Electrolytes are Under Prescribed and Under Consumed

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) from the FDA for sodium is 2.3 grams or less than 6 grams of salt per day. This under-dosing stems from medical mythology that high sodium intake causes high blood pressure, which can cascade into various cardiovascular diseases. I push back on that narrative. Here is what actually happens: sodium and the other electrolytes are necessary for bodily function, so restriction leads to a higher risk of harmful cardiac events. 

The RDAs for the other six electrolytes are shown below:

Potassium - 4700 mg
Magnesium - 420 mg
Calcium - 1300 mg
Chloride - 2300 mg
Phosphorus - 1250 mg
Bicarbonate - no RDA

Each prescription is based in its own science. However, there are a few issues to tackle.

WHAT ARE ELECTROLYTES

Macronutrients are carbohydrates, protein and fat whereas micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. Electrolytes are the seven specific key minerals listed above that regulate fluid balance, nerve impulse, etc in the body because they carry an electric charge. Each one serves many crucial roles in the body and a proper quantity of each is necessary for homeostasis. A quick rundown of the functions of each is below:

Sodium - fluid balance, nerve impulse, muscle contraction, nutrient absorption, so much more
Potassium - fluid balance, nerve impulse, muscle contraction, pH balance, so much more
Magnesium - nerve impulse, energy production, bone health, cognitive performance, sleep support 
Calcium - nerve impulse, muscle contraction, bone health, blood clotting
Chloride - fluid balance, muscle contraction, pH balance, digestion
Phosphorus - fluid balance, energy production, cell repair
Bicarbonate - pH balance, CO2 transportation

These minerals are naturally occurring in water. Unfortunately, tap water is full of industrial waste products and other toxins (heavy metals, fluoride, chlorine, etc) so it should be filtered. You filter your water with your reverse osmosis filter, but it’s so strong that even the naturally occurring minerals are filtered out leaving you to remineralize your filtered water with electrolytes, specifically GROUND. Reverse osmosis is the right way to go for at-home filtration, by the way.

Electrolytes also occur naturally in food. Chickens will eat insects, worms, plants, fruits and scraps and slowly accumulate the minerals, which later get consumed by you. This is in a perfect world, because now we are left with the effects of mass manufacturing. Monocropping, lack of diversity in cattle and other animal feeds and missing emphasis on nutrient quality and quantity are all guilty for food at the grocery store missing out on essential nutrients that you would normally expect to find.

A NUTRIENT DEFICIENT FOOD SUPPLY

True wild caught salmon (left) and mass-manufactured farm raised salmon (right). You can visibly see the health difference: tight muscle fibers, deep red color, firm texture vs loose muscle, pale color, more fat.

Meat, poultry and fish mass production all consist of force feeding animals to quickly size them up or to fatten them for taste. Feed is often grain, like corn and soy that is monocropped and full of pesticides leaving it near devoid of nutrients and full of toxins. Grain isn’t even the natural diet for the animals, so their stomachs often can’t metabolize it or properly synthesize micronutrients. Since this is most of what the animals and fish eat, there is little bioaccumulation of important micronutrients such as the 7 electrolytes. The macronutrients also take a hit as the breadth of amino acids in the protein is constricted and the quality of fatty acids is weakened.

Unless you are sourcing your food from farmers or businesses who use regenerative agricultural practices, like open foraging on pastures, you will be hard pressed to find perfectly nutritious food. This is not to say that big grocers don’t have healthy options, because they absolutely do and they are often more affordable than those at small markets. Regardless, these circumstances make informed nutrient supplementation essential for health and wellbeing.

LABELING TRICKS

Foods sold commercially are supposed to contain a certain amount of macronutrients and specific micronutrients and their labels will display the quantities. The standards are set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Regarding macronutrients, take bacon: some strips will contain a lot more fat than others. This means that the same label used on all of the bacon packages will be inaccurate for some units but accurate for others. The laws allow this for naturally grown food which provides a 20% margin of error for the quantity of nutrients listed on a label.

Dietary supplements must be 100% accurate as to the quantity of their nutrients because the present nutrients are added rather than grown. This is great, however most supplement brands opt for cheap forms of their vitamins and minerals that lack bioavailability but they still get away with labeling high quantities of the element. For example, companies often use magnesium oxide, it's cheap and has high elemental magnesium but the compound is poorly absorbed by the body, so you don't receive the benefits of the magnesium. Their actions are detestable. We opt for magnesium glycinate which is expensive but effective, check out our ingredients to see our other selections.

HOW MUCH IS NEEDED

Navigate to the NIH's dietary supplement fact sheets to find the RDAs broken down by age group and gender using the health professional tabs. These levels are a starting point. Reach and record your levels as a baseline, then see how you operate and if you experience any downsides. 

I was suffering from exertion headaches at the RDA levels of electrolytes. It wasn't until I heavily increased (3-4x) my electrolyte intake that the headaches subsided. The caveat is that I am a young adult male weighing 195 pounds at 6 feet and one inch tall: your stats are probably different and thus require different electrolyte levels. On top of that, I use a reverse osmosis water filter for all of my water, so my supplementation needs are high, but I was able to figure this out from trial and error and you can too.

WHERE TO GET ELECTROLYTES

A quick web search will give you a variety of food sources for each electrolyte, but like everything these food sources lack nuance. For example, the common sources of calcium listed on google are "dairy, fortified plant milks, leafy greens and fish with soft bones." Dairy is great, but I caution the consumption of leafy greens especially when their purpose is to provide calcium. Leafy greens contain oxalic acid, which is an antinutrient that binds to calcium thereby preventing calcium absorption in the body. When you mention this to google, the results will try to reassure you that leafy greens remain a nutritious food source. Plant foods are full of other antinutrients such as phytic acid or thiocyanate that also work to prevent the absorption of nutrients. While vegetables, legumes, seeds and other plant foods can take part in a healthy diet, they won't make my list of recommendations for electrolytes.

The other internet-prescribed sources of calcium, plant milks and fish with soft bones (which alludes to canned fish), will be highly processed and likely to contain harmful compounds as well. Plant "milks" are devoid of nutrition; these abominations being referred to as "milk" is an insult to real milk. Regarding fish, the high calcium comes from the bones, not from the meat. Animal foods (including seafood) and fruit are your safest and best bet to obtain quality sources of nutrients such as electrolytes due to their large quantities and absorbable and bioavailable forms. Why not plant foods other than fruit? Stay tuned for a future blog post on the matter. See below for quality sources of each electrolyte:

Sodium - salt*, cheese
Potassium - fruit (bananas, oranges, avocados, etc), dairy, fish, meat
Magnesium - yogurt, fish, meat, poultry
Calcium - dairy, bone, eggshell
Chloride - cheese, fish, tomato
Phosphorus - meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy
Bicarbonate** - not naturally occurring in whole foods

*While not an animal food or a fruit, salt is a staple in the human diet to meet sodium needs.
**Your body naturally produces bicarbonate.

THE GROUND RULES

The medical guidance is never tailored to you as an individual, since you have your own body and your own needs. You may have a genetic condition, you may be undertaking a new physical adventure, you may simply need more or less of a nutrient than the next person. It is up to you to learn and test to meet your specific needs.

Americans are dealing with countless health issues such as dehydration, sleep disturbance, lack of focus, osteoporosis and other ailments that are commonly linked to electrolyte deficiencies. I wish the best for your health and hope you can build a solid foundation with all of this information to tackle these issues or prevent them in the first place.