Subject: RE: Salt tablets For salt, the typical American diet has plenty of excess salt, so you typically won't need to salt supplement. For IM stuff, some salt can help, but often the electrolytes in your nutrition already have a decent amount. Taking extra salt won't necessarily hurt you; but what taking excess does do is drive your thirst reflex to dilute out any extra salt you took in with water. This is the same phenomenon as going to salty Chinese buffet, and having to drink a lot of water afterwards. The main risk is that if you suddenly take in a lot more salt that you're used to on race day, you're going to have to drink a lot more water and risk getting a stomach cramp or GI upset from SBR on a sloshy stomach. You will also eventually have to pee out all that extra salt+fluid; in multihour races, this could mean an extra pee stop on the race course (or on the bike!) This is why you have some triathletes who seem like they take in ridiculously high amounts of salts (Jordan Rapp is one of them, and it works for him), and others who do zero salt tabs. Your kidneys are pretty smart about exactly regulating the right amount of sodium balance in your body and controlling your thirst reflex to match. |