Electrolyte – Weight Loss Diet Solutions

Did you know that potassium is classified as a metal? Strange as it sounds, your body needs this metal – it’s an essential mineral that occurs in abundance in your body. Roughly 95% of your body’s potassium is stored within your cells. It’s called an electrolyte, like sodium, calcium, magnesium and chloride, because it conducts electricity when dissolved in water.

Potassium and Electrolyte Balance

It’s very important for our bodies to maintain the correct amount of potassium. A deficiency can manifest itself as muscle weakness, fatigue, irritability, confusion or heart problems. Potassium is often loss through sweat, which is why athletes drink electrolyte balancing drinks – to replace loss potassium and other electrolytes. The same is true of alcohol consumption, so down a sports drink after a night of drinking too.

This mineral can have a big impact on your weight through indirect means. It won’t cause fat to magically melt away, but it will support some bodily processes that your body must go through for weight loss.

One thing potassium does is contribute to healthy muscles. Healthy muscles are able to contract correctly, heal after injuries, and grow with the correct exercise techniques. This is important because muscles are 24 hour calorie burning machines. The more you engage your muscles, the stronger and bigger they’ll become – making them burn more and more calories whether you’re actively trying to or not. Muscles take up a lot of energy (calories) just to survive. Fill your body with more muscle mass, and fat will naturally start being reduced.

Another thing potassium will do is assist your body in converting food into energy. Potassium is important to the health of your cells. Inside your cells, an organelle called mitochondria is busy combining your food’s nutrients with oxygen, thus converting it into energy. Potassium helps keep this process running smoothly. With the increased energy, you’ll find you have better workouts and more energy to keep up with your weight loss goals.

Potassium and Water Weight

Potassium also helps to balance sodium levels. This helps a great deal if you have problems with water weight.

There are many differences in expert opinions about just how much potassium you need on a daily basis. There’s no number set in stone, but aim for around 3500 mg a day. In most American’s existing diets, only 2000 mg of potassium is provided. Although it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal, it means most American’s are slightly deficient in potassium and may be suffering from minor ill effects of that deficiency.

Luckily, it’s easy to increase the amount of potassium you’re consuming by adding more healthy foods to your diet. Potassium is found in large quantities in many fruits and vegatables. Look to swiss chard, mushrooms, spinach, celery, romaine lettuce, squash, basil, tomatoes, cauliflower, asparagus, cucumbers, bananas, oatmeal, peanuts and yogurt to name a bunch.

Whenever possible, avoid cooking or adding water to foods when you’re eating them for the purpose of increasing potassium levels. Doing so will reduce potassium intake. If you think you’re not getting enough potassium because you like to cook your potassium rich foods, consider drinking parsley tea, which extracts large amounts of potassium from the parsley, leaving it in the hot water.

And although potassium does so many great things for you and will help with weight loss, it’s important that you don’t go overboard. You can go too far, and taking too much potassium could put you in danger. Excess amounts can cause hyperkalemia. Hyperkalemia may cause stomach irritation and possibly trigger a heart attack because it causes irregular heartbeat. It’s hard to overdose on food and supplement sources, though. It usually only becomes a danger if you take potassium salts or if you’re naturally prone to develop hyperkalemia.

Potassium is a great tool to help you reach your weight loss goals. It’s simple to obtain too, as you simply have to eat a variety of healthy foods, which should have been the first commitment you made when deciding to lose weight anyway.

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It’s summertime and the sweating comes easy for children. Whether they are enjoying a pickup game of basketball or competing at a sports camp, how does a parent know the appropriate amount of liquid refreshment to offer?

Part of the mystery lies in whether the child’s body produces a lot of salt while engaged in a difficult workout.

Staying Hydrated During Exercise

Brendon McDermott

Staying hydrated and avoiding heat illness are two areas Dr. Brendon McDermott at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga understands, and he is often asked about his research in this area. McDermott, Assistant Professor, Clinical Coordinator for Graduate Athletic Training Program and Co-Director of the Applied Physiology Laboratory has one overarching goal: to prevent heat related deaths, particularly in athletes.

One of McDermott’s current studies focuses on student athletes who cramp during intense movement, creating an extra layer of exercise performance frustration. There are two prevailing theories about the cause of cramps. Some researchers believe those who produce higher amounts of salt when they sweat harbor an electrolyte imbalance which initiates a cramp, while others blame neuromuscular fatigue. By measuring the sweat and salt outputs of students who cramp compared to a control group who doesn’t, with common factors like age, weight, and similar levels of activity, McDermott hopes to unravel this painful mystery.

Even if your child has not complained of cramping while exercising, there are some tips to keep in mind. Hydration guidelines have evolved for the average person, but who exactly is the average person? Each body reacts differently and replenishment needs depend upon the individual, according to McDermott.

How To Figure Out Sweat Rates

“Sweat rate is very simple to calculate: weigh yourself before exercise, with as little clothing as possible; exercise for a half an hour and don’t drink or use the bathroom for that half hour; weigh yourself again, wearing the same amount of clothing to see how much you’ve lost,” McDermott said.

To get a true picture of sweat rate, this test should be done in the cold, in the heat, at different intensities of exercise. It will then be easier to gauge whether your child is a heavy or light sweater.

If that sounds like a lot of work there’s a quicker way to assess hydration needs, and it’s focused on the delicate matter of, ahem, passing a different kind of water.

“You can monitor your urine color. It should have a light yellow tinge to it. Lemonade is much better than apple juice. And if you’re delving into the iced tea realm, it’s time to drink. It’s normal to have darker urine in the morning,” McDermott said. “As for frequency, some people are camels, other people urinate frequently.”

McDermott explains body size is not the main factor in sweat production. During his training for an Olympic marathon, accurate measurements showed Alberto Salazar lost nearly 10 pounds of water an hour. He only weighed 145 pounds.

“When you’re talking about a football lineman who loses 10 pounds of water, that may not be so bad, but for someone who is 145 pounds, that’s a huge percentage,” McDermott said. “If someone is losing 10 pounds of water per hour and they are told to replenish with 16 ounces of water, that’s one pound, and one-tenth of what you are losing in an hour—that’s insufficient.”

Similarly, young children at sports camps, especially those who wear heavy pads for long periods of time, can be at risk. Water is not enough to replenish what some athletes lose in sodium and calories, so many reach for full strength sports drinks.

Hydration tips for kids

1. Those involved with physical activity should assess their personal sweat rate
2. The goal is to replace what is lost (no more, no less)
3. Activity longer than one hour most likely requires fluids, electrolytes, and carbohydrates in liquid or solid food forms
4. Exercisers should begin exercise well hydrated
5. Fluids should be readily accessible during activity
6. Following activity, it is important to rehydrate as soon as possible (within 30 minutes)
7. Cool temperature rehydration fluids encourage fluid consumption in the heat
8. Monitor hydration status by checking urine production and color

It’s important for everyone to be well hydrated before exercise begins, but too much water could lead to hyponatremia.

“In the most severe case of hyponatremia, those who have taken the advice to drink as much as they can tolerate during a marathon, they drink at every rest stop, and there have been cases where people have gained up to twelve pounds after running a marathon in order to avoid dehydration,” McDermott said.

Finally, drinking when you feel parched is not a good way to gauge hydration needs, because the thirst mechanism does not kick in until a person is two percent dehydrated.

“It’s okay if you are a healthy person who is used to working out in the summertime—it’s a great way to prevent hyponatremia,” McDermott advised. “But if you are a competitive athlete, you’d be behind the game and trying to play catch up. Think again about those like Alberto Salazar. If they drink to thirst, they’re two percent behind plus they must replace ten pounds an hour.”

In addition to his responsibilities at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Dr. Brendon McDermott serves on the medical and science advisory board of the Korey Stringer Institute, founded by Kelci Stringer to “minimize sudden death in sport for any reason, beginning with exertional heat stroke.” Kelci’s husband Korey Stringer, a Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman, died from exertional heat stroke in 2001.