Too Much Water or Not Enough?

Hyponatremia is a condition where the body lacks salt

Sodium is a required element for normal body functions. You lose it by sweating and urinating. It is replenished in your diet. While the body has a remarkable ability to maintain sodium and water balance throughout a variety of conditions, it is put to a severe test in endurance events.

Coconut Water- Natural Electrolyte sports drink

When these events occur in hot and/ or humid weather, the body's sodium/water balance can become off balance resulting in Hyponatremia, the most common electrolyte disorder.

What is Hyponatremia?

Some people mistake hyponatremia with dehydration and respond by drinking lots of water. While you can have dehydration and hyponatremia at the same time, drinking excess water sometimes causes hyponatremia. That's because the absorption of water into the bloodstream can dilute the sodium in the blood making the condition worse.

Hyponatremia is a low concentration of sodium in the blood. In other words, you don't have enough salt floating around in there and you need pretzels with salt, not more water. It is said that hyponatremia occurs in events like the Iron Man, marathons and triathalons. But this writer has had it happen in a 7-mile run on a hot day. More than once. Older people and those on a low sodium diet are more prone.

Symptoms

Hyponatremia can begin with confusion and lethargy and can progress rapidly to more severe symptoms. More severe symptoms include twitching, siezures, stupor, coma nausea, muscle cramps, disorientation, slurred speech and confusion.

I feel weird and get prickly goosebumps, chills and a dreamy weird feeling. But I also feel alarmed and that something is not right.

Conversely, I feel sick and nauseated when I'm dehydrated which is how I can tell the difference or tell that I have the hyponatremia along with the dehydration.

Clif Shot Bloks flavor Margarita has 3x the sodium of their regular Shot Bloks, providing you with the energy you need in endurance events as well as the sodium to ward off muscle cramps and hyponatremia. Clif Shot Blok with 3x Sodium- Margarita

Treatment

Major symptoms require immediate care by qualified medical personnel. It can result in coma or even death in the most severe of cases.

Minor symptoms can be rectified with a sports drink or salty pretzels. For those like me on a low sodium diet, I have found that Pedialyte, or the "fake pedialyte" in the recipe above, works the fastest simply because pretzels are too "gluey" for me to eat when I have hyponatremia (probably due to also suffering from dehydration at the same time). If I hydrate with about one cup of plain Pedialyte I can then follow up by eating something salty.

Prevention

Athletes should take in the adequate amount of sodium days and even hours prior to an endurance event. Athletes often take salt tablets before a race. On a hot day, I drink one half cup of the plain generic pedialyte. It's not delicous, it's not terrible. But it works. There is argument that sports drinks do work and one that says they don't work. They do seem to work but they are not high in sodium concentration and actually have a ton of sugar. So it's best to not rely on them for sodium replacement but to supplement with salty foods.