Electrolytes with Robb Wolf | S3E10 (E030)|
Most people we work with are deficient in basic electrolytes. Evie and I are often including electrolyte supplements in our client protocols. And one of our favorite electrolytes is called LMNT. Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist and 2X New York Times/Wall Street Journal Best-selling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired To Eat. And today, you too can learn from the co-founder himself about why electrolytes are so vitally important to health and wellness.
In This Episode
Robb’s pickle juice epiphany (03:38)
How sodium intake naturally plummets (05:59)
Insulin and sodium relationship (06:25)
LMNT started as a free recipe (07:06)
Sodium intake anxiety (08:54)
Cardiovascular disease and hypertension (10:45)
Low sodium drives osteoporosis (11:54)
Sodium’s importance for cellular health and POTS (14:38)
Electrolytes and breastfeeding (16:30)
Is there a maximum dose of LMNT? (18:58)
Sweet or salty taste to LMNT can indicate electrolyte balance (24:00)
Electrolytes and migraines (24:43)
Electrolytes dramatically improve HRV (28:16)
Role of electrolytes in preventing altitude sickness (29:36)
Hydration isn't water (30:21)
Are we drinking too many fluids in a day? (35:17)
Does sodium make your hands swell? (37:35)
Consuming LMNT at different concentrations (38:08)
Spearfishing as the ultimate outdoor reset? (40:58)
Resources Mentioned
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 0:08
Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. I am your host, Toréa Rodriguez. And I’m joined by the lovely co host, Evie Takacs. Both of us are Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners and we love working with women from all over the world, through our virtual programs, helping women not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves, they’ve been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Now, please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you like what you hear today, we would love for you to hit that follow button, leave a review in Apple podcast, share with your friends, and keep coming back for more. Let’s start today’s adventure shall we?
Toréa Rodriguez 1:08
So welcome, everybody. We're super excited. Today we have Robb Wolf, who is a co-founder of LMNT Electrolytes, something that Evie and I are a huge fan of, and you may know Robb from some of his previous works in terms of his books that he's authored and some of the work that he's done in the natural health world. But Robb, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Could you just give us a little bit of background about the electrolyte piece of your story? Like how did you stumble upon this being a need to bring this to a commercial product?
Robb Wolf 1:41
Yeah, it it. It is actually kind of a to me it's an interesting story at this point. But uh, 23 almost 24 years ago, I almost died from ulcerative colitis. I was in a an MD PhD program, getting ready to start that and became so sick with ulcerative colitis, I nearly died like I'm 5 foot 9, 165 pounds ish. At that time, I was also 5 foot 9, but I was about 125 to 130 pounds. So if you imagine 30 pounds less of me like I was in pretty rough shape. And the solution that I found for my situation was this kind of low carb paleo type diet, like both the low carb part ends up being pretty important for dealing with some of my gut and autoimmune issues.
Toréa Rodriguez 2:26
Yeah,
Robb Wolf 2:27
And then some of those immunogenic foods like gluten and dairy and unfortunately, eggs and some stuff like that, like that ends up being a part of this. So I've managed this complex, gut and autoimmune health situation for the better part of 25 years now with this kind of low carb diet. But amidst all that, I had co founded the first and fourth CrossFit affiliate gyms in the world, I participate in Brazilian jujitsu. I'm now a brown belt in Brazilian jujitsu. And so a lot of the activities that I do are kind of glycolitically based, or they're kind of higher intensity stuff, low carb and glycolytic activity kind of sucked together. It is not like peanut butter and jelly like, this does not go together beautifully, but I've kind of motored through and gutted it out. But I just have always kept looking for a way to optimize things. And it's kind of interesting, I have continued to poke around the interwebs. And over the course of time, I would just search like ketogenic diet, Brazilian Jujitsu, and I found a group of people that were part of this community. And it was mainly women, interestingly, who were competing jujitsu eating low carb and killing it.
Toréa Rodriguez 3:36
That's cool.
Robb Wolf 3:36
And I track Yeah, and I tracked down the folks that were that were running that and I kind of stalked them and shook them down. I'm like, hey, what do you What are y'all doing? And I kind of had them look at what I was up to. And they were basically like, I think what you're doing as far as protein, carbs, fat are good, but you're probably deficient in electrolytes, specifically sodium. And because I'm a biochemist, and you know, I'm going to ignore the advice of these coaches who know more than than I do about this and so I was like, oh, no, I salt my food. I'm good. And probably about a year went by before they were kinda like no, why don't you really like weigh in measure everything because I was still struggling I could just didn't recover well, I didn't have that kind of low gear that I one would like to have when when doing this kind of, you know, grinding glycolytic type stuff.
Toréa Rodriguez 3:37
Yeah.
Robb Wolf 3:38
So they did something crazy. They said, Hey, why don't you weigh in measure, all your food, put it in chronometer, and then amidst all that, track all of your electrolytes specifically sodium, so I did that. And they wanted me at at least five grams of sodium per day. I was getting less than two grams of sodium per day. So Luis one of my primary coaches, he basically said hey, do you have some pickled juice? Like yeah, I have some pickled juice, he's like, get six or eight ounces of it. And the next time you work out, shoot that down before you go work out and tell me how you do and it was it was literally like a light switch was flipped. because every muscle contraction, brain impulse, nerve, you know, transmission is driven by sodium potassium pumps.
Toréa Rodriguez 5:09
Yes.
Robb Wolf 5:09
And if you are off on your electrolytes, the only thing more tightly regulated than electrolytes might be pH. And it's kind of a tough battle between the two. Like, if you want to make someone feel horrible, or have them die, tweaking their pH or tweaking their electrolytes, just a tiny bit, and they're, they're done for. And so I felt phenomenal and Luis knew, you know, for a long time that these electrolytes were important, but it was kind of an eye opener for me and I looked out at the community that I serve, and the bulk of the folks are kind of leaning towards this low carb ancestral health kind of kind of deal and also eating minimally processed foods. And this is an interesting thing is that when we shift from a more processed food intake to a minimally processed food intake, our sodium intake naturally plummets, I mean, it just falls off a cliff 85% of the sodium that folks consume is part of processed foods. So whether you're paleo or vegan or low carb or high carb, if you're eating minimally processed foods, you tend to not eat a lot of sodium. And arguably, we need more sodium when you eat minimally processed foods because our fluid balance and our electrolytes are really tightly regulated by a hormone called insulin, which manages another hormone called Aldosterone. Aldosterone causes us to retain sodium. And when we eat a lower glycemic load diet, we tend to lose more sodium and water. So even low carb diets, you lose more water and sodium and dramatically so there's actually this this process called the natriuresis of fasting, which if you are fasted, or eating a low carb diet, you just it's understood that you lose a bunch of more sodium and water. So I fix this in myself, and it was my goodness, like I did the main frustration was that I really had wished it 23 years prior to that I had figured this out, you know, but we knew that this was a big deal for the folks that we serve. And we actually put together a make your own keto weight deal where
Toréa Rodriguez 7:05
Okay.
Robb Wolf 7:06
And we still have this on the LMNT website, it's basically make your own homebrew and so it started we didn't have the the intention of starting like a salt company, we just wanted people to fix this electrolyte problem. So we told people how much sodium chloride you know, table salt to use and potassium chloride, which is in this product called No-Salt, some magnesium citrate, because we think it's really important to get a certain amount of magnesium, some stevia, lemon juice, water, shake it up and go. And we had this free downloadable PDF. We didn't even use it as a lead magnet or anything. Like we were super unsophisticated with this thing. We just put it up. And six months later, we had a half million downloads of this thing. Like it was crazy. And what was really wacky, is it folks were tagging us on social media. They're like, hey, love the Keto weight, but I hate it. Like TSA hates it when I travel with three bags of white power. Like, could you guys,
Toréa Rodriguez 8:00
I understand the police though.
Robb Wolf 8:01
Yeah, yeah, like body cavity search?
Toréa Rodriguez 8:03
That'd be a nightmare.
Robb Wolf 8:04
Yeah, yeah. So that's the whole story. Like, I figured out I had a problem. When I addressed the problem, I realized that most of the folks that I was trying to serve likely had the same issue of inadequate electrolytes. And then we started this thing as a freemium deal. Like, we just gave this formula away. And then folks came back and they're like, Hey, this is awesome. But like, Could you do like a convenient stick pack thing because I'd like to take it to the gym, take it traveling, Do this, do that. And that was like just a hair over four years ago. And LMNT is super lucky. But it seems to be one of the fastest growing health and wellness companies in the world right now. Like, it's just going like gangbusters. And we don't we don't do anything. We don't have a proprietary formula, we tell you exactly what it is on the package we give you
Toréa Rodriguez 8:51
Which wee love, by the way.
Evie Takacs 8:53
Yes, yeah.
Robb Wolf 8:54
It's kind of cool. Because we just lean into like, it's convenient. And it tastes really good. You know, and when and that's it. There's no mystical stories about magical salt crystals and their mineral content, you know, kind of BS, stuff like that. And, you know, we've we've done, I think, a great job on customer service. And I think that it's been interesting, because there's still enough anxiety around sodium, that people have been hesitant to enter this base. And so they're like, Well, you have the formula wrong. You should have more potassium and more magnesium and everything. We're like, you go, you go girl, like you do your formula the way you want to do it. We'll do it the way we're doing it. And we're currently kicking everybody's ass.
Toréa Rodriguez 9:35
Can we talk about that specifically? A little bit,
Robb Wolf 9:38
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 9:38
You were talking about processed foods, and that we get a lot of sodium from processed foods. And something that we're acutely aware of Evie and I is that when we introduce LMNT to somebody, they look at the 1000mg of sodium and they kind of freak out a little bit. And I think a lot of this has to do with the cultural conditioning that we have had that we've heard for decades of like, you got to be careful about sodium because it's gonna raise your blood pressure. Can we talk about that piece for a minute and kind of debunk that myth? Because that I think might be true if you're eating a highly processed diet.
Robb Wolf 10:13
Yeah. It's interesting. And it, I don't want to make this political but in,
Toréa Rodriguez 10:17
Sure.
Robb Wolf 10:17
In an age of like, follow the science and the science is settled. When you hear people say stuff like that they have no goddamn idea what they're talking about, like science is only the only thing that you should hang on science is good until further notice. And maybe use with caution, because you don't really know what the edges of our understanding our and hypertension is a terrible disease, you know, a disease process. It is a primary driver of cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular disease is the primary killer of people worldwide. And at this point, it shortens untold numbers of human life years, and all that type of stuff. And sodium is a factor in that but the bugger is that it's a bystander, not a cause. And the process within that is that whatever our state is our fluid volume, you know, the amount of plasma that we have in circulation is largely driven by how much sodium and potassium that we have in our body. And if we retain more sodium, we will retain more water and our fluid volume will go up. If we lose sodium, then we will lose water and the relative fluid volume will go down the bugger with all this stuff and it is crystal clear that hypertension is terrible for cardiovascular disease, kidney disease
Toréa Rodriguez 11:35
Sure.
Robb Wolf 11:35
Stroke, I mean, on and on. And on the bugger though is that when they put folks who have hypertension on low sodium diets, their blood pressure doesn't go down. It budges a little bit, but it doesn't fix the problem. It's sodium isn't the problem, the primary driver of hypertension is insulin resistance. And insulin resistance
Toréa Rodriguez 11:54
That's a whole other podcast.
Robb Wolf 11:54
And a whole other podcast, you know, but it you do need sodium to make this process worse. But the problem with this situation there, we can put people on literally zero sodium diets. But if they are still insulin resistant, they get sodium out of their bones. And in the process of getting the sodium out of their bones, they also extract calcium out of their bones. And when you look at low sodium diets and the correlation with osteoporosis, hip fracture, and all those problems, it's stunning. We have a really good article coming out on this. So what has happened is that they they put insulin resistant folks on low sodium diets, almost universally, these are high carb, and you know, low fat approaches, which don't really fix the underlying insulin resistance for the most part.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:11
No.
Robb Wolf 12:43
And then these people ended up still hypertensive and with poor bone mineral density, and now both a propensity towards cardiovascular disease, and, you know, hip fractures and those sorts of things.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:56
That's a shame.
Robb Wolf 12:57
Yeah, and this is one of the hidden features of like a low carb diet, it's understood that people will lose a bunch of water people like oh, well, you know, you go on a low carb diet and lose a bunch of water and you just lose this water weight. That waterway is your cardiovascular disease risk profile, because you're getting down to a normotensive situation. And so when people dismiss the fact that low carb diets, or even just going minimally processed carbohydrate diet could be a vegan diet, you know, you go from a standard western diet to a vegan diet, but the amount of processed carbohydrate that the individual is eating decreases, that decreases the insulin load. When insulin drops, aldosterone drops and then we start shedding sodium and water, and at some point, usually need to start adding some sodium back in to kind of balance all that stuff out. But it's been interesting because sodium is definitely a factor in cardiovascular disease via the effect on hypertension. But the thing is, it's not the cause it's a bystander, and just simply going on. Now, if you're hypertensive, I don't think that using something like LMNT is helping you but also, eating a bag of pork rinds or a Chinese food meal or a Mexican food meal isn't helping you either like yeah, the high carbs high sodium isn't necessarily helping you, but going super low sodium and insulin resistance isn't going to fix the problem either. So we really have to get out in front of the insulin resistance, we need better sleep, we need some resistance training, a little bit of zone to cardio, and we need to find a glycemic and caloric load that works for the person so that they are norm attentive and not insulin resistant.
Toréa Rodriguez 14:38
Right. Right. So let's back up a little bit. I want to talk to you about the importance of electrolytes for cellular function and health and more specifically, a lot of the listeners here might be dealing with chronic illness, they might be dealing with issues with their nervous system. POTS is a common thing. Can we talk about the importance of electrolytes just for basic functionality and Why is it so important for nervous system dysregulation situations like POTS.
Robb Wolf 15:05
So if folks think back to, you know, their whatever biology class that they've had in, we go through the Krebs cycle, like the TCA cycle, and seeing how energy is generated, literally every single muscle contraction nerve impulse in the body, every time your heart beats, it is driven by sodium potassium pumps, we have more sodium outside of cells more potassium inside of cells. And this gradient is created so that we can harness this chemical potential energy to be able to make ATP. We also have some hydrogen ion pumps involved with that. So it's not just sodium, potassium, but those really are the structural integrity of that system. So literally, every thought you have sodium potassium pumps, actioning, you know, every time you wiggle your fingers if sodium potassium pumps happened, so if we are off in our sodium potassium ratio, we're going to work sub optimally. And some of the first signs that we see in electrolyte dysregulation or electrolyte imbalance is actually like brain fog, fatigue, loss of fine motor skills. And then this progression is up to lethargy and you know, more severe brain fog and then ultimately, people start cramping like at jujitsu, people will complain about like toe cramps and stuff like that, by the time you're cramping, you've had hours of suboptimal performance and you know the POTS community is really interesting POTS was not on my radar before launching LMNT but they found us the POTS community found us in like a went bananas because they are a group of people are like, No, we need a bunch of sodium. And they're unabashedly about it. And we started getting the POTS community and then oddly enough of breastfeeding moms were the the other ones that just we got deluged with with being tagged on social media because breast milk production isn't tied specifically to fluid intake, it's tied to hydration status. And if you look in a textbook of medical physiology, hydration status is the water in the electrolytes.
Toréa Rodriguez 17:10
Yes.
Robb Wolf 17:10
Because the the sodium when breast milk is being produced and released, it's the sodium that is CO transported it like you'll trade a sodium for a lactose molecule, when you're pumping breast milk out of the breast tissue and into the ducts to be released. So you need sodium and liquids to be able to make this thing happen. And so these breastfeeding moms would show like, especially the exclusive pumpers like for whatever reason, maybe it was you know, a mom worked out of the house and she had to pump all the time, but she knows exactly how much she's producing and super stressful. My wife did this with our our first daughter for like nine months was exclusive pumping. And so super anxiety provoking if you're not producing enough, but women would show pictures of you know, they have these skinny little bottles, and it's like this was yesterday without LMNT. And then this was today and they've got four bottles full.
Evie Takacs 17:11*
Wow.
Toréa Rodriguez 17:32
Oh that's amazing.
Robb Wolf 17:59
And mechanistically it just totally makes sense. It pushes more fluid volume through and interestingly also adequate sodium drops cortisol, the stress hormone. So cortisol antagonizes breast milk production, because biology doesn't you know.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:16
Yeah.
Robb Wolf 18:17
If a woman is under stress, she doesn't get pregnant easy, she doesn't breastfeed is easy. Like there's just all these mechanisms there. So POTS, and breastfeeding moms were kind of these two medical areas that just went crazy for LMNTs early on, because that really robust dose of sodium was just totally game changing, like
Toréa Rodriguez 18:37
Correct.
Robb Wolf 18:38
Stuff tastes pretty good. And all that. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:40
And POTS I know that there's a common therapy for POTS by using saline IVs. Right. So you get a liter of saline put into your veins. And when I was reading about the solution, that's nine grams of sodium in one liter. So that led to my question like, is there a maximum daily intake of LMNT?
Robb Wolf 18:58
There isn't it and usually it's disaster pants is the limiting factor there. So if that is one of the advantages of like an IV deal, like.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:08
Yeah.
Robb Wolf 19:08
Bypass that the GI issues on that we make our magnesium amount in LMNT pretty modest, but like magnesium can be a laxative. And so
Toréa Rodriguez 19:19
That's right.
Robb Wolf 19:20
LMNTs interesting in that regard. Like it's super effective as an oral rehydration therapy. But like if somebody is at death's door, that's where an IV is going to be, you know, preferable to that. But that said, the spectrum that we see on how much folks will use something like LMNT it's a shocking spread and it's really interesting like usually you could make the case that size of the individual and then he humidity activity are all these factors and they definitely play into how much sodium and individual needs because the amount they sweat the way they sweat. There are people that are called Super Sweaters where they sweat more than normal, mainly men, although some women do this, women tend to have a much more thermally efficient type of sweat, their sweat glands are higher density, and they produce more mist, like sweat, which is better for cooling. And this is probably an evolutionary advantage to help keep body temperature normalized for carrying a fetus because an overly high body temperature can be damaging fetus. But in general, men tend to be less efficient sweaters and they will just have these giant drops of sweat that like pour off of them. And although some women are, are this way, but super sweaters can be two to three times more sodium loss per unit time than an average sweater. So it can range you know, like a given individual. So like let's take me at home I didn't work out today, I'm eating low carb low and kind of minimally processed foods by salt shaker LMNT pickled juice, you know different means I probably need five to six grams of total sodium in that day. I spent two years living in Texas which is just right next door to hell basically you know, it's it's hot, it's humid, all that stuff like you know, by a very awesome state. But I like the Mountain West where I am now much, much better. But just living in a hot humid environment, double my electrolyte need that was even before jujitsu. That was before taking the dogs on a jog or anything like that. So just living in Texas, my electrolyte needs were more in the 810 grams per day of sodium. And then a jujitsu session with you know, every hour, Jujitsu usually bumped me up a gram, two grams of sodium just to get back to baseline, we've done some work with some NHL teams where they put a patch a sweat patch on folks. And so they know the square area of the patch. And then they know the height of the individual. And so they're able to estimate what their total surface area is. And then based off the patch, they can extrapolate how much sweat these guys produce. But these NHL guys, they're big dudes, but not huge 200 220 pounds, they will lose 10 pounds of water and 10 grams of sodium in a hard game or practice and the medical recommendations are consumed fewer than two grams of sodium per day.
Toréa Rodriguez 22:21
That's just not gonna work.
Robb Wolf 22:22
Well, it's never gonna work. Yeah. And this leads into sleep dysregulation, terrible performance, you know, on and on and on. And so there's this massive spread on how much sodium people need. And it's, it's honestly one of the most frustrating things because it's one of the most common questions, how much do I need, and I don't like bullshitting people. And it's like we can really benchmark this with most people seem to like all cause mortality seems to be at a low ebb at five grams of sodium per day. So we can kind of safely benchmark that, you know, if you're not hypertensive, and if you are hypertensive, then we should be doing things to fix the hypertension. And then, oddly enough, your sodium need is going to increase. But then beyond that, we know that the American Council sports medicine, like for active individuals, high motor output, heat, humidity, the ACSM guideline, and this is very orthodox mainstream stuff is seven to 10 grams of sodium per day. So we've got a pretty good bracket there. And then in the back of our heads, we know that if somebody is lower carb, or exceptionally high motor output, we know that sodium demands can can get up into the 15 grams per day. I haven't really seen anybody above that 15 gram per day level. But that's Yeah, yeah,
Toréa Rodriguez 23:43
That's a really great way to answer the question because you're right, it's not straightforward. It's all going to be dependent upon what's going on with that individual. Whether it's performance, whether it's electrolyte imbalance, or they've got something going on, like POTS or something like that. Breastfeeding, same kind of thing, right. So
Robb Wolf 24:00
So what I've generally recommended is, is folks just kind of pay attention to how they feel if you're feeling lethargic, if you're feeling kind of off. If you're feeling like you want another cup of coffee or something like that, try adding in some more electrolytes, go grab some pickled juice, do your home brew or grab something like LMNT. And the kind of cool thing about this is, it's definitely been a factor in our success. If you were low in sodium, low in electrolytes, five minutes after consuming some, you're like, hi, diddly ho neighbor. Like you're just like, you know, you're ready to go you feel markedly better immediately. And there's very few supplement I mean, caffeine does that if you're legitimately out of sorts and tired and you drink some coffee, you're like, oh, yeah, you know, I feel that kick in the pants with it. And so LMNTs been kinda cool in that regard. If you are feeling off, that's a great place to start. And then as an interesting aside, usually if people are very deficient in sodium and they drink something like LMNT they only taste the sweet, they don't really taste the salty. And then as they start getting adequate sodium in their body, it'll start getting saltier and saltier to the point where they're like, I don't really know that I want this and they'll stick it back in the refrigerator. And then maybe six hours later, they're like, I think I might want a little bit more and they taste some and then it tastes less salty, because they're not at that literal sodium saturation point, there's some good brain mechanistic models for why that would be like the brain really samples the bloodstream for Osmolality of like the concentration of sodium, and really tightly regulates that. And sodium is also really tied into appetite control. And so there's some interesting mechanisms there. Like I don't have a randomized control trial that shows that people with low sodium, you know, wouldn't taste it as powerfully in a beverage as people with adequate sodium. But we've got a lot of anecdote around that, it seems like a pretty good way for people to help self regulate. So if you're feeling a little bit off, try consuming some more sodium and again, like, you know, six ounces of pickled juice or something like that, like just kind of sip on it and use that. And then when things start to taste really salty, and kind of off putting them pump the brakes on it, maybe then you go to just some plain water to fill in the gaps in between that.
Toréa Rodriguez 24:42
Yeah, I had an interesting personal experience with LMNT and adding a ton of salt to water. And then later on, I was using LMNT. But, you know, for years and years and years, I would experience these chronic migraines that would happen for three days at a time, and I tried just a really concentrated solution of an LMNT packet when a migraine was coming on. And lo and behold, within five minutes, 10 minutes, maybe that pain loop stopped. Yeah. And that was my first like, awareness of like, wait a minute, okay. Because I, you know, biochemist history myself, you know, I knew about sodium potassium pumps, but for some reason, I'm not really putting two and two together as far as pain loop and neurology and how the nerves are communicating together. And that was just such an eye opening experience to understand that, you know, if it almost kind of gave me the awareness that if we were to do anything for somebody's health, there'd be two things balance your blood sugar, and balance your electrolytes.
Robb Wolf 26:19
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 26:20
Period.
Robb Wolf 26:21
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 26:21
Like, those two things are game changers.
Robb Wolf 26:34
I can't agree more. And the funny thing is, you know, everything that one would do to improve blood sugar, like clearly like glycemic load diet, appropriate glycemic load, and that was my my second book Wired To Eat, like trying to find the, you know, good glycemic load, but a little bit of strength training, a little bit of zone two cardio, improved sleep, doing some meditation, like all those things that improve insulin sensitivity, so that you have better blood sugar. If you do all that stuff, that's going to dramatically improve that blood sugar side of things. And then this electrolyte status is just this kind of non negotiable feature like it will write itself over time if we don't pay proper attention to it. But you feel like garbage in the interim, your sleep is disordered if you're tracking like heart rate variability scores and stuff like that, when people are off in their electrolytes, their you know, their HRV score is suboptimal This is one of the first thing that we see normalize, when people get electrolytes on point is that their HRV dramatically improves and like their sleep quality improves, and their blood sugar improves. People forget that like these STLT, you know, these new G wiz Diabetes drugs, sodium glucose transport, they always focus on the glucose side, but they use the sodium as a co transport. And so to normalize blood sugar, you need sodium. Inadequate sodium is a stress, we release cortisol, which elevates blood sugar, both cortisol and elevated blood sugar are indirect methods of retaining more sodium. So if we just fix that problem on the front end, then we don't have the stress response, which is trying to it becomes a scavenging mechanism, like instead of the body being really robust and just, you know, yeah, we have plenty of sodium. We don't need to be stressed out. It's in this like resource scarcity mode. So you're you're adrenalized you're retaining sodium from any nook and cranny. You're pulling it out of the bones. Your energy level is low. Yeah, like everything just just kind of spins out of control. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 29:23
Can we talk a little bit about altitude and altitude sports? I know some people who listen to our podcast, do things at altitude. I had an experience while mountaineering on Mount Shasta.
Robb Wolf 29:35
Okay.
Toréa Rodriguez 29:36
And so I'd love to understand the role of electrolytes in preventing altitude sickness. What is the relationship there with higher altitude sports?
Robb Wolf 29:45
Yeah, in my
Toréa Rodriguez 29:47
Flying on a plane for that matter?
Robb Wolf 29:48
Yeah,
Toréa Rodriguez 29:49
That's an 8000 cabin altitude.
Robb Wolf 29:51
Yeah. One of the big factors there's just blood volume, and one of the buggers about altitude sickness usually at altitude, even In the summer, it's cooler. And when people are in a cool or cold environment, naturally, their thirst mechanisms are suppressed. And so they just tend to under consume fluids. And then generally when people consume fluids, they're just consuming water. And they're not consuming enough electrolytes. And again, like a textbook of medical physiology, hydration isn't water, its water and electrolytes. And so you know, all this stuff is going in, in together. But the fluid volume is a major piece of the the altitude sickness. And again, like anything with the flavor, like I think LMNTs great, like we really nailed the flavorings generally, people really liked the flavors, but a pickle juice, like anything that you find appealing. So that's kind of like, oh, I kind of want that thing. So that you stay ahead of the hydration curve. And maybe just just backing up a little bit like at altitude, we have a lower partial pressure of oxygen, and so our hemoglobin carries relatively less, it drops off relatively less. So we start getting in this kind of oxygen deficiency scenario, one of the characteristics of efficient cardiovascular activity is just the fluid dynamics of the heart, like when the left ventricle is loaded, it gets a pre stretch, which is almost like bouncing on a trampoline, instead of the heart needing to fully all of the energy for moving the blood around the body comes from just a contraction. If the prefill happens in this interesting way, then there's actually like this stretchy rebound which, which again, it's kind of like you imagine like a trampling going, if our fluid volume gets low, then the heart rate at any given exertion will increase. And so this is another thing that ends up kind of hurting us at altitude. If we are low fluid volume relatively, then our heart rate will increase. And that elevated heart rate starts putting us closer and closer to getting into that, like glycolytic, or anaerobic type of state, even if we're just standing around, you know, base camp in the Himalayas or something like that. So adequate, hydration is a big, big factor to at least deal with the fluid volume, so that we're moving, you know, blood as efficiently as we can. The heart is acting efficiently. And then there's definitely some electrolyte features with kind of that neurological piece of this. And maybe at some point in the future, my good friend, Dr. Kirk Parsley is retired Navy Seal, and also a physician, but he Okay, okay. Yeah, it was, he was the dive physician for the West Coast navy seals for eight years. So he actually understands, you know, the dive medicine far, far better than I do. And so if that was something that you wanted to get deeper on, he would be the person to talk to. Yeah, yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 32:48
Cool. Because I think there's in general, there's a misconception with hydration and adequate hydration, right, you've referenced a couple times that hydration really means both water volume and electrolytes.
Robb Wolf 32:58
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 32:59
I think, you know, we get a little bit of pushback, sometimes when we're working with our clients in terms of hydration, and I'm like, Okay, two to three liters a day and they're like, but I'm gonna pee all the time, you know, so and I think the electrolyte is so important, because that's what causes the hydration to uptake into the cells.
Robb Wolf 33:16
Yup.
Toréa Rodriguez 33:17
So that you're not peeing all the time. Correct?
Robb Wolf 33:19
Oh, yeah and here's a
Toréa Rodriguez 33:21
Or there's a little bit more nuanced than that.
Robb Wolf 33:23
No, no, it's so let me see if I've still got this paper here really quick. I'm working on writing this thing up evolution of water conservation and humans. And it makes the case that we should look at humans relative to other primates more like a camel than other primates, like most primates, because of their their mainly vegetable based diet, they have an expectation of massive amounts of fluid intake. And then interestingly, as as an aside, the cellulosic fermentation that occurs in most primates, where they break down cellulose and convert it. This is a funny thing. Gorillas are mainly fat fueled, they're not carbohydrate fueled, because their gut breaks the cellulose into short chain saturated fats. And then there's
Toréa Rodriguez 34:10
Go keto gorilla.
Robb Wolf 34:11
That's the funny thing is, you know, particularly and I don't want to, you know, piss off the vegans. But when people are talking about like their plant based thing, like frugivorous primates are definitely more carbohydrate driven, but like gorillas and chimps are largely fat fueled, because of the cellulosic fermentation, which is a whole other interesting side,
Toréa Rodriguez 34:32
Another podcast episode.
Robb Wolf 34:33
Another podcast, but also that that metabolism of fat naturally produces water, you know, and depending on your activity level, you get 200 300 milliliters of, of water per day from hydrolysis of fat, whereas metabolizing carbohydrate and protein actually require it's a condensation reaction. So it actually requires water to do that. So that's a whole you know, so a fat fueled deal is really important. And oh my god, I so diverted myself, remind me your question again, because I started talking about gorilla gut fermentation.
Toréa Rodriguez 35:06
The question really had to do with hydration and that complaint about, yeah, I'm gonna pee all the time, and how important those electrolytes are to prevent that situation from happening.
Robb Wolf 35:17
So I could make the argument that a lot of the reason why people need LMNT is because they drink too much fluid throughout the day. So you think about like, are particularly in the US, we don't do what they do in Italy, which is have a two ounce espresso shot. And that's our coffee. We do like a jug of coffee. And yeah, you know, it's these giant things, we have iced tea and all this stuff. I'm working on this paper. But and it's funny because it kind of it makes the case that you probably don't need LMNT or don't need as much of something like LMNT if we just consumed the amount of water that's appropriate for us. But culturally, like, I just enjoy having some water here and there and stuff like that. But really, if we look at the evolutionary biology, I think that the amount of liquid that we habitually consume is probably not what is ideal for us, we should look at ourselves more like camels than, you know, this animal that is wired to have constant hydration. And interestingly, and this is like, you know, kind of controversial to say, but like, if you were in a situation where you had difficulty accessing both water and electrolytes, you could make the argument that being really careful with water consumption is better than over consuming water. Because if you can't replace the electrolytes, you will get yourself into a hyponatremic low sodium state. So if we're losing electrolytes from sweat, and we're throwing electrolyte deficient water or liquids into our system, we're making the problem worse, not better. So an individual that is dehydrated, they have low body water, and they're low in electrolytes, you will kill that person by giving them water only, you will dramatically worsen their situation. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 37:06
Yeah that happened to me personally, on a long distance century bicycle ride in heat, it was almost 100 degrees in Santa Rosa, California, and totally over consuming water, not replacing any electrolytes and sweating all of my electrolytes out.
Robb Wolf 37:21
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 37:21
And I got to a waystation. And the gal just looked at me and she was like, are you okay? No, I'm not, you know, and ended up needing to just sit and drink electrolytes for about 30 minutes to actually feel like I could continue.
Robb Wolf 37:35
In one of the signs and symptoms of that situation. Ironically, people are oftentimes worried that sodium is going to make their their hands swell, and they'll retain water, when you are in that hyponatremia. That low sodium environment, actually, that's when your hands tend to swell. This is like the hiker, they swing in their arms and feet are swelling and everything. It's actually because the intracellular extracellular makeup of sodium and potassium is off, and we're getting fluid going out of the intracellular space and into the extracellular space and we blow.
Toréa Rodriguez 38:08
Wow, that's really cool to know. I know we're coming up short on time. I've got two last questions for you. I'm really curious, is there a difference in drinking LMNT in a more concentrated form, say like eight ounces of water versus in a big 32 ounce kind of thing?
Robb Wolf 38:24
The truth be told the eight ounces is getting closer to that like isotonic level. So you could make the case that that's kind of where we should probably consume it. But it makes the flavor so intense.
Toréa Rodriguez 38:38
A little intense. Yeah.
Robb Wolf 38:39
Folks don't like it. So I tend to recommend somewhere between that like 16 to 24 ounces for most situations. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 38:47
Okay. Because I have noticed that if I drink a more concentrated version of LMNT that that has a faster effect with killing that pain loop. If I've got a headache coming on.
Robb Wolf 38:57
Yeah, absolutely.
Toréa Rodriguez 38:58
Yeah. Okay.
Robb Wolf 38:59
And at the end of the day, what you're needing to do is normalize, you mentioned it a bit ago, which is, you know, the normal saline is nine grams of sodium per one liter of water. It's a mountain, like nine grams of sodium is,
Toréa Rodriguez 39:15
I don't even know what that would look like in a powder form you know.
Robb Wolf 39:18
A teaspoon, like one, one half of a teaspoon is about two grams of sodium. So we're talking
Toréa Rodriguez 39:26
Couple tablespoons, at least.
Robb Wolf 39:28
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is a it's a lot. Like that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. per liter. You know, just a smidge bigger than, than this.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:37
Yeah.
Robb Wolf 39:37
And that's what's normally cruising through our, our circulatory system. Like that's kind of what the expectation of normal is. So that's a tough sell from like a marketing perspective, but for people that really need a therapeutic effect, and that that more concentrated form is definitely the way to go. It also shows that there's an amazing, very safe therapeutic Window on this that, like, you'll still get benefit from lower concentrations will test the kidneys a little bit with normalizing, you know fluid versus electrolytes and whatnot. But it is interesting that you could, you know, cut our recommended dose by a half or a third, you know, 24 down it down to 8 ounces, and to actually improve the efficacy not make it worse.
Toréa Rodriguez 40:23
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
Evie Takacs 40:25
So Rob, we want to thank you so much for spending so much time with us and answering a lot of questions that not only we had and want clarification on, that a lot of our clients ask, because any, any protocol that we write LMNT is linked in there.
Robb Wolf 40:37
Oh, awesome! Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. So
Evie Takacs 40:40
We love that and there's so many other questions that we could have asked for sure. But we want to finish this particular episode with the question of, you know, we love spending a lot of time outdoors. We encourage our clients to do that. We encourage our podcast listeners to do that. So what is your favorite way of enjoying outdoor time? And how has that impacted your health and your life?
Robb Wolf 40:58
Oh, man, the favorite you know that that's a tough one. Because living in Montana, we have a legit four seasons. That was one of the reasons why we left Texas because my kids were born in Reno, which has four seasons, and they were like, what it snows here once every 30 years. That's not going to work. So I really like skiing and snowboarding a lot. Like I really love you know, what do I do have my favorite? It's spearfishing it's spear fishing in either like the Caribbean, Baja California like that, that that's my favorite. Like I was I was full of shit there that that is absolutely my favorite.
Evie Takacs 41:35
That's awesome
Toréa Rodriguez 41:35
So good.
Robb Wolf 41:35
Because I will I will spear fish until I am hypothermic and my wife literally drags me out of the water. I'm like, I'm fine. And I'm I'm losing my mind out there. I'm so cold that I'm making bad decisions.
Toréa Rodriguez 41:48
Lips are blue
Robb Wolf 41:49
Purple. And she's like No dude, you're done so yes, spear fishing and I I like open water spear fishing, but I really prefer areas where there's rocks and stuff like that. So I have kind of a difficulty clearing my ears. I had a pretty good head injury a number of years ago and like ever since then I have kind of a tough time clearing my ears so the pressure is difficult to deal with and so if I'm 20 feet or shallower I'm pretty happy in the water and so spearfishing is my preferred thing to do outdoors.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:18
So cool. So cool.
Evie Takacs 42:19
We've not heard that one yet.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:20
No, we haven't heard spear fishing yet, and I'm guessing there's several elements about it that you can recognize benefits your overall wellness.
Robb Wolf 42:29
Yeah, I mean, I just love it. You know, and I mean, you've got the
Toréa Rodriguez 42:33
Joy.
Robb Wolf 42:34
Yeah, the enjoyment that water immersion, I've got sunlight, and also it's a good reminder that we're not the top of the food chain everywhere all the time. And like you can get yourself in such remarkable trouble so quickly with with diving and spear fishing like, we live in an environment where all the dangerous edges have largely been removed, which I think is generally good, but it also gives people a really false sense of security. Like I just saw a video of a gal that was in Yellowstone Park and a black bear walked up to her and started like like stood up and was like sniffing her hair and stuff and she just stood there and like she didn't see them getting mauld or anything like it ended up running off but we have so Disneyfied the world that that people are idiots like they have no idea when actual like danger is in front of them. You know, and, and diving and spearfishing, whether it's snorkeling, or in particular scuba diving, and even scuba diving is a degree of attention to detail that I'm not comfortable with because I can be an idiot. And so I'm like, I don't want that attention to detail. Or if I do do it, it's like 30 feet of water. That's it, I don't push it. I'm not into like trying to figure out like you know, the deepest dive I can do and all that type of stuff. Because it just starts narrowing the margins for errors so much that I don't want to do that. That's why I'm not a fighter pilot or whatever, like tougher people are made to do things like that, but the spearfishing is cool and you know, I'm outside I'm hunting for my food like usually when we go somewhere like the Bahamas or Mexico or something like I try to catch the bulk of the food that we that we eat, you know if I eat
Toréa Rodriguez 44:19
Not everybody does that.
Robb Wolf 44:20
Yeah, yeah. And then there's that other piece that I'm not the top of the food chain. Like I've had some interactions with some tiger sharks and some things like that, where it's like, okay, this could be it, you know if things go sideways. So I think that that's a good orienting thing to really makes you appreciate what you have and keeps you very focused and in the moment.
Toréa Rodriguez 44:39
Awesome. Well, thank you once again for coming on the podcast and sharing all this wonderful information. Where can people find you? And of course we're gonna give some LMNT codes and things like that. But where can people find out more about you your next works either papers or books,
Robb Wolf 44:53
robbwolf.com is kind of the clearinghouse for most everything I do. I do have a sub stack RobbWolf.substack.com And most of the writing that I'm doing is kind of kind of over there right now.
Toréa Rodriguez 45:05
Over there. fantastic. Thanks again.
Evie Takacs 45:07
Thank you so much.
Toréa Rodriguez 45:14
Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. If you’re ready to dig deeper into your health, stop playing the Whack-a-Symptom game, start testing to get better guidance, you can find more about Toréa at torearodriguez.com and you can find Evie at holisticallyrestored.com. Want a peek into what it’s like to work with us? Come join us at our Optimized Wellness Community. You can find the invitation link in the show notes below. And if you have a question for the show, you can submit your question under the podcast section of torearodriguez.com. Finally, if you found something helpful in this episode, don’t forget to leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. They’re gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, see you outside!
