#611: Electrolyte Mythology: Wellness Marketing vs. Evidence - Zoë Rom & Kylee Van Horn

0:00Zoë Rom: Hello and welcome to episode 611 of Sigma Nutrition Radio. My name is Danny Lennon. You're very welcome to the podcast. Today we're going to be taking a look at electrolyte supplementation. And rather from a purely biological perspective or a nutrition perspective, we're going to be taking more a look at this of the cultural phenomenon that is currently going on with a lot of the marketing and popularity around the use of electrolyte supplementation in a whole range of situations. So not only in elite level sport as is being used in the past, but now is becoming more routine in people training recreationally.

0:41Zoë Rom: And even beyond that, people who have interests in performing better cognitively or feeling like they have more energy or a set of other symptoms that are now being marketed to as that there could be a benefit to consuming an electrolyte supplement. So what we're going to do is maybe take a look at some of the typical narratives that are popular nowadays that many people believe around the use of electrolytes and supplementing with them specifically. Try and take a look at where those narratives came from, how they got shaped, how they became so popular, and then what that actually looks like in comparison to some of the evidence we have and some of the situations where electrolyte supplementation would be indicated.

1:27Zoë Rom: And so hopefully this gives a really useful look at how some of the messaging from nutrition or wellness circles gets shaped a lot by media, by popular culture, by marketing messages, etc. and so to do this i'm going to be talking with two guests zoe rom and kylie van horn they are the hosts of your diet sucks podcast where they talk about this intersection of these nutrition and health topics and what's going on in current culture and society right now and how some of these get formed kylie is a sports dietitian who works with endurance athletes through her practice as well as being a athlete herself.

2:07Zoë Rom: And Zoe, in addition to being an ultra runner herself, comes from a background in both science and environmental journalism and has spent a number of years now looking at, again, this aspect of how these claims within nutrition and wellness get shaped by media, culture, social platforms, and so on. And so hopefully what we're gonna get to is to take a look at this really interesting area that of course is very popular right now, that there are many things that are taken to be true just from how often they are repeated and we're going to see where they came from how those narratives got shaped how they stack against what we know from the evidence or what we can hopefully conclude and then maybe what that situation looks like of who these types of products would be indicated for who they maybe wouldn't indicate it for and what where that gap exists currently in terms of their popularity so all the resources related to this episode will be linked up in the description box where you are currently listening there you will also find a link to details about sigma nutrition premium which is our membership that you can get extra resources related to each episode like a set of study notes our edited transcripts as well as our key ideas segment after each conversation all with the aim of helping you get more out of your podcast learning and retaining more of the information and then every month you get a premium exclusive episode all the details are linked up in the description box below so if you're interested in checking that out click there but otherwise please enjoy this episode with zoe rom and kylie van horn

3:59Zoë Rom: big welcome to the podcast to both zoe rom and kylie van horn thank you for taking the time to

4:05Kylee Van Horn: come and talk to me today excited to be here yeah excited thanks before i get into any of our topic

4:11Zoë Rom: today give us some context to the work that you do your interests anything else that might be relevant to what we're going to talk about today to get people to get to know you guys.

4:20Kylee Van Horn: Yeah. Hi, I am Kylie Van Horn. I am a sports dietitian who works with endurance athletes. My business is Fly Nutrition. And yeah, I started the podcast with Zoe. Our podcast is Your Diet Sucks. And we started that about two years ago as a way to help people involved in fitness and sport to help them navigate the crazy world of wellness and diet claims. My background is in science and environmental journalism. And for many years, I sort of was taking around the world and outdoor media. So I feel like I got an inside benefit to how the sausage was made and how sometimes even the best intentioned journalists, writers, bloggers, podcasters might inadvertently disport science and the attempt to reach our masked audience and to throw clicks to gain attention and traction and the attention economy, how that can sometimes shape narratives about how we eat, how we exercise a lot more than the evidence does.

5:20Kylee Van Horn: So I've always been really interested in how our culture takes these ideas, takes the science, takes the evidence, and then what happens when those things get sort of refracted through the prism of social media, of podcasts and of everyday humans trying to communicate about the complexities of science. And I'm also an elite ultra runner myself. And being in these niche sports, I feel like I see a lot of people fall down bizarre rabbit holes, getting really either into restrictive patterns of eating with crazy diets, particularly as someone who's been socialized. As a woman in the United States, I understand the sort of body image pressures that come with being an athlete, particularly being an endurance athlete.

6:00Kylee Van Horn: And I see the things that athletes try to do to gain an edge. A lot of them are really well intentioned, but can have pretty negative consequences. So I'm always about equally interested in what does the science say? What evidence do we have? What do we not know? And why do we feel this way? Like, what is the history here? And what are the cultural beliefs that we're bringing to this narrative? Because more often than not, it's the feelings that guide people's decision significantly more than the facts.

6:27Zoë Rom: Yeah. And I think all of that will be laid out as we go through the topic of today. And we're going to be discussing electrolytes in terms of many supplements and products and the messaging around that, that has gone from early on some of the sports nutrition research, which we'll probably mention, but has now seeped into the public consciousness in some way. If even people who are not interested in sports or training per se will have no doubt heard this on various podcasts related to health or optimization culture, et cetera. And so maybe before we do get into that science, maybe I'll start with you, Zoe.

7:03Zoë Rom: Can you give us just a quick overview of, for you, what does that current scene commercially look like of these various products related to electrolytes that we're now seeing, some of that messaging, some of the beliefs that you have seen within the public consciousness that are almost taken as true by a lot of people who are coming across this information.

7:23Kylee Van Horn: So broadly writ, the sciences may be a little less settled than most of us might like, especially from an endurance sports perspective. But because there's still some questions and there's still some different strains of thought in terms of how much sodium is ideal to maximize athletic performance, I feel like this sort of seed sows the seeds of doubt in the culture. And because athletes are a relatively small marketplace, right? Like you have people who are actually trying to compete in sport and Kylie and I kind of fall into that category. Then you have like more amateur athletes and people generally interested in fitness.

8:00Kylee Van Horn: And then the broadest sort of top of the funnel is people who are vaguely interested in health, wellness, and optimization. So if you owning an electrolyte company wanted to make as much money as possible, sure, you could sell a handful of electrolytes to serious athletes or gym goers, or you could sell a ton of electrolytes to anyone who's ever been interested in health, fitness, longevity, and just feeling a little bit better at 2.30 in the afternoon. So electrolytes, which are very much a thing that is essential to athletic performance, have been rebranded and co-opted by the wellness industry as this biohack, as like the thing you didn't know you needed.

8:40Kylee Van Horn: And we can get into some of the underlying cultural mechanisms that make that narrative so compelling, but it's the perfect case study for the wellness industry. As there is a grain of truth there, like these things are important. There is some stuff that's unknown. And into that information vacuum steps the wellness industry to say, if you're not doing a thousand milligrams of sodium, then there's no way that you will ever be able to be the productive, masculine keto man you always knew you could be.

9:08Zoë Rom: And we'll certainly look at a variety of these different claims and some of where they come from, the origins and this intertwining in many niches. But maybe to take a step back and set the stage for everyone here, Kylie, when it comes to electrolytes and then this connection to hydration and performance, what are some of those basic things we should know about what electrolytes even are and mechanistically how are they connected to something like hydration or sports performance in the first place?

9:36Kylee Van Horn: Yeah, so electrolytes are charged ions. So it could be things like our sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium. So oftentimes when we're looking at the wellness space, people will think of them as things you lose in your sweat when you're exercising. Each individual electrolyte though is going to have different purposes or physiological purposes in our bodies. When we're looking at it from a wellness and sports performance aspect, I feel like a lot of times it's paired in conjunction with hydration, so fluid balance in the body. And when we start with the fluid balance piece, and then when we start to get into it more, there'll be claims like, oh, magnesium is going to stop all muscle cramps or it's going to help your sleep or it's going to give you energy.

10:31Kylee Van Horn: So it stems from maybe the fluid balance piece and then it starts to get into all areas of health, I guess. And so a lot of these charged electrolytes are then marketed as like the miracle health cure, I guess.

10:48Zoë Rom: And that movement from that grain of truth that you both outlined that does exist and they have physiological roles in the body, there's potential applications for them. And then suddenly that can start to snowball and we end up in some absurd places. But where that crosses the line from something that is actually evidence-based and reasonable to when it starts becoming less so is maybe hard to pinpoint. What are some of the things that we can say with a good degree of confidence around what happens with electrolytes, for example, when someone is training? What are some of the parts of the claims that we can actually say are true or not necessarily misleading?

11:29Kylee Van Horn: I guess I would say if you're just consuming water, if you were to consume too much water without any electrolytes, that could lead to a condition called hyponatremia. So essentially your blood is getting diluted and your electrolytes are not balanced with your fluids. And so taking in the electrolyte in the fluid can help the hydration process overall be balanced and prevent you from getting into a situation where the electrolytes are diluted down in the body. The problem is a lot of people are not doing the kind of exercise or they don't have sweat rate to where they're losing so many electrolytes that they need to be replacing a ton of them during exercise.

12:13Kylee Van Horn: And I think that's where science and the actual claims kind of get muddied because someone that might be going out for an hour run doesn't necessarily need to be having an electrolyte supplement to be able to maintain fluid and electrolyte balance and keep our physiological processes going in the body. Like one of the things that we do know is there's a ton of individual variation when it comes to sodium losses. So two runners and two endurance athletes are going to lose dramatically different amounts of sodium in the course of an hour. And looking at the population level, people are doing really varied levels of exercise, a lot of times skewing on the none end of the spectrum.

12:55Kylee Van Horn: And so you sort of have this particularly American propensity to believe that like more must always be better. So if a little bit of electrolytes is good, then a lot of bit of electrolytes must be even better. And so you see it fall into the same camp as like we're seeing with a lot of other things of like protein maxing, magnesium maxing, fiber maxing, like people have no ability to just do things the normal amount. And you see it on the other end of the spectrum with people's crazy attempts to drink like a gallon of water a day, which there is just like no benefit to exceeding your individual needs, right?

13:31Kylee Van Horn: Like, and it's, That's a much less compelling narrative to sell. And therefore, more is better. If 500 milligrams are good, then 1 ,000 must necessarily be even better. Well, I think we also miss out sometimes on the diet aspect, too. Like, we get a lot of electrolytes from our food. People just think, well, I need supplemental electrolytes. But then they forget that our food has electrolytes in it. And also, a lot of processed and ultra-processed foods, there's a lot of sodium in those things, too. So I think that component is missed out by a lot of people because they hear I need the supplement versus, oh, there are dietary things that I eat on a daily basis that contain these electrolytes.

14:12Kylee Van Horn: And like usually when you see people selling the idea of water maxing, whatever folks online are calling it, of this is like I drank two gallons of water in a day and people with their like inspirational tumblers feel like charted for a full day of water consumption is that's much harder to monetize. You absolutely can. The amount of like attention economy nonsense of like influencers make their YouTube videos about like how they drink two gallons of water in a day. you can harness and monetize attention. But what electrolytes do, and at the same time that these are absolutely biologically necessary, it also does allow companies to monetize your otherwise not extremely beneficial to them water consumption.

14:53Zoë Rom: And I mean, this is the difficulty for most people coming across this type of messaging, that it really relies on some degree of epistemology of, well, how do we know these certain things, right? Because we could say a number of things that technically could be true but if we say them in a way that are misleading we end up maybe supporting some of this messaging as opposed to asking well does it really play out like that will it actually benefit my health so a lot of these companies as you've outlined do things like say well look electrolytes have functions in the body they can be important when you sweat you lose them therefore that the and then the logical conclusion for most people is oh well if i replace them that's good, as opposed to asking, well, do I need to replace them?

15:37Zoë Rom: And this is where that question comes in, in what situations is it necessary in the first place? To what degree? And does a supplement need to provide that? And is it going to be beneficial? And that becomes quickly quite difficult for us to put together. And so we're left at the whim of much of this messaging, which can make some degree of sense, but doesn't really have the evidence to support the widespread bread supplementation is often put across. I think one of the useful things that we can maybe discuss here is if we're sticking with that idea that people do lose indeed electrolytes when they sweat, and then companies will use that as a way of, well, replace them, and that's going to be better for you.

16:15Zoë Rom: Better recovery, if you're in accession, you'll feel better, or even more so, some type of fear-mongering that if you don't do this, it is dangerous, that you're going to be causing a variety of problems and symptoms if you don't replace that and if you just drink water. I'm wondering, can you maybe speak to some of those types of things that are commonly seen? What is that fear that often gets spread about some of these deleterious effects? And in what situations would that actually be likely, considering how most people are typically going to be using these supplements?

16:47Kylee Van Horn: I would say it plays into the energy, fatigue, fatigue sleep your metabolism your weight it really extrapolates the role of an electrolyte and makes it into this thing that's like magnesium might play a role in your metabolism and it extrapolates it to if you take this electrolyte supplement you're going to have this revved up metabolism that is going to help you lose weight like it really extrapolates role of the electrolyte and makes it into maybe a bigger claim from a health and wellness perspective. There was a while on Instagram where I kept getting served this ad for a magnesium athlete-oriented electrolyte drink of the first person POV of, I used to feel tired and struggled to get through my workouts and I had a hard time focusing at work.

17:41Kylee Van Horn: And then I started mega dosing magnesium. And it's like the perfect encapsulation of what these companies will do is identify the sort of vague constellation of symptoms where like in the year or Lord 2026, who doesn't sometimes feel tired or unfocused or exercising is hard. Yeah, that's what exercise is hard many times, regardless of magnesium status and intake. And it sells you this theory of everything. The underlying cause here is that your magnesium, this thing that you've somehow never thought about because this cabal of powers that be have been conspiring to keep you from the universal truth that you need to be mega dosing on magnesium in order to truly thrive as a human and finally get ahead at work and PR your 10k and it creates this really simplistic answer to a lot of vague nagging questions and a lot of times we'll get athletes that will be like do you think I just need to take this supplement so that I can get faster.

18:41Kylee Van Horn: And it's like, well, you've got to actually like do the training. And the hard part is, is people latch on to this, we'll do this rather than like, oh, it's complicated and nuanced. And we need to have a conversation about what does your sleep look like? What does your diet look like? What does your training look like?

18:59Zoë Rom: It's important that you mentioned that oftentimes within some of that framing, it claims to help with a variety of symptoms that are relatively vague that anyone can experience at any time. But it also speaks to that point you mentioned earlier, Zoe, that it then opens the marketing up to a whole variety of people now that has nothing to do with your sports performance per se. Because not only we can help you with that, we can help you with anything. If you're fatigued or have a headache or just want to think better in school, we've got you covered. And so now it all starts to fit in nicely when we start to layer in relatively vague symptoms that could relate to anything really.

19:35Kylee Van Horn: They're unfalsifiable too, right? Because then if you start supplementing more with electrolytes and you feel better, maybe it's because you just started paying attention to your hydration for the first time ever and drinking a bit of water, which is in general a good thing to do. But if you start to feel better, great, maybe you needed the electrolytes or maybe you would have felt better anyway. And it's really hard to disprove a lot of the claims put forth by these companies. But I do think it's really fascinating when you look at the messaging, like the sort of gendered component to it, I think really it's a bit of a tell because there's no mechanism that would explain like such a wide difference in sex responses to electrolyte deficiency.

20:18Kylee Van Horn: But for women, so often the marketing is around like weight loss and trying to optimize for weight loss. For men, so often it's around optimizing productivity and thriving at work and being able to focus the productive breadwinner. And so there is no salt that can do both of these things. And so paying attention to the fact that the marketing claims are so far out in front of any mechanism that could reasonably explain what's going on there. And a lot of those symptoms that you hinted at are universal. They almost never have that underlying mechanistic explanation of there is not a thing that, you know, makes you both gain weight and have a hard time focusing at work and makes you feel laggy on the back half of your marathon.

21:03Kylee Van Horn: And so it's so easy to just plug in sodium there. But it's the exact same playbook that you see with things, inflammation, adrenal fatigue, toxins, candida, of like, it's always the same symptoms. You're having a hard time gaining weight, you're fatigued. And it's these things that people tend to have underlying anxieties about in that science doesn't have super clear and great solutions for. And into that gap slides this entire cottage industry of people slinging sodium on the internet.

21:33Zoë Rom: There's a couple of things I'll maybe open a tab for us to return to later because I think they're really important points. One relates to some of those sub communities or niches that seem to have really taken on board some of this messaging. I think that's interesting to explore what those are and why that may have happened. And then second relates to some of the public health concerns around some of this messaging, particularly for sodium intakes within the general population that we should return to. But first, if we stick with the point that people will rightly make, that there is, of course, some utility, and no doubt, given both of your backgrounds, there's been times where you or athletes that you coach will have used these supplements.

22:10Zoë Rom: And there's, of course, indications for that. But I think where some of this gets blurred is this ends up being a thing where people saying, okay, I'm on board with the thing of this is not for the general population, but I do some degree of sports or I go for a run. And so therefore this is a good supplement choice for me. And there may be not really understanding just the very specific cases where this might be useful. And they might be massively overestimating the need for this for something like going out for a 5k, which is very different to someone that's going to go on a really long run that's competing at a high level in hot weather climates and so on.

22:50Zoë Rom: Kylie, I'm wondering, can you again, speak to this distinction of these potential indications where we know there might be utility and then where you have seen either in your athletes or just messaging online of people thinking, because I'm an athlete or I train, I need to be using this a lot more than maybe you think would be indicated.

23:09Kylee Van Horn: Yeah, and I think one of the biggest things that I encounter with athletes is the misunderstanding of sodium sweat rate and the fluid loss rate that they have as well. So your fluid loss rate is the amount of fluid you're losing per hour. And then the sodium sweat concentration is the amount of sodium per liter of sweat lost. And so a lot of people like interchange those and just assume like, I have salt crystals on my skin, so I'm a salty sweater. but we also know that if you eat a lot of salt the day before and you go and exercise you can have a lot of salt on your skin so that alone is not a good indicator and I think a lot of people are taught that is an indicator so I explain that because I think people interchange those and then they just assume like I need a bunch of sodium in my run that I'm doing and in reality when we look at actual sodium losses in a 5k it's not going to be significant enough for someone to have severe muscle cramping or not be able to have the right fluid balance in the body to be able to utilize maybe carbohydrates that you took in, or it's going to potentially lead to a level of dehydration that's going to affect your performance in the 5k.

24:27Kylee Van Horn: So for most people, they aren't going to need to have some kind of sodium supplement or electrolyte supplement during a 5k. Again, There can maybe be exceptions here, depending on like the environment that someone's racing in or the huge salt loss. There are outliers that lose a lot of sodium. But even then, I would argue like that they're probably not going to be out there a long enough period of time to experience this level of loss that's going to have impact on overall performance. When we get into something though, like ultra marathons, which Zoe and I work, Zoe is an ultra athlete. I do trail running, but a lot of people we work with are ultra athletes and that might present a different situation.

25:14Kylee Van Horn: If you're doing a 100-mile race and you are a pretty heavy sodium loss person, that is something that then over time, that gap could get pretty big and could have impacts on performance overall. If you're not consuming sodium and you're just drinking water, could then cause that hyponitremia situation and that fluid electrolyte imbalance that then is not going to have good implications for performance and health. But most people are not necessarily doing 100 milers. I don't know the stat on that, but I would say a small percentage of people that are doing endurance events or maybe doing full Ironman, multi-day races or ultra races or multi-day cycling things, long cycling races, which might then require some thought going into sodium and fluid replenishment strategies.

26:09Kylee Van Horn: And then I will say, though, what I run into a lot is athletes still over-index the amount of replenishment per hour that they need. And so a lot of times people come to me because they have nausea and vomiting and just feel sick in the middle of their ultra races or Ironmans, and they're actually taking in way too much sodium compared to the amount of fluid that they're taking in per hour. and that mismatch can cause a lot of like undesirable symptoms as well. And so I guess one of my thoughts would be like these electrolyte companies are really pushing that marketing for the more sodium is better thing, even, you know, for the endurance population.

26:50Kylee Van Horn: I mean, even looking at the fact that Gatorade should be a niche product that was originally formulated for college football players in the swamplins of Florida, the fact that is something I can walk into any gas station and grocery store tells you that the marketing narrative of electrolytes has really outpaced the actual biological demand for these things because it's healthy. It's for your athletic performance. You did take a brisk walk earlier today, so maybe you better go ahead and make sure that you're replenishing those electrolytes like the athlete that you are.

27:19Zoë Rom: And I think that's the thing where even now we're seeing that there's certain cases where athletes will use them and you've given some really nice examples of that. But in many situations, depending on their training workload, the type of training session they have, it may not be necessary. There's a whole host of factors. But what is probably even more the issue is that there's people that wouldn't even be dedicated athletes in many of these sports that might go for a jog two to three times a week between 30 and 60 minutes and now are feeling obliged. Well, this is something I should be doing or I'm putting myself in danger.

27:52Zoë Rom: And really the typical run that someone might do of a 30 to 60 minute jog for health purposes is no way be indicated on that. And I think it ties back to one of the previous points that you both raised that, okay, even if someone does excrete sodium at that time, we have to then ask, well, is that even a problem? We know most people in the population over consume sodium. We could even make the case it's probably a good idea. Some of that thing gets excreted. And then we get into this whole area now where there's almost been a change even in the general population messaging around, well, we can't claim sodium is something we should limit because we want to sell more of these products.

28:32Zoë Rom: And now we're seeing a shift in people's perspectives of, well, salt can't be a problem or sodium because it's natural or good or I need it.

28:39Kylee Van Horn: Even, you know, the word electrolytes, which again, real thing that people really need. Americans are pretty savvy. Like we know we should be limiting our sodium. We know you shouldn't be salting, but you need electrolytes. Like they've sort of been rebranded, even though it's a, you know, a distinction without a difference. There was actually a book written in 2017 called The Salt Fix by Di Nicolantonio, which makes the claim that everyone is actually secretly walking around salt deficient. And that is a hugely compelling wellness narrative because it fits into this archetype of the like, you've actually been totally wrong about this thing the whole time.

29:18Kylee Van Horn: And this thing that you thought was good for you is actually bad for you. You know, there's so many things that fit into that category for athletes. Carbohydrates is, I think, one of those things. But it can create this permission structure that is, again, based in a seed of truth of there is a subset of the population that could probably pay more attention to their electrolyte intake. And yet on the whole, generally speaking, most people are absolutely meeting their sodium needs and exceeding them, particularly as the American diet is like has a surplus of ultra processed foods, which tend to index a little bit higher or a good bit higher than whole foods in terms of sodium intake.

29:55Kylee Van Horn: And so it almost gets framed as this rebellion or like resistance of you're smarter than all of these undersalted sheeple out there who aren't even taking 1000 milligrams of sodium at their desk every single day. And so it gets plugged into this like idea that a lot of people have, we don't fully understand human health and well being, which like is complicated. There's some things we do know that most people are, in fact, getting plenty of sodium, if not too much. And so it just creates this compelling, ooh, you have access to this whole insider realm of knowledge about how everyone is secretly undersalted.

30:32Kylee Van Horn: That kind of plays into the time that we're living in with the distrust in science and the medical and health system as well. I think here in the U.S., like a lot of people are like, oh, I don't trust medical doctors now. I'm going to my naturopath. And my shaman said I need more magnesium. Yeah. So and I see that often, actually, like I'll have athletes come to me that want to work together. And they're like, and my naturopath said I need to be taking this list of 20 supplements plus in a daily electrolyte supplement in order to have good health. And even though their doctor might have said, like, maybe you need to cut back on the sodium intake.

31:14Zoë Rom: There's so many examples of, I remember seeing one particularly prominent, I don't know if you'd call him a health influencer, basically a marketing grifter more than anything else, talking about how people who go around just drinking plain old water, not only is that not hydrating you, it's dehydrating you because you don't have the correct type of water and the electrolytes. It's so wonderful how we've managed to survive as a species, yet now we're dehydrating ourselves by drinking water.

31:41Kylee Van Horn: As soon as you spend more than a second thinking about it, it clearly just falls apart with even the minimal amount of investigating. But with how social media works, how the attention economy works, those claims of this thing that you thought was right but is actually secretly wrong, These really outlandish or extreme challenges are actually going to outperform normal claims or the most accurate claim of all, which is like, there's still some question marks. The stuff is hugely individual. 99.99 % of you are already doing okay and or could limit your sodium. But, you know, some shirtless guy on TikTok claiming that water actually dehydrates.

32:18Kylee Van Horn: Like, that is going to get immense engagement. And people are going to be exposed to that incorrect messaging, disproportionate to the correct and boring nuanced information.

32:29Zoë Rom: It's quite striking that kind of playbook that they almost go by in all these different kinds of myths, right? And now this electrolyte one just seems to be following the same thing. As you've outlined, what you were told all along was a lie. You've been misled by the main organizations, government bodies, guidelines. But here's the truth. And you need to do the opposite to that.

32:51Kylee Van Horn: My proprietary supplement at the link in my bio.

32:54Zoë Rom: It's incredible how often it happens that the same people claiming to expose the corruption of the industry are the ones that are making the most money off pawning off products on people. And so it just is replicated across a number of these different areas. And one thing I did want to, again, return to that we mentioned earlier is that it also seems to take seed in specific types of communities, maybe more than others. And some of those maybe are a bit more open to this kind of contrarian messaging. Or in other cases, it might just be that they're more exposed to these types of influencers or this way of thinking.

33:31Zoë Rom: There's a variety that are distinct buckets that we can look at. There's for good reason, many athletes would have heard about that just because there is that natural connection. But now within some of these other areas, this kind of optimization culture that people crave for again. And well, if I can do anything that will have even a tiny impact, I need to do it. That fits in with the whole biohacking thing. Also, from a nutrition perspective, seems to be more popular in certain communities like carnivore guys or some of the keto communities, depending on that. From both of your perspective, I'm wondering where have you seen this show up either on social media or people asking about something they've seen?

34:11Zoë Rom: What are some of those areas where it seems to be more prominent? and are there any reasons why you think that that might be the case like you said this does show up

34:20Kylee Van Horn: a lot in the keto and low carb communities and there is there is a small mechanistic truth there because these lower carbohydrate diets can actually increase how much sodium you lose because when your insulin is lowered your kidneys are going to just dump more sodium so some folks will feel a little bit better again when they start paying attention to their hydration and sodium intake for the first time, that doesn't always mean and rarely means that maximizing and going whole hog on sodium is like the solution to why you don't feel great on a keto diet. There might be other elements of the diet worth investigating, but there can be like a small mechanistic truth there.

34:56Kylee Van Horn: But again, it fits into this rebellious, like resistance oriented messaging of you need to like everything needs to be hyper specific. Everything needs to have the whole 30 or like the keto stamp and into that sort of niche open up this entire other marketplace of electrolytes for insert diet community here. Electrolytes that are keto certified, electrolytes that are clean, that are Whole30, whatever it is. Obviously, you need this thing, but it has to be certified for your exact community, your diet, your particular food identity because of marketing. These marketers have gotten incredibly savvy at being like, you, keto bro, absolutely need this.

35:34Kylee Van Horn: Similarly with biohacking, I think that a lot of the claims of other biohacking interventions mesh and nest really neatly with some of the like more outlandish claims of sodium of like this small intervention just putting this little packet of whatever in your water bottle can have these outsized beneficial impacts again drinking water is very good having replacing the electrolytes that you need to replace can be very good but it is probably not going to make you steve jobs overnight no matter how expensive they are and so it's sort of this claim that like this small thing, this added thing, this little additive can have this amazing downstream impact in your life.

36:14Kylee Van Horn: And so these things really just get extrapolated throughout these communities. I would add too, we talk a lot about some of these restrictive diets turning into like a religion or a cult. And so when you have certain rules within that community, like part of that is, okay, everyone needs to replace their electrolytes and do this thing and you have 20 different steps that you have to follow and it actually makes people feel like they're part of this special community and so it encourages people then to like okay I want to be more a part of this so I'll do the electrolytes I'll do this thing and so I feel like that's what we run into a lot in our conversations that we have on our podcast and then even when I'm on social media just seeing some of the like reels and things that are out there.

37:04Kylee Van Horn: I see that too. It's just this sense of people wanting to belong to a sort of diet community. And so talking about eating a balanced diet and hydrating normally and being cool about your diet and not doing all these extreme things maybe isn't as appealing to people, you know? And I mean, people are always looking for ways to enact or perform their identity and particularly diet is a really helpful way to do that. All the better if, I mean, sure, you've got three opportunities a day to perform what a good little carnivore you are. But then if you can also sneak in little, if you can make every time you drink a glass of water, another opportunity to perform, to re-solidify or re-assert even to yourself or to your immediate community how very carnivore you are by adding elements to every ounce of liquid that passes your lips, then all the better.

37:57Kylee Van Horn: People genuinely crave that ability to demonstrate who they are to themselves and to other people. And these companies are extremely happy to play into that desire. I think that Element itself is a really fascinating example because some people might need that heavy dose of electrolyte because of their individual needs. And the majority of humans absolutely do not need a thousand milligrams of sodium at a time. And then they mess it like so much of the messaging is packaged around how it's clean, calorie-free energy, which is not a thing that exists because the calorie is the energy. And it, again, takes this mechanistic truth of like, you do need sodium and electrolytes are essential for the metabolic process, but electrolytes without something to metabolize do not energy make.

38:45Kylee Van Horn: And it's so tempting to believe that if you have salt, you can still get energy without consuming calories, which is, of course, It's just not how things work. And so all of these companies are just so happy to speak into whatever identity, whatever restrictive framework that people are interested in, creating a market that speaks specifically to that and playing into sort of all of our worst fears about over-consuming calories.

39:10Zoë Rom: It's often what's not said in some of that messaging that is really crucial, right? They can say something like, well, if you look at sodium and the role it plays in muscle contraction, then of course, it's going to be important for you doing any type of exercise and you're going to be losing with sweat. Again, all of those things they're saying can technically be true, but what they're not telling someone is, well, you don't need this sodium bomb based on the amount of sodium that you are losing and relative to your needs. And so it becomes very quickly difficult to distinguish. And I think from a, I suppose to try and get this message out, the trick here becomes that because there are these different communities that take on board these messages.

39:49Zoë Rom: and oftentimes as there's literature speaking to this around people that have certain beliefs are tied into a web of other beliefs that seemingly might not be connected but suddenly become connected and so you just gave an excellent example of suddenly someone that's deep within a carnivore community now for obligation to that group must have almost the same thing around salt right well salt is not a problem that was all a whole scam that they were telling us all these registered dietitians are peddling nonsense i've seen the truth with the carnivore diet so this thing around salt must be the same and so this then is almost very difficult to to get through to people because if any of those people maybe listen to some of the things you might be saying trying to even speak to literature we have showing salt needs or impacts on sodium where it might be applicable is just going to fall on deaf ears a lot of time because of these deep bedded beliefs and so how do we go about that is there any way to try and get that messaging out or are we trying to just aim to help the people who are kind of caught in between that maybe aren't at the extreme

41:00Kylee Van Horn: but are still maybe susceptible to that messaging i'll let kylie speak to the like dietary specifics But at a meta and messaging level, anytime someone is saying something to you that makes you have a big emotional response, you should pump the brakes immediately. Like anytime someone is trying to, anytime it feels like they're critiquing your identity, where like you as a practitioner of the keto diet, anything that makes you feel like I have to continually reaffirm this identity or makes you feel shaky and that whenever like dietary advice starts to, when you perceive it as a personal attack, That is a good indicator that you might want to think more critically about what's going on.

41:37Kylee Van Horn: Anytime you feel fear, like, oh, maybe that is why I feel fatigued, or maybe that is why I'm having trouble sleeping, or maybe that is why I'm not currently the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, also a good indicator to pump the brakes. or anytime you feel angry, such as the like, they've been lying to you, or like what the medical professionals don't want you to know, or water has been secretly dehydrating you this whole time. Anytime you see something that says it's upending years and years of this giant body of evidence, that's a good indication you might want to take a beat and fact check. And anytime something is clearly framed or contextualized in this way that makes you have an emotional response, that's a really good indicator that you might want to pause as well.

42:23Kylee Van Horn: I think, I mean, my biggest thing as a practitioner is just asking questions and wanting to understand why someone is doing what they're doing. And sometimes I feel like if you are open to having a conversation with people and hearing their side of things as well, you might be able to chat through some of the things that we might be talking about here on the podcast as well. Rather than just saying like, you need to do this, people are going to close their mind immediately if you're saying that. And I've seen this the most with low carb athletes. I work with a lot of people that have done low carb diets for endurance exercise and they get to a point where they're just like, oh, I'm just feeling really low energy and my health feels off and my blood markers are off and I thought I was supposed to be feeling another way.

43:12Kylee Van Horn: so they'll come to me and they'll talk about well you know what are your thoughts about like reintroducing carbs and so we'll talk about you know the benefits of having carbohydrates in your diet and what can happen if you aren't and you're training for these endurance events and helping them understand like that there are maybe two sides to the equation here and then helping them find that balance on their own because again if you just try to force people into believing something i don't necessarily think that's going to be the best way to create change

43:42Zoë Rom: So if there's people who maybe have came across some of the messaging that we've discussed today, who maybe have thought that they could be someone who could benefit from an electrolyte supplement from the variety of these different products that are available, and maybe there's differences between them. but someone that thinks well maybe this is something for me and my goals i've been considering it but i'm not so sure is there any type of maybe a checklist or set of questions we could give them that they can ask themselves before deciding if they do actually need to go and purchase an electrolyte supplement is there anything that might be helpful for them to think over and ask

44:22Kylee Van Horn: themselves before making that decision i would ask yourself do you actually have a problem and Is it a problem that electrolytes can meaningfully solve? Because like, again, having, you know, feeling unsatisfied at work or having trouble in your marriage, not going to be solved by a packet of electrolytes. But it does sort of speak to the ennui and like discontent that a lot of people are feeling and will try to problem solve electrolytes into. And then, and I think Kylie will have a more definitive list, I would also say there's a lot of people that will go throwing a supplement or throwing additional electrolytes without even knowing what their baseline is.

44:59Kylee Van Horn: So figure out where your baseline is in relationship to what your actual needs might be. And if there's a gap, that might be an opportunity to supplement. But if you don't even know where your floor is, why would you just continue to add other substances to that? yeah and then figuring that i mean i think that's where people get then they get stuck because they're like well what does that mean like where's my what's the baseline and so i think being able to understand sometimes through blood work sometimes then doing an analysis of your current diet can be helpful not everyone likes to look at the micronutrient consumption of their diet so working with a professional that can help you do that as well can maybe take some of the pressure off of, oh, I'm looking at all these numbers and I still don't know what they mean.

45:46Kylee Van Horn: So understanding, you know, what your intake of magnesium and calcium and sodium and chloride, what that looks like on a daily basis from food, I think is a really good starting place before you jump into, oh, I, you know, I just need this electrolyte supplement. I think another thing for people to consider is what level of activity are you doing? What kind of athlete are you? What level of activity are you doing? What? I mean, you could go as far as doing a sodium sweat test if you want to understand what your sodium sweat concentration looks like. But you also have to, again, understand your fluid loss as well.

46:26Kylee Van Horn: And so that's the piece that people miss out on is they're like, oh, well, I got my sodium sweat test done and this is what it says I lose. And then they forget that the fluid piece impacts you. Because if you're losing more fluid per hour, then that can impact the amount of sodium you're losing per hour etc so a lot of times i'll walk people through like the sodium sweat testing the fluid loss testing baseline diet intake from food and then deciding do i really need to do an electrolyte supplement if you are short on something as well because again like our diet if you want to increase magnesium intake you can do that through food.

47:08Kylee Van Horn: You can get it in through dark chocolate, leafy greens, bananas, things like that. You don't necessarily need to take the element product. Or some people are like, oh, yeah, I can solve my food. Like when I remind them that they can actually add a little salt to their food, that's groundbreaking for them. They're like, oh, OK, there's that much sodium in a quarter of a teaspoon of table salt. So that is also an option versus buying an expensive electrolyte supplement. So yeah, I think looking at those things and not maybe just using vague symptoms to say, I need this electrolyte supplement and I'm just going to go buy the expensive one.

47:47Zoë Rom: I think that's going to be really useful for athletes across a variety of sports, particularly those that have relatively high sweat rates. And then again, with a sodium sweat test, depending on their amount of sodium loss. But I think one of the key things you just mentioned there that often is also tied into some of the messaging is that even if they are losing a considerable amount of some of these electrolytes that can be replenished over quite a significant time frame through their diet and i think part of the messaging from the supplements is this there's some urgency right that as soon as you finish a training session you must get this and replenish all of those lost electrolytes immediately as opposed to well thinking about what is that actual time horizon, even for the people who do need to replenish some of those.

48:32Zoë Rom: And so a lot of that gets built into some of this messaging. And so maybe a final one that relates to that, because a lot of that is really useful, particularly for the athlete population. Is there any examples of other groups, say outside of people who are dedicated athletes that have quite a heavy training workload? Are there any other groups that you have seen examples of who have now jumped on board this electrolyte supplementation train and have been using that who are a clear example of someone who absolutely shouldn't be doing this, who is not indicated for it all. What are some of the examples of those types of groups?

49:07Kylee Van Horn: I would say really any sedentary population. I think particularly the most heinous example with the most potential for downside is sort of the sedentary office worker who's being told that consuming more electrolytes will help with weight loss focus, optimizing whatever particular thing they're vulnerable about. I think that's really where the messaging starts to be like a little less silly and have a little more potential downstream negative health impact. If you are not sweating and you are eating a modern industrial diet, like 99.9 times out of 100, you're checking that sodium box and then some.

49:45Kylee Van Horn: Well, and I would even say the yoga community, the wellness type community, meditation, yoga, it definitely feeds into those type of communities as well, because there's this focus on like, I got to get in all of my electrolytes and have them be natural so that I can perform well or be less stressed or whatever we want to say in those kind of communities too.

50:11Zoë Rom: There's so many examples. I even see it in a lot of people I know within, for example, powerlifting communities or maybe interested in bodybuilding. And that's been an area over the last few years where more than just electrolytes, just the whole hydration piece has just become, again, this hydration maxing thing where I see some of them going around with these big gallon jugs that are probably unnecessary in many cases, bar a few exceptions. but again i can't think of too many situations and types of training sessions for a lot of people who maybe go to the gym and lift some weights a few times a week where they need to be thinking about electrolyte supplement even if then afterwards they're going and doing a bit of running that the actual types of sessions that would require that are very very uncommon in many types of sporting endeavors and so i think it speaks to that it's so pervasive across a number of these outside of the maybe the narrow applications, typically within endurance sports, where it's probably more indicated.

51:04Zoë Rom: Before we get to the final question that I always end the podcast on as we start wrapping up here, could you both maybe let people know if they're interested in finding about more about your work, any things you've got going on, any places online you'd like to direct their attention towards, where are some places they can find what you guys have going on?

51:22Kylee Van Horn: You can find Your Diet Sucks wherever you are listening to this podcast. And we also have a Patreon page where we dive into and debunk different concepts around health, fitness, nutrition, diet, pseudoscience every Tuesday. And Kylie answers people's nutrition questions.

51:39Zoë Rom: Fantastic. All of that will be linked up in the description box for everyone listening. So you can go and check all of that out. So with that, we come to the final question that I always end the podcast on. And this can be quite a broad question that goes beyond even what we've discussed today if you wish. And the question is simply, if you could advise people to do one thing each day that would have a positive impact on any area of their life, what might that one thing be?

52:06Kylee Van Horn: I would say eat something you enjoy. So much of the world right now, so much of the conversation around food and diet and nutrition is trying to distill this extremely human act down into numbers and optimization and just function and fuel. And there can be a time and a place for that. But I think a lot of people have lost a sense of connection and touch for the pleasure that can go into eating that connection with your with yourself with your community with the actual like, food that you are eating. And just really, you know, every day sitting down and not watching TV, not listening to a podcast, not you know, eating a sad sweet greens salad at your desk that has 400 grams of protein in it and just eating something that you enjoy because it is pleasurable and we are extremely lucky to live in a world where you can where like the human body necessitates eating pizza eating things that we enjoy it is very cool that our bodies can turn nachos and pizza and chicken sandwiches into athletic activity and into going about our days and doing all the things that we enjoy doing and so I think just getting back in touch with that sense of pleasure in eating.

53:18Kylee Van Horn: Then I feel like mine will play off of that a little bit, but it's paying attention to how food makes you feel in regards to I think so many people are very hyper focused on counting calories, counting macros, and following a diet plan that they get out of touch with, oh, how does my body actually feel when I eat this thing, you know, and so maybe that involves maybe journaling a little bit, journaling in the sense of not logging everything on MyFitnessPal, but actually just like putting something in a written form in a journal or on your phone in a journal and paying attention to that sort of thing.

53:56Zoë Rom: Fantastic. Perfect way to round this out. And with that, Zoe and Kylie, thank you both for everything that you've discussed here today. It's been a really, really enjoyable conversation and a topic that hopefully many people listening will find very, very interesting. So thank you both for sharing your insights. thanks so much for listening into today's episode i just wanted to remind you about sigma nutrition premium at the core of the subscription is our detailed study notes that you get to each episode you also get these segments at the end of each episode called our key ideas segment where I recap certain key ideas.

54:44Zoë Rom: You get episode transcripts. You get then a number of premium only episodes. So for full details on this, then check out the link in the description box, wherever you're currently listening right now, or just go to sigmanutrition.com and you can see all the details there. I hope you do come back for the next episode regardless. And until then, have a great week, stay safe and take care.