How much electrolytes are too much?

CinnamonScallop
CinnamonScallop Posts: 15 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi there,
I'm in my second week of going low carb/no sugar. I'm feeling good, supplementing with vitamins, still eating a good amount of low carb greens, along with good quality meats fish butter eggs cheese dairy. Trying to do 3 to 6 miles a day, training for a half marathon... Live at super high altitude.
I've been drinking electrolyte packets in my water to supplement, but I'm wondering how many electrolytes are too much? I also was reading about potassium and it's easy in the initial stages of going low to no carbs to be too low in potassium.
I know with all the supplementing it's easy to over supplement or under supplement.
Any advice would be much appreciated!
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Best Answer

  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,261 Member
    Answer ✓
    It'll depend on what your low carb diet consists of. LMNT's formulation is well under the RDA for all of those and this would be once a day, that's what I do when supplementing. My diet is for the most part keto and basically has very little sodium and I do salt freely with mostly sea salt and I eat lots of greens, swiss chard, fatty fish, avocado's and squash and some but not a lot of nuts and seeds so I work with once a day and if your not feeling dizzy or foggy or your muscles are good and not cramping up I suspect that's an indication of balance. but yeah 3 times a day is too much imo and I would stick with once, especially considering a low carb diet can still have quite a bit more sodium than a keto diet. My tell tale are muscle cramps because I play hockey and workout a lot my muscle cramps are the canary in the coal mine, so to speak.

Answers

  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,261 Member
    Your using an electrolyte now so are you worried it's too much, too little? I know with ELMT for example the standard packets have 1000mg of sodium, 200mg's potassium and 60 mg's magnesium witch is formulated by a keto guy Robb Wolf who was a power lifting champion and worked with Canadian and American Military and NASA for some nutritional seminars and coaching etc which seems to be the a decent formulation. Anyway I make my own but I have tried this product and it's pretty good with lots of different flavors if your into that.
  • CinnamonScallop
    CinnamonScallop Posts: 15 Member
    @neanderthin
    Thank you for jumping in with that! Much appreciated! I was wondering if you can overdo it on the electrolyte packets. As in drinking two or three a day is that too much or is that okay? With what you posted above it seems like a lot- 3000 mg alone of sodium. I know when doing this you have to add sodium as well, and I'm doing that- I'm just worried about overdoing it. Any idea where I can find guidelines on how much I need to be supplementing with (regarding electrolytes, potassium, sodium, magnesium etc) when going no sugar no carbs? I appreciate the time!
  • CinnamonScallop
    CinnamonScallop Posts: 15 Member
    @neanderthin
    This helps so much. Thank you, great answer, detailed and concise. I'll pull it back to one packet a day! I'm getting in a decent amount of sodium.

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