I drink tons of water and I get lots of cramps, presumably from electrolyte shortage. Is there any way of knowing what the right amount of salt is to be consuming?
basic osmosis - water washes out the body's minerals. esp. tap water.
add a bit of salt to your tap water - it helps to retain water and doesn't flush out your deposits.
too much water and too much salt are both bad! had a dude in my village die after drinking around 5 liters on a dare - nervous system failure. it was so severe that he couldn't be saved.
Rule of tongue - if it tastes salty its too much salt.
Take a half full water bottle. Add some salt. See if it is salty yet, then keep adding until it is just barely salty. Then fill the bottle to the top. If you taste salt you added too much.
Note that with kcl, you start with less water, more like a quarter of the bottle, because the salty flavor is much weaker.
No, this is only when I am going to exercise for an extended period of time, 30min+. I generally consume enough potassium from fruits and vegetables not to need any additional electrolytes in my day-to-day water.
Basically I don't consume sugar or alt-sugars so I make my own version of gatorade.
Hey. If you're drinking lots of water and getting lots of cramps, don't ask people on the internets. Ask a physician, right? If there's something wrong with your kidneys, say, you won't make it better until you figure out what it is.
Very often people on the internet have more expertise in things than a physician. Also, physicians are often overkill for minor problems, the system would be overloaded if we went to them for every little thing.
First of course do some research on your own don't want to give wrong advice, but generally I would say:
Start by making sure you're eating enough. Adequate salt quantity starts by getting it from your food and getting enough to eat. Second just (slowly) add small amounts to your food and see if that addresses the problem. If you're exercising or doing physical activities and sweating a lot while also drinking a lot of water, you likely need to add some salt to food. As others have said, it should not be such an amount that tastes overly salty. Start really small.
