Why does sodium-heavy liquids like pickle juice, chicken noodle soup, or saline hydrate you better than regular water when you’re dehydrated, but salt water dehydrates you?
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So borrowing my own answer about sports drinks.
Having spent a lot of time in environments where hydration is of life saving importance, water is good, but sometimes it can be better. 1/2 water with 1/2 gatorade was a common drink in the field on long hikes.
Small amounts of sugar help aid in both drinking(flavor) and absorption.
You also lose electrolytes like magnesium, potassium, and sodium when sweating. Sports drinks generally have mixtures of electrolytes(why they taste salty), and sugars since this both aids absorption and replenishes lost electrolytes to sweat.
This is due to research suggesting that the body absorbs glucose and electrolytes through a different channel than the large intestine like most liquid so it can be absorbed faster.
Gatorade, powerade, Liquid IV, bodyarmor, etc all have the same idea of “little sugar to aid in flavor and absorption, and electrolytes”
Some try and get fancy with it and add in other vitamins for marketing and to be different but the core concepts are still all the same.
Most people do not actually need these. In most studies, unless you’re going at it for over an hour and losing a lot of sweat(like playing football in the southern sun like gatorade was meant for), most people do not actually see any benefit of sports drinks. They can even be worse since people think “This one bottle of water is like 5 since I added this packet to it!”
It’s not. You still need to drink water. Liquid IV has just found the market for “Clean packaging, heavy influencer marketing, all natural claims, and quasi association with medical things because of the name”, it’s effectively the same idea as any sports drink.
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The above answer was about a specific product but the statement still works.
Also salt water like from the ocean contains far far more salt than most food products.
Gatorade has 450ish mg of salt per liter.
Ocean water can have 30-40 grams per liter.
This is several times higher.
About 6,000% higher.
Even chicken noodle soup has about 1.5 grams of salt per liter.
There’s also things like isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic which have different concentrations of sodium versus the body.
Because most of the time, when you’re severely dehydrated like that you’re also short on electrolytes so the salt helps. You can’t drink sea water because the salt concentration of salt is so high your kidneys can’t process it and just dump even more water than you’re taking in drinking the salt water making you more dehydrated.
It’s all about the concentration Of the salt.
There was a study recently that concluded milk is a better hydrator than water because the fats and proteins in it help keep the water from passing straight through you. It’s true for other drinks too — juice, etc.
It’s about salt balance. If you’re slightly dehydrated, you are probably a little low on salt too. So having a slightly salty liquid is good.
Sea water on the other hand, is VERY salty. It’s too much for your body, so your body will try to dilute it by using up water already in the body and will try to get rid of that salt through urine ASAP, which further dehydrates you.
Imagine you have a large pot of soup. You want the pot full of soup with good flavor (the right amount of electrolytes or “saltiness”).
When the pot is not full, you are dehydrated and you want to fill the pot….but you still need the soup to taste right.
If the soup that’s remaining is at a good level of saltiness, adding pure water will make the soup “bland”. You want to add more soup that has some flavor- saltiness (Gatorade or soup). You need both water and electrolytes.
If the soup that is remaining is too salty you want to add water or soup that is low saltiness (hypotonic). You need water more than electrolytes. Plain water or just light electrolytes is probably fine.
If the soup that is remaining is both low in volume and bland, you need to add liquid and definitely more salt (pickle juice).
That being said…..
When you exercise a lot you sweat and lose electrolytes.
A general diet usually has plenty of electrolytes. But if you really go hard, some electrolytes may need replenishing.
If you just ate 4 slices of pizza and then play sports and feel thirsty, you probably just need water. You already got your salt load.
If you been sweating in the sun for 6 hours, you probably have lost electrolytes and Gatorade or maybe pickle juice works.
Also our kidneys are normally very good at flushing excess water. So most of the time you don’t need very salty liquid. Our body will generally be happy with water, or just minimal electrolytes because we usually have plenty (eating a regular diet). But if you are really going at it, yes maybe you do need some pickle juice.
Distance runners like me think of electrolytes rather than just table salt alone. Even when we take them directly (salt tablets) they still aren’t as salty as sea water.
Water is absorbed most quickly when accompanied by salt and sugar, in specific ratios. This promotes [active transport](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11193601/) of water from the gut to the blood stream.
Your blood needs to stay at a very specific level of salt concentration.
If you drink pure water you dilute the salt in your blood so your body has to reduce the amount of water in your blood to get the salt level back up.
If you drink sea water, which has way more salt than your blood, your body is kind of screwed because it doesn’t have a good way to remove just salt from your blood.
If you drink something that is close to the salt concentration of your blood that can just be absorbed without the body having to rebalance.
Seawater has a *lot* more salt in it than soup does. A little bit of salt is good when you’re dehydrated because when your body loses water it’s largely through sweat, which has salt in it, so when you’re dehydrated you’re usually also short on salt. The symptoms of dehydration and being short on electrolytes are often quite similar and have the same cause so fluids with a little salt in them help both.
Because you require the right balance of electrolytes for your cells to use the water to hydrate you. Sodium, magmesium, calcium, and potassium are all electrolytes. So if you have been sweating a lot or not eaten well that day or week and are missing too many of those you wont be able to hydrate properly. That’s why you see sports drinks or pedialyte have them.
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