this is a real human brain and these are multiple nerves that would inate or control the muscles of the Upper Limb now why would I be showing you a brain and nerves during a video about hydration water and electrolytes well water and electrolytes are actually quite relevant to how your brain nerves and even muscles work but how much water and electrolytes do we really need on a daily basis and what is the best strategy for replenishing water and electrolytes we are definitely going to answer these questions but let me first go back to the brain and nerves so that we can start with one of the important reasons as to why you actually even need water in electrolytes your brain is made up of about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons and your nerves are primarily just bundles of neurons wrapped in connective tissue and what is remarkable is that these neurons send electrical signals but how in the world does your body generate an electrical signal it's not like we plug ourselves into an outlet and charge ourselves up that would obviously be bad but the story of our ability to generate electrical signals and how this relates to hydration starts with some quick info about the periodic table now many of you have probably seen the periodic table which shows you the elements now some of these are extremely important to the functioning of the human body there's some obvious ones like oxygen carbon and hydrogen but also things like sodium potassium chlorine magnesium and calcium to name a few now for those of you that are terrified or just ate chemistry hang with me for just a second here because this is really cool how this relates to water electrolytes and your overall hydration all of these elements listed on the periodic table are listed in their purest form in their neutral state so for example if you had an atom of sodium in a neutral state it would have the same number of protons which have a positive charge and the same number of electrons which have a negative charge the negatives and positives would cancel each other out and again you'd have a neutral atom of sodium but in nature many of these atoms don't exist in a neutral state they exist with a charge and an atom with a charge is referred to as an ion and this is extremely important for our story on hydration and electrolytes things like sodium and potassium for example lose an electron because they're more stable this way and therefore mostly exist in nature as a positive ion magnesium and calcium are also positive ions where something like chlorine gains an electron in and is a negative ion and you may already know this but sodium and chloride love to get together with their positive and negative charges to form sodium chloride which we all know as table salt but again what does all this have to do with water and electrolytes well when ions like sodium potassium are tossed or placed in water we call these ions electrolytes and this is because an ion in water has the ability to conduct an electrical current in water and luckily we are made up of a lot of water but this gives us the answer to how our neurons can generate electrical signals our neurons take electrolytes and pump some of them to the outside of the cell membrane of the neuron while pumping other electrolytes to the inside of the neuron and this creates a charge difference from the outside of the neuron compared to the inside and therefore gives the neuron an ability to send the electrical signal and the signal is known as an action potential so you can see how important water and electrolytes are just for the proper functioning of your nervous system and even for muscle contractions because muscles will use electrolytes in a very Sim way to create Action potentials for muscle contractions and this process works beautifully when we have the proper balance of water and electrolytes but what happens when we are not in balance with our water and electrolytes well for us to best understand that point we'll want to cover some of the other functions of water and electrolytes and some of the things that cause us to lose these substances and then of course that will lead us into some of the best strategies for replenishing our water and electrolytes but real quick I want to take a second to say thank you to the sponsor of today's video ag1 ag1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that I've been drinking every day for years now it's made with 75 highquality Whole Food sourced ingredients including vitamins minerals superfoods probiotics and adaptogens this is a formulation based on the latest science that maintains the highest quality of standards and speaking of Standards ag1 is also NSF certified for sport which means it's tested to ensure that what's on the label is actually in the bottle one of my other favorite benefits of ag1 is that it can help sustain energy levels throughout the day and since I'm quite selective about my caffeine intake throughout the week this has definitely been a bonus for me it's also ridiculously easy to make all you do is take one scoop add 8 O of water Shake It Up drink it down and carry on with your day and I really do believe that the more you can streamline and simplify your health routine the more likely you are to adhere to it and getting so many highquality ingredients in just one easy scoop certainly helps one to streamline their routine so if you're interested go to drink a1.com humananatura packets with your first purchase that information and the link will also be in the description below so let's quickly talk about some other important reasons why we need water and electrolytes and then we can talk about what happens when we get out of water balance and then of course rehydration strategies water is the universal solvent meaning substances dissolve in water and water provides a medium in which many of the body's chemical reactions take place and is therefore critical for these physiological processes water also acts as a transport Medium as it's a major component of the blood and is also essential for Thermo regulation maintaining that proper temperature throughout the body and this will be especially important when we talk about cooling off the body through sweat in just a minute water also helps to provide moisture for certain tissues and structures and even provides protection or a form of cushioning as cerebral spinal fluid for the brain and is fluid found in cartilage and Joints electrolytes not only allow our neurons to function properly but they also affect how and where water is distributed throughout the body as water tends to flow towards areas or spaces in the body where there are greater amounts of solutes or electrolytes and there are pretty much three main places where you find water throughout the body you find it in the intravascular space which is to say inside the blood vessels as plasma and this accounts for about 7% of the total body water you also find it in the intracellular space which would be inside the cells and this accounts for the largest amount of body water at about 66% and you also find it in the interstitial space which is the area between the blood vessels and the cells which accounts for about 26% of total body water and how water is distributed throughout the body is really helpful to help you understand certain scenarios like with water distribution issues or with water and electrolyte imbalances like if you were to have too much fluid in the interstitial space that space between the blood vessels in the cells this could result in swelling or edema or if you had too much fluid in the intravascular space like the space in the blood vessels this could create increases in your blood pressure and why sometimes you hear about this relationship between high blood pressure and high salt diets and what about the opposite end of this if you had too little fluid in that intravascular space which can can happen with extreme fluid loss through like extreme sweating through exercise this would result in hypovolemia making it more difficult for your cardiovascular system to deliver blood to the tissues throughout the body and if it gets bad enough could lead to hypovolemic shock and let's even go with another extreme case if you drink way too much water which we'll talk about a case where this occurred with a marathon runner this could cause too much fluid to enter the cells that intracellular space and cause the cells like the neurons to swell and therefore would not function properly and in extreme cases could even result in death so what is our goal with water and electrolyte intake well I don't think it's going to be too surprising that we want to spend most of our time in a state of u hydration or slightly above it and I'll explain that slightly above part in just a minute but U hydration would be a normal or adequate amount of water for normal physiological processes to occur this would allow us to be in water and electrolyte balance so we've got the proper amounts of water and Electro in the places they need to be in in the interstitial intravascular and intracellular spaces hyperhydration as the name implies would be having an excess of water beyond the normal state of hydration whereas hypohydration is an insufficient amount of water below the normal state of hydration and just as in FYI most of us don't really use the term hypohydration the term dehydration is more often used but they technically are a little different I know it's splitting hairs a little bit but dehydration is is actually the process of moving from a state of u hydration to a state of dehydration either way I think we can agree that we'd want to avoid large amounts of dehydration that could put us into a hypohydrated state and if we want to develop a protocol for maintaining uh hydration and get some actual numbers on how much water and electrolytes we should ingest it would be helpful for us to understand the different ways that we can lose water and electrolytes and add some of those numbers up there are two categories of water loss there's what is known as sensible water loss and insensible water loss and keep in mind electrolytes will be lost by some of these mechanisms as well insensible loss is how it sounds you don't really sense it or you're not really aware of this type of water loss this mainly comes in two forms one is through breathing we use water to warm and moisten the air and again you aren't really aware of this unless you breathe on some glass or you're breathing in a cold environment another is water lost through the skin that is not sweat water that is essentially used to moisten the skin and keep it from cracking total insensible water loss is about 1 liter per day although this can increase a little bit in environments that are more dry and cold and even through increased breathing rates that occur during exercise sensible water loss is water loss that you would notice this is primarily through sweat urine and the feces now unless you're having some major bowel issues such as diarrhea water loss through the feces is fairly minimal at about 100 ml per day the urine is going to be more variable than the feces depending on how much water and salt you ingest and this can also be influenced by certain drugs or medications but the average person under homeostatic conditions will urinate about 1.5 L per day and sweat will also have quite a bit of variability depending on your environment you'll lose more water and electrolytes if you are in a hot and humid environment and obviously exercise and physical activity can greatly influence this but someone that does not exercise and is not in a hot and humid environment sweating could be very minimal and and may only lose up to like 100 milliliters per day but on the other hand someone exercising or doing hard manual labor in a hot and humid environment could lose over 2 L per hour and finally how much water and electrolytes do we need to ingest in order to maintain a state of u hydration well we do know that this is a bit of a moving Target because the amount of water in the body is constantly changing with fluid constantly being removed and added so the first general strategy that we could apply to nearly everyone's situation is to drink an excess of water to a state of slight or mild hyperhydration then the body can retain what is needed to maintain fluid and electrolyte balance and then the kidneys can excrete the excess now keep in mind I said slight or mild hyperhydration this can definitely be taken too far but for someone that isn't in a hot and humid environment doesn't exercise or sweat a lot maintaining hydration through this strategy alone would be quite easy if we added the numbers we mentioned previously for a person in this situation it was about 1 liter of insensible loss per day about 1.5 L loss of the urine about 100 milliliters lost to sweat and another 100 milliliters lost in the feces that puts us at about 2.7 L we'll call it three lers for a little bit of hyperhydration into account for just in case someone sees the person they have a crush on and they get all nervous and sweaty but again replenishing 3 lers isn't very difficult for those of you who've had who've been told cups of water your whole life like me 3 l is just over 12 1/2 cups and the average American actually gets about 20 to 25% of their water from the water contained in the food they ingest which just adds to the relative ease of replenishing water in this situation but we want to know about how much we need when it comes to exercise and physical activity and that obviously can change the numbers quite a bit now again there are many variables that influence how much water you'll lose through exercise are you exercise in a 70° environment or 100° environment what's the humidity are you exercising for 20 minutes or 3 hours these variables make it very difficult to give a one siiz fits-all approach but I can give you some important guidelines and strategies to start with that are based on data and I've also found some of these quite useful for myself plus give you some practical ideas or ways to measure your own status of hydration while you're at home but here's a number that is relatively consistent during exercise most people can only absorb about one liter of water per hour so in the more extreme exercise conditions where somebody could lose over 2 lers of water through the sweat per hour even if you're drinking during exercise you wouldn't be able to keep up with that amount of fluid loss so that means we need to employ strategies prior to exercise and definitely after exercise to replenish what we've lost prior to exercise A good rule of thumb to start with is to consume approximately 5 to 10 mL of FL fluid per kilogram of body weight so if you only know your body weight in pounds you can convert that to kilog by dividing by 2.2 so let's use me as an example I weigh 185 lb dividing that by 2.2 gives us about 84 kg so if we went on the lower end of that recommendation we would multiply 84 kg by 5 and that would give us 420 ml to consume if we went with the upper end we would multiply by 10 and that would give us 840 ml to consume PR to exercise for my body weight now you would want to start this about 2 to 4 hours prior to exercise but something that is important with these numbers is that this assumes that you are already in a state of u hydration if you are in a state of hypohydration you may need to add an additional 3 to 5 milliliters of fluid per kilogram of body weight on top of the 5 to 10 milliliters that we just discussed and again we'll get to some strategies on how to tell if you're in a hypohydrated state in just a second during exercise a fair fairly safe number to go with is about 1 liter of fluid per hour taken periodically throughout the hour rather than all at once now some may be able to tolerate and absorb a little bit more and they may try to add a little more especially during long endurance type events but this number is relatively safe for two reasons one it gets us close to the maximum amount of fluid that most people can absorb and it's not too much even during lighter exercise sessions that could cause you to get into a dangerous state of hyperhydration and this is assuming you have healthy and functioning kidneys and that you didn't drink excessive amounts of fluid prior to exercise but I do want to clarify an important point I am not suggesting that you try to drink one liter of water per hour during all exercise sessions there are definitely intense sessions when you are sweating profusely in a hot and humid environment when this number would be appropriate but during a session that you are exercising say in an air condition environment and not sweating as much starting with a lower amount in making small incremental adjustments based on something like pre and post exercise weight differences would be a good protocol to start with and this leads us to some post exercise hydration protocols that will help us to make adjustments if you were to undershoot the amount you needed to drink during exercise or just can keep up with the water loss due to intense conditions after exercise it is recommended that you drink approximately 1.25 to 1.5 L of fluid per kilogram of body weight loss starting as soon as you can after EX exercise or in other words if you measure yourself in pounds a 2.2 lb loss of body weight would require about 1.5 L of fluid intake now you may have noticed that I haven't said much about electrolyte replacement yet and when it comes to electrolyte replacement for exercise sodium tends to be the biggest player and this may or may not surprise you but if someone consumes the typical amount of dietary sodium the data actually shows that there's little need for sodium replacement during exercise if if the exercise is less than 90 to 120 Minutes in that case most people can just replenish it through food and fluids afterwards but anything greater than 90 minutes to 2 hours especially if someone is a big sweater and or in a hot and humid environment it can be beneficial to ingest sodium at about 0.7 to 1 gam per hour and that could be mixed in with the fluid that the person is also drinking so if you know you are going to be exercise or competing for multiple hours you would want to start this during the first hour it's not like you'd want to wait until after the second hour to start ingesting the sodium now I do want to again acknowledge that there is variability in this from person to person and that the one size fits all approach is very difficult even with the electrolyte situation like some of those that are on the more extreme end of training heavy sweaters training more than once in a day it may make sense for them to ingest electrolyte containing beverages even during shorter exercise sessions but again for most people the above recommendations of fluid and electrolyte intake would be a great starting point the last thing I wanted to cover is giving you a reasonable strategy to monitor your hydration status I say reasonable because you could perform expensive lab tests like blood draws that measure plasma osmolarity you could collect your own urine throughout the day but probably don't want to measure the volume of your own urine every time you pee however urine test strips that measure the specific gravity of your urine are fairly inexpensive these days but you still have to collect your own urine and dip the strip in it and I would be lying if I told you that I hadn't done this on myself on more than one occasion but some of the more feasible strategies are using a urine color chart for example there are some drawbacks to this you would want to make sure that you're comparing it to a white background under good lighting and certain foods and medications do have the potential to change the color of the urine and the other method that we have already touched on a little bit is weighing yourself before and after a workout because any weight loss during a workout can mostly be attributed to fluid loss now this can be somewhat challenging to monitor over the long term if someone is also trying to lose weight at the same time but again if you weigh yourself just prior to and just after a workout you can get some pretty decent results but to help you get a little bit more accuracy you can combine some of these methods and how you would do this is in the morning you would assess three things your thirst urine color and weight if one of these conditions is present then you might be hypohydrated if two conditions are present then it is likely that you are hypohydrated and if all three conditions are present then it is very likely that you are hypohydrated so hopefully that gave you some useful tools to assess your own hydration status as well as some good Baseline numbers that you can utilize to replenish your own water and electrolytes and thanks for watching the video everyone please comment below let us know what you thought of the video like And subscribe if you want to support the channel we've got ag1 listed down in the description below if you're interested in checking them out and of course we'll see you in the next video [Music]