significant amounts of water with it. Hydration and electrolyte supplementation are the biggest factors in how well a member feels and how efficiently their body performs and recovers. Sodium is crucial to every cell in your body and is important to nerve and muscle performance. The consequences of dehydration (water loss) or water intoxication (too much water) can be severe or even deadly. Make no mistake, drinking a lot of water without sodium is dangerous and can lead to death. At no point in time should members take in significant amounts of water without sodium. This could lead to sodium deficiency (correctable by processes within the body that don’t show up on bloodwork) and, eventually, hyponatremia (low sodium levels that are not correctable by your body and will show up on blood work).

Sodium deficiency can be reversed by electrolyte supplementation. Hyponatremia is a medical emergency and requires careful and measured replacement done in a hospital setting. The percentage of minerals like sodium in your body goes down when taking in water alone which will eventually signal your body to equalize the fluid and mineral levels. To do this, your body shifts water into your cells to make the concentration of sodium even inside and outside of the cell. The result is that the cells swell. When this happens in your brain, which is enclosed by the skull, your brain swells which leads to really bad things like seizures, coma, and eventually death. Your cells can only expand so much before they burst. It’s crucial to understand why drinking water without sodium is a bad idea for anyone who is losing water and sodium, like winterguard athletes. Every year, we have members that don’t believe us when it comes to water and salt, but they quickly learn to trust what we’re telling them. We prefer to avoid this altogether and have members follow our lead. Proper hydration is not something that can happen only on the weekends when you have rehearsals and competitions. It must be a daily practice to give you the best advantage.

The signs of dehydration include headache, fatigue, dizziness, muscle cramps, constipation, low blood pressure, fainting, nausea, and rapid heartbeat. When you’re dehydrated, your body finds ways to bring processes back to normal (known as homeostasis) and conserve water. When your blood volume decreases from dehydration, your body is less efficient at transporting oxygen. To fix that, the heart must beat faster to increase the pre-contraction force and get precious oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. The result of dehydration is lower blood volume, reduced cardiac output, and decreased aerobic capacity which equates to reduced muscle contraction, poorer muscle performance, more fatigue, and reduced ability to think. This is when injuries to yourself and others are more likely to happen.

Sodium deficiency (loss of sodium or failure to replace lost sodium) causes headache, muscle cramps, brain fog, fatigue, and mood changes. Dehydration is not the same thing as sodium deficiency, and sodium deficiency is different than hyponatremia. It’s important to recognize that some of the symptoms are the same between all three conditions, and it is the job of the health team member and other medical professionals to determine the cause of your symptoms, so it can be reversed. This is why we will ask members how much water you’ve had today AND how many electrolytes. We’ll also ask about diarrhea and food intake because those things could be impacting you as well. Sodium deficiency is often the cause of the symptoms which means your body’s fluid balance is probably off as well (too much water, not enough sodium). Sodium helps your body hang onto water, and without enough sodium in the winterguard member’s diet, your body will take steps to hang on to as much as possible. On the surface, that seems like a good thing, but the way it’s done, releasing  things like aldosterone, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, which also raises blood pressure. In addition, norepinephrine and epinephrine cause insomnia. When the body can no longer compensate and keep sodium levels in a normal range, it starts stealing it from bone. Having a normal sodium level only means that your body’s sodium retention system is functioning properly; it does not mean you are taking in adequate sodium to support your body in the best way possible. That is why symptoms are important, and you should report anything including headaches, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, etc. Hyponatremia occurs after a prolonged period of sodium deficiency when your body’s sodium retention system fails and can be caused by heart failure, kidney disease, diarrhea, vomiting, diuretic use/overuse, and excessive consumption of plain water. This last one is why so many elite athletes, including winterguard members, seem in a fog after performances and long rehearsal days. Preventing dehydration is important, but just as important is preventing sodium deficiency by replacing the sodium you will lose.

For more detailed information and scientific research, please click here.

What you need to do:

Start properly hydrating now and continue that on a daily basis. Ideally, your rehearsing on your off days and require the same hydration requirements. Order LMNT if you can and start using it. For now, let thirst and urine color be your guide (see graphic below). You want your urine to be a pale yellow. The guidelines for athletes are one ounce of fluid for every pound of body weight per day, spread out throughout the day. I keep LMNT with me whenever on site, but I’m also an LMNT dealer, so I can order for you at a 50% rate ($23 a box for 30 packets instead of $46 a box). I take no cut and make no profit. The only other electrolyte supplement I consider appropriate is Liquid IV, but the LMNT electrolyte profile is better for athletes.

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