Electrolytes on low carb

I have been reading a low of books and resources on low-carb and other diets and one crucial thing to remember is that you need your electrolytes, basically this means making sure that you keep your sodium and potassium levels at a good level. 

A lot of this information is available from the awesome book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living (I will try and get round to a review soon). 

Firstly don't forget that sodium (mainly taken in through salt) and potassium are essential for life so you really do need to ensure that you get good level, in fact someone on a diet recently told me that they had some major problems whilst dieting after this potassium levels got too low (they were not on low-carb). 

The reason that salt, or sodium, is crucial on a low carb diet is because the reduction in carbs changes the requirements for salt in your diet. This is because a low carbohydrate diet will increase sodium excretion by the kidneys meaning that is is lost from the body and therefore needs to be replaced in the diet. A high car diet will do the opposite and causes the body to maintain more salt and therefore less is required in the diet. 

A great way round this and I am afraid I can't remember where I first saw it as it is everywhere, is to drink some broth / stock. We use a certain kind of broth, bouillon, as we find that not only does it taste pretty good but it has a good carb to salt ratio. There are some common side effects to not having enough salt which include headaches and weakness and constipation which can be a common problem on low carb anyway as you lose all the fibre from not eating foods like bread. 

Potassium is another key thing that we need to get in our diets, it is again crucial for life and the most common source is fruit. Low salt and potassium are both common causes of cramp, which when I am out running is the last thing I need. Potassium is also required for ketogenesis (the process of burning fat) and so makes it even more important on this diet. 

So how can we get Potassium in on a low-carb diet? 

Well personally I think that spinach is a great way to go. If you see the list on this link then you will probably notice that there is not a huge amount of low-carb high potassium food. Spinach is pretty good for this diet as well and I regularly have it both boiled up for dinner and just some from a bag for lunch and sometimes breakfast, it should be enough to help top up my potassium levels if nothing else. Spinach is also good for magnesium levels, see the following link for a great run down on a lot of these issues.

Ideally I think to get enough potassium you should take a supplement however you would need to take a lot of it to get up to your RDA anyway. 

So I guess if you are struggling with any of the symptoms list on various low carb pages, this could be due to a deficiency in salt or potassium levels, the answer is of course to have more of them. Just don't overdo them, so I suggest you do some research and log your levels and try to get in your RDA.

My experience:

A few weeks into this diet and I started getting cramps on my running, I started drinking the broth and straight away they eased up, to this day I still rely on it to keep my salt levels up and reduce cramping. On my recent break I wasn't able to keep my salt levels as high as I would like and although I didn't get any full blown cramp I could feel the early onset kicking in. 

And a science sodium "joke" to end on: 

 Sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium Batman  

A few more links (ok so one): 

http://www.low-carbdiet.co.uk/potassium.htm