Article: Sweat and Electrolyte Education

Dialing in electrolyte intake can be beneficial for anyone prioritizing restoring health through hydration. Proper hydration leads to better sleep, sharpens focus, improves energy, and much more. The Nix Hydration Biosensor provides athletes with their fluid and electrolyte losses from a particular workout, and LMNT can help replenish those losses.

What influences sweat rate?

Sweat rate depends on a myriad of factors. Ambient temperature influences sweat rate, of course, but so does humidity, exercise intensity, exercise duration, genetics, heat acclimation, hydration status, body weight, and even time of day.

Understanding your sweat rate helps with hydration planning. LMNT shares a method for calculating your sweat rate during exercise. It's helpful to know how all of this is calculated, the range of sweat rates and the factors that most influence sweat rates.

Just want to get your workout in and skip straight to the stats? Wear a Nix Hydration Biosensor for your next workout and get your stats in real time.

How much salt is in your sweat?

You already know that the more you sweat, the more sodium you lose. LMNT shares details about how higher sweat rates lead to higher sweat sodium concentrations. This can be due to more intense workouts, hotter temperatures, more humidity, less airflow, greater body mass, and even better aerobic fitness. Read more to learn about sodium reabsorption and sweat sodium concentration.

It is worth reminding that currently the electrolyte losses present in the Nix app reflect total electrolyte losses (sodium + potassium + magnesium + calcium + chloride). In general, the published literature provides a breakout of the micronutrients found in sweat. While each individual is different, the average electrolyte breakout is 47.4% sodium, 47.4% chloride, and 4.7% potassium. There are also nominal amounts of calcium and magnesium. You can apply these rough percentages to your Nix reported electrolyte losses to better determine your sodium replacement needs.

Low Electrolyte Symptoms

Do you feel tired, crampy, low energy, or experience headaches but can't identify the root cause of the problem? Often these symptoms are blamed on lack of sleep, stress, poor blood sugar control, or getting old. And these could be factors. All of the symptoms listed are multifactorial, meaning they don’t have just one cause. It’s often a combination of a number of things, but an underappreciated and fairly common cause is a lack of electrolytes. Learn from LMNT the various causes and symptoms of low electrolyte imbalances.

Interested in learning more about the science behind sweat, electrolytes and more? Head over to the comprehensive science library at LMNT.