[00:00:00] Carl Lanore: [00:00:00] welcome back to another episode of super human radio. I had to put a new microphone in today. Believe that a microphone I had for 14 years it's finally died on me. Yeah, we have a good show today. Then if you're talking about hydration throughout the entire show, and, uh, we're going to talk about a study that was just published, um, talking about why it's even more important for us older guys.

[00:00:27] Especially as older guys who train hard. Of course, before we do any of that, we have to thank our title sponsor legendary foods. The website is legendary.com. The code is, I say top 10 for 10% off your entire purchase. If you're not familiar with legendary foods, you will want to try one of their tasty pastries.

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[00:01:26] And he is Robert meet. He's a doctoral student at the university of Ottawa. How are you, Robert?

[00:01:33] Robert Meade: [00:01:33] Good. How are you?

[00:01:34] Carl Lanore: [00:01:34] Wonderful. Wonderful. So, um, we're going to talk about a study that was just published and it was published in a journal. I'm trying to think what journal it was, what journal,

[00:01:47] Robert Meade: [00:01:47] the journal of physiology.

[00:01:48] Thank you.

[00:01:49] Carl Lanore: [00:01:49] There it is a journey of general physiology. It was published, looking at the relationship between temperature, regulation and dehydration, and you found some interesting things, [00:02:00] but before we go there, why this study, what led up to this study? What work preceded this study that this need to be looking at?

[00:02:09] Robert Meade: [00:02:09] Yeah. So this was actually a series of two studies that we conducted over the past two or three years. Um, essentially when we think about, uh, dehydration and body temperature regulation, we know from work dating back years and years, mostly done with the U S army that, um, as we become dehydrated, what we see is our ability to lose heat and regulate body temperature is adjusted.

[00:02:32] Um, what's why this is thought to occur is if. We are becoming dehydrated. If we let our body run a little bit hotter, um, it kind of makes thermoregulation a bit more efficient. So what we can basically do is sacrifice a bit of body temperature regulation, so we can preserve fluid. We don't need to sweat as much.

[00:02:51] Um, but most of this work had been done up until this point. In, um, younger adults kind of either in a military or a [00:03:00] occupational worker context. And we really didn't know if this kind of same, um, the same mechanisms translated to older individuals. So in this first study, which was published in 2019, essentially what we did was we had, uh, groups of young and older adults come into the laboratory.

[00:03:14] Um, they walked on a treadmill with a poncho on until they lost, uh, around 4% of their body weight, which worked out to be about seven pounds. So quite a, quite a large dehydration. Um, and then we basically, we have a specialized device and we can get into it in a couple of minutes, but, uh, in our laboratory we can measure exactly how much heat someone's dissipating from the body.

[00:03:33] So we completed the trial or each group. So I completed the trial once when they were you hydrated or adequately hydrated. And once when they were dehydrated. And what we basically saw was in, in, in line with previous work, um, the younger adults, they lost that heat and they got hotter when they were dehydrated, but we didn't see this reduction in the older adults.

[00:03:53] So even though when they were adequately hydrated, they lost less heat than the younger adults. Because as we get older, our [00:04:00] regulation of body temperature becomes as efficient. There was no sort of this adjustment that we saw when they were dehydrated. Now in the study that was just recently published.

[00:04:08] Essentially. We wanted to kind of probe a little bit deeper into why this may be occurring. Um, so when we become dehydrated, there's two things happening specifically. We want to become dehydrated from sweating. There's different kinds of dehydration, but as we sweat, we're losing fluid from the body and that's, that's a loss mainly from the blood.

[00:04:28] Um, as everyone knows, sweat is quite salty. We're also losing salt as it happens, but the sweat glands are actually very good at absorbing some of that salt back. So, not only are we having seen a reduction in blood volume, we're also seeing an increase in the saltiness of our blood or the osmolality that we've measured it in this, um, this study in business, basically just, um, for lack of getting into VAR Intuit, um, represents how the electrolyte content of fluids in the body.

[00:04:56] Um, no, based on some other work, um, that had been [00:05:00] done a long time ago or from our lab and other labs as well. Um, we kind of thought that if. One of these systems was likely not working as efficiently in the older adults. It was likely to be molality system. So we're thinking that, um, the older adults respond less efficiently to this increase in osmolality.

[00:05:17] So to assess this and this, we skipped the dehydration and instead we gave a group of young and older adults. Again, an infusion of salient through an IV. Um, one pile, the ceiling was just your normal. 0.9% salient. So that's the same kind of osmolality as your blood. And then the another trial we use 3% salient.

[00:05:37] So that's about triple the osmolarity of the blood. We then had them again in the calorimeter, um, do some extra besides with an hour of exercise at about 50% of maximum oxygen uptake. Um, and we saw pretty well the same funding. So, uh, leads us to believe that the kind of lack of an adjustment. Or the blunted adjustment to dehydration is probably due to reduce Osmotics [00:06:00] sensitivity as we get older.

[00:06:03] Carl Lanore: [00:06:03] So in the case of older men, they're going to end up tempting, let's say, in, in extreme conditions, heat stroke, in an effort for the body to maintain its quality and fluid content. Right? Hmm.

[00:06:22] Robert Meade: [00:06:22] Yeah. So. Interestingly enough, it wouldn't, it shouldn't have much of an effect done the risk of kind of, it's tough to say, but the risk of kind of getting to very elevated body temperatures, because regardless of whether they were dehydrated or, uh, you hydrated or adequately hydrated, um, or, you know, hyperosmotic ISO osmotic, we saw that there was no difference in the kind of end core temperature they achieved, um, where we kind of thought this was significant.

[00:06:48] Was that. What this basically means is as we're exercising, um, in order to also, we don't see need that kind of competent Tory reduction in further sweat losses, [00:07:00] um, which, and in the first day we actually saw that they were achieving higher heart rates. So the kind of strain on the cardiovascular system seemed to be a bit higher.

[00:07:08] Um, You then kind of, and this is again in very structured laboratory conditions, but then when you kind of add that to research, going back a long while, showing that, you know, as we get older, maybe our thirst isn't so sensitive, our kidneys don't work quite as efficiently. Um, we think that the risk of dehydration may be, uh, Increased in older adults.

[00:07:29] So when you're exposed to a heat wave or working in the heat, that's where the risk may come in. So it's a kind of combined age rate at reductions in our ability to dissipate heat and regulate body temperature, as well as a reduction in our ability to kind of maintain adequate hydration.

[00:07:43] Carl Lanore: [00:07:43] So when we talk about hydration, we talk about drinking water, right.

[00:07:49] But, but is water by itself adequate to achieve hydration? Or should we also be looking at. Uh, electrolytes, uh, in, in [00:08:00] this process as well.

[00:08:02] Robert Meade: [00:08:02] Um, yeah. So, like you said, a lot of the kind of, um, guidance around this coming from, you know, sporting organizations, public health is drink, water, drink, water, drink, water.

[00:08:13] Um, a big part of that is because as like I mentioned, as we're losing, as we're sweating, um, we typically are losing water in greater proportion than we are assaults, um, sodium and that sort of thing from the sweat. Um, certainly drinking too much water is not, it's not the healthiest thing. Everyone's heard of water toxicity and that sort of thing.

[00:08:34] It's called a hyponatremia where essentially, if you're only putting back. Just non, um, mineral water, then you can potentially dilute the electrolytes. You do have, um, as far as I understand it, unless we're talking about, you know, longterm, ultra marathons, marathons in the heat, that sort of thing.

[00:08:53] Typically our diet is good to replace those, um, the electrolytes we're losing in any sort of physical activity, [00:09:00] but we do need to keep in mind that, you know, just. Shoveling on the water, um, is not going to necessarily protect us either.

[00:09:09] Carl Lanore: [00:09:09] So, uh, we have, uh, a viewer who's, uh, security settings. Won't let their Facebook, uh, name come through.

[00:09:17] And this is really interesting. Hydration depends on your middle environmental temperature, physical activity, intensity BMI, and plasma osmolarity, which is related with sodium concentrations, but it even goes further than that. Really? When you think about it. So you, you mentioned marathon runners, right?

[00:09:34] Um, marathon runners. I shouldn't drink too much water because their kidneys actually undergo a blockade process. Right. At some point, and the, uh, quality of their blood can change dramatically. We've we've, we've heard stories about, um, uh, marathon runners drinking too much. Just water, not like a sports drink with electrolytes and stuff like that.

[00:09:59] And, [00:10:00] um, and literally passing out because of the change in mineral ratios or electrolyte ratios in their blood. So when we talk about, when we talk about hydration, this is a multifactorial process. It's a, you can't, it's very hard to, they give guidance and say, well, for every hour you train, drink. You know, two ounces or six hours you can't because how hard are you training?

[00:10:25] How much are you sweating? Um, I read a study once that showed that athletes, uh, depending on the environment that they're training in can lose up to 2300 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat. That's a lot of sodium and top of that, if you look at it, How much you can sweat. Uh, there, there there's evidence that you can sweat anywhere between two and five liters of sweat in a, in a, [00:11:00] in a single one hour training session, again, depending on the temperature of the environment, how hard you're training.

[00:11:05] So when we talk about, uh, hydration, it, it, it, it, it's hard to give guidance. Isn't it?

[00:11:11] Robert Meade: [00:11:11] Absolutely. Um, there is kind of an ongoing debate in the field. Um, there's just kind of two camps. Like you had mentioned, there is the camp saying, you know, you could potentially have a reduction in performance. Um, if you're not adequately hydrating and there, there is evidence to support that.

[00:11:30] Um, there's also, so the other side where, you know, when you're in this situation, heavy work like a marathon, um, you know, like you said, you're. Your, your body's kind of set up to, to preserve fluid, but there's other things happening as well. Another big thing with marathon running, um, and, and hard work and especially in the heat is that we have a reduction in kind of flow to the gut and, um, too much water loading on I'm sure many people have experienced this, but you can not feel so good in the stomach when that happens.

[00:11:57] Carl Lanore: [00:11:57] Yeah, it just sits there. It doesn't move.

[00:11:59] Robert Meade: [00:11:59] Yeah.

[00:11:59] Carl Lanore: [00:11:59] You [00:12:00] can hear it. Sloshing can actually hear it sloshing around as you're moving sometimes.

[00:12:05] Robert Meade: [00:12:05] Yeah. So there, there is a lot of, of different factors to consider. And, um, like the, the viewer had mentioned all of those factors. Obviously, if it's hot outside, um, we need to sweat more.

[00:12:15] If it's humid, the sweat, we are sweating, it's not evaporating. So it's not actually contributing to thermoregulation the larger we are, the more weight we have to carry around, the more heat we're producing just from that. So it's very hard, um, to, to kind of. Give targeted guidance on how much we should be drinking.

[00:12:34] Um, you couple that as well with our ability to actually what you would call spot, check, hydration status. So single measure that you give to someone, you know, and you say, is that right person hydrated or not is, is not, is not very, uh, is not very good. So, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of one of those things that.

[00:12:53] When we talk about it, it's, there's a lot of, kind of, um, confusion and, uh, [00:13:00] conflicting information out there for sure.

[00:13:01] Carl Lanore: [00:13:01] Is it, is it just enough? Is it adequate enough to just say, well, when you're thirsty drink more water or do older adults present some sort of unique situation in that area?

[00:13:12] Robert Meade: [00:13:12] Yeah. So, um, there, there is that kind of, um, You know, notion that as we get older, we tend to be dehydrated more.

[00:13:22] Um, this is, uh, not, I wouldn't say a myth, but it's a little bit, um, um, it's not that easy. Um, essentially what you do see is if you have older adults admitted to a hospital or those, you know, living in care homes, for instance, with, um, you know, certain neurological diseases, they do tend to kind of be hydrated often.

[00:13:42] Um, but. If we age and, you know, we don't develop any of these conditions and we're active in that sort of thing. Like the, the gentlemen behind me, um, we don't see that kind of same dehydration and just everyday life, typically older adults maintain hydration adequately. [00:14:00] The, where are the kind of trick comes in?

[00:14:02] Is that. As we age, even what we'll call healthy aging. We do see that our ability to replace fluids when we lose them is kind of it lags a little bit. So it might take longer for us to re me in that state of hydration. Now what, where the research kind of needs to go in and, and in our field for sure. Or my field, I guess, with the, uh, the heat stress.

[00:14:24] Is that, does that place someone at risk during prolonged, um, activity? Um, certainly we know that. Even younger adults, they do undergo what's called voluntary dehydration when they won't actually drink to replace fluids, right. Or enough fluid to maintain body mass or the hydration status. Um, we know as well, all that older adults, it seemed to go undergo a little bit greater voluntary dehydration.

[00:14:50] What we don't really have a good understanding of now is does that lead to more risk down the road or in most cases at this kind of a level of dehydration going to be something that we can [00:15:00] easily manage? Um, so we're still not quite sure on that one. I don't think

[00:15:03] Carl Lanore: [00:15:03] so. There's another phenomenon that I noticed and, and non-athletic older people.

[00:15:10] They tend not to drink water. They tend to go to diets, sodas, you know, coffee, uh, and beverages that don't really, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, I'm drinking coffee. There's water in here. No, it doesn't do the same thing in your body that just plain water does. And I find older adults who are not athletic.

[00:15:30] Uh, tend to not drink water or they can go for days. I mean, except taking a medication, you know, they'll take their medication, they'll take a sip and put it down, but then they'll grab their diet soda and finish that. So, uh, that, that could present another lifestyle challenge. It could be people out there, average people who show up in hospitals for average reasons who are dehydrated, because they just don't drink water.

[00:15:54] They think their drink, they drink a lot of liquids, but it's just not water.

[00:16:00] [00:16:00] Robert Meade: [00:16:00] Yeah, absolutely. And in most of those cases, I think, um, the water that you are consuming, um, does add to that, you know, body kind of pool of water, um, whether or not, I'm not saying that you don't need to drink water, drink, soft drinks, that sort of thing.

[00:16:15] Um, this does bring another kind of interesting, um, factor we need to consider when we're talking about hydration is that there's also that kind of hedonic, um, component to it where most of the time. Even even people who are drinking, um, who are active and you know, no, they're not watching their, or they're watching their soft drink.

[00:16:33] Yeah. A lot of times the reason that we drink is not because we're thirsty is because. You know, social cues, tell us we should, you know, we're at dinner or something like that. Or in the case of maybe if you're having a few beers after work, you're not actually looking for that,

[00:16:45] Carl Lanore: [00:16:45] that

[00:16:45] Robert Meade: [00:16:45] fluid you're looking for other than the fluid.

[00:16:49] So it just kind of complicates the situation a little bit, a little bit further. And there's tons of research on that as well, showing that, you know, if you offer someone. Um, for instance, cold versus hot water, I think [00:17:00] some probably pretty obvious during a prolonged treadmill, walking in the heat, they're more likely to drink more cold water.

[00:17:05] If you flavor that water, um, then they're more likely to drink with, you know, like a meal or something like that. They're more likely to drink that flavored water because it's, it's, um, palatable or it's pleasing. Um, and so this just adds another layer of complication. When we talk about, you know, what is hydration, how much do we need?

[00:17:24] Um, how do we without. Measuring our, you know, our blood, how do we maintain our own hydration?

[00:17:31] Carl Lanore: [00:17:31] So there's another phenomenon that's actually beneficial to, um, adaptations from training. And that is when the body reaches a certain temperature. And usually it's just an uncomfortable temperature for most people.

[00:17:48] It turns on a phenomenon called heat shock proteins and muscles, and he chucked proteins in muscle, actually. Aid us in the super compensation [00:18:00] that we desire from exercise. So, um, if someone is training at a very, very hot environment, should, should they by drinking more water? Are they actually. Avoiding that reaching that body heat you think, or, or does your, your body's going to get that as hot as it can get?

[00:18:22] No matter how much water you drink, does it even matter?

[00:18:26] Robert Meade: [00:18:26] Yeah. This is a, actually a field of open debate right now. And it's funny that you bring that up. One of the postdocs work in our laboratory, dr. Ashley Ackerman actually has done quite a bit of research on this. Um, this though is another field where.

[00:18:40] There's just so much there. The thing with setting this kind of factor is it's really hard to kind of, because all these systems are interrelated to tease out the, the bits. Um, I don't think there's a good, um, information on it right now. Um, when we're talking about adapting to any sort of stress, the thing we can start to consider with, um, the kind of.

[00:19:00] [00:18:59] Competing influences of exercise and heat is in one case. And we'd say, okay, maybe if we become dehydrated, um, we're going to get hotter. And that might kind of spur on that, that heat shock protein response on the other side of that coin, if we become dehydrated and maybe we're not able to exercise quite as long, or we want to stop earlier.

[00:19:20] We're not necessarily getting the actual training time in which of course will also drive that response. So right now, I don't think there's, there's a much consensus on, you know, is it better to be dehydrated? Um, Or keep your fluid maintained when you have that talk to dr. Ackerman about that. I think

[00:19:39] Carl Lanore: [00:19:39] let's take a minute to take some comments and questions from the audience.

[00:19:43] David Ellison said, happy Thanksgiving to Robert you're in Canada. This is your Thanksgiving right now, right? Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving to you. Uh, this has to be, so this person's, um, Facebook username is not coming through, but I'm willing [00:20:00] to bet that this is dr. George  from Greece, just because of the comments that he's making, George, whoever whoever's making these posts.

[00:20:09] Could you just post your name? This is like, um, what's my line. You know, we have to guess the other person's job, but he talks about, uh, Sodium chloride and obviously, uh, losing a potassium, uh, and, and training, uh, in and, and, and sweating. And then he goes, it goes on to talk about the isotonic beverages, which he's talking about Gatorade and things like that.

[00:20:34] In fact, we're going to have element on, um, at the end of today's show, they just became a new sponsor. And so I figured this would be a great show to drop them in at the end and, uh, They are an electrolyte product with no sugar, no B vitamins, no garbage, just minerals. Uh, but he talks about the desire to drink extra water, uh, coming from, uh, there D the need to [00:21:00] replenish a sodium chloride.

[00:21:02] Okay. He says, by eating carbs, we elevate plasma. This is observed and, and hi. Um, Highly in bodybuilding during carbo-loading. Yeah, you get, sometimes it overflows under your skin and you can look soft veins pump up due to higher osmolarity. And also the desire to drink water increases in order to dilute plasma concentrations.

[00:21:22] That's an interesting phenomenon that I was not aware of. Uh, it's gotta be him. Yeah. Look I said, who is this? I said, it's gotta be dr. George Julianos. He's in Greece. He's a wonderful doctor. He's been on my show numerous times. He's brilliant. And he's pumping out comments here, caffeine and ethanol block vasopressin, or ADH that flushes water and dehydrates.

[00:21:44] Interesting. Thanks for your contributions today, George. Yeah, he says, yes, Carl that's me. Yeah, I knew it was I'm reading. I'm thinking this can only be George typing this stuff. All right. So here's what I want to do. I want to hear a quick commercial break. When we come back, [00:22:00] we'll continue discussing this, um, uh, this study and also, uh, what older men need to know, uh, and do in order to, uh, overcome this potential for being dehydrated.

[00:22:12] Okay. Here's what we're going to take one quick commercial break, stay tuned. We'll be right back. Hey, you were listening to the superhuman channel. We're ripped and we're ready. We're ripped. And we're ready. Welcome back. We're talking with Robert meet. He's a doctoral student at the university of Iowa Ottawa, and we're talking about hydration and especially older individuals, which tend to probably be more dehydrated cause they don't drink enough water and perhaps they don't get.

[00:22:43] Enough of the important electrolyte minerals in their diet. So what, what, what should older individuals be thinking about? Like, if, if they, if they are training, if they do, you know, run, go to the gym and train, or like me sitting [00:23:00] 180 degrees sauna a few times a week.

[00:23:03] Robert Meade: [00:23:03] Yeah. So, um, in terms of hydration, um, obviously the, the big kind of take away from this research, as well as a lot of the research that proceeded it is that you may or may not, as we get older, have, um, the same ability to assess.

[00:23:18] Um, how dehydrated we are. So that means we might need some more external cues to kind of replace water. Um, and these are going to be really boring, but they're the kind of the best methods we have going. So first thing is you can always check the color of your hair, um, after a long time there in the morning, after a long training session and when there's enough time for kind of any sort of, um, different, yeah, this is in fluid regulation over the day to kind of show up in the urine.

[00:23:44] If you're waking up and your urine is extremely dark. Probably means that you need to take in a bit more fluid during the day. Um, what really easy one to do? Uh, you know, if you're training at the gym or you're running from home and just measure your body weight before and after, um, if you know, you [00:24:00] normally sit around 175 pounds, You should try to maintain that you come home and you're maybe 170 pounds, you know, that maybe not right away, but over, at least before the next training session, you should try to put up that water and I'm in trouble.

[00:24:13] Those are really hard training sessions. Um, and this goes for more than just hydration, um, for work or especially if it's hot out. A lot of times you've stated having, using the buddy system, having a training partner who kind of knows your. Your normal energy levels and how you normally act. And if they notice anything is out of the ordinary, then that might be the time to call it for the day or, you know, seek medical attention if necessary.

[00:24:38] Um, unfortunately there's no real, uh, no real silver bullet. It's just, you gotta be diligent and watch your fluid levels essentially.

[00:24:46] Carl Lanore: [00:24:46] You know, that they, uh, their straw colored urine has always been a good one for me. Very, very, very, very rarely is my urine dark. It's always that it's not yellow, [00:25:00] like clear yellow, but it's always that straw color.

[00:25:03] And for me that tells me that I'm, I'm drinking enough water, but I've been actively drinking water for decades now because I was a hard training athlete for much of my life. And I'm still hard training for my age. Squat and dead lift what I used to that doesn't mean I couldn't devise train back that, you know, for that purpose, but I mean, I'll drink three of these in a show just because I get thirsty and I want, I want a drink.

[00:25:30] Um, but yeah, there was a study we discussed on this show back in 2008 that showed that even a 10% reduction and fluid in the body. Which is the, like the beginnings of dehydration, maybe that is Frank dehydration. I forgot what it was caused a dramatic drop in strength and strength. Because when we talk about strength, [00:26:00] people don't understand this, but powerful anabolic steroids that impart great strength gains like trend.

[00:26:08] Balone the way they. Affect strength gains is not through the androgen receptor, but the way they change the osmolarity of how magnesium and calcium function. Like, like trend bologne is known to increase calcium channel activity, like tenfold. It even makes your heart beat harder and faster. And so the, the, the, if you go to the gym one day and you think to yourself, man, I just don't have it.

[00:26:37] I don't understand. Like, I, I got enough sleep and my calories are high. You may be Teeter tottering on being be hydrated because when you're  great and you will not be able to lift the weight you normally lift you can't just muscle through it because the electrical system that fires the impulses to make those muscle fibers contract [00:27:00] it's, it's running on, it's run around half of half, half, half a battery instead of the whole battery.

[00:27:05] That's basically what we're talking about here. So, you know, the hydration, people write it off. I'll just drink some water later and I'll be okay. It can actually take you a couple of days, a gallon of water without minerals in it. A gallon of water weighs close to eight pounds. So if you go to the gym and train and you lost five pounds, you know, you lost two thirds of a gallon water, that's a lot of water.

[00:27:30] Robert Meade: [00:27:30] Absolutely.

[00:27:32] Carl Lanore: [00:27:32] So, um, what the next step for the, are you going to follow through with this research into something else? Are there still some unanswered questions here?

[00:27:40] Robert Meade: [00:27:40] Um, yeah, there's a couple of, uh, areas that we can kind of take it. Um, the first is that even though we have two studies, it's hardly kind of a open and shut case for this issue.

[00:27:54] Um, so just step back and we can discuss the physiology a little bit. So essentially, like I was saying, what basically [00:28:00] happens is as we become dehydrated, we have two different things happening. We have that reduction in volume. Um, and an increase in the osmolality or the salt content of the blood, which is driven by as well, glucose as well, but it's, it's mostly, it's mostly sodium chloride.

[00:28:15] Um, both of these factors, um, can potentially affect our ability to sweat and dissipate heat and that sort of thing, um, in the study by kind of manipulating osmolality, um, We were able to kind of adjust, assess that osmolality component while controlling for that volume component, but there were some really subtle differences in the results between the osmolality study and then the kind of Frank dehydration study, um, to the point where it's almost suggesting like that volume component could be also important.

[00:28:53] Um, and we do know that part of the reason that as well, um, as we get older, we don't [00:29:00] maybe put as much fluid back. We don't get as thirsty for dehydration. It's not only because we are less able to sense that increase in osmolality, but actually the effect of changes in blood volume on the re on that response are also, um, Changed or reduced.

[00:29:14] Um, so kind of a, an easy follow up to this and would be, would have to find some way to manipulate blood volume separately from osmolality. So kind of the reverse study. Um, one way you could do that is with diarrhetic use, um, not, not the cleanest way to do research, but that would be an interesting line of research, um, where I'm mostly kind of interested in taking it though, is, is kind of going more for the, um, the practical component.

[00:29:38] So in physiology, we kind of, when we do studies, we, we have a habit of hitting things with a hammer. Um, we try to get the biggest change in a given physiological system. So if there is an effect of that system, um, we will be able to see that effect. Um, for instance, in [00:30:00] this study with the osmolarity to induce.

[00:30:03] The changes in Oz models, we saw the amount of sodium we were actually infusing into the body was about the equivalent of 40 standard sport drinks. Um, so quite a large increase, um, what is often not done in physiology research. And I really like, um, it's actually a couple of researchers at the U S army call it.

[00:30:21] This is, we never do what are called four minute abs studies. So we know that five minute abs. Is enough to get, you know, shredded six pack, but no one ever thinks maybe four minutes is enough,

[00:30:31] Carl Lanore: [00:30:31] right? The lowest.

[00:30:34] Robert Meade: [00:30:34] So what I'm really interested in doing is kind of, um, and again, with this, the study, as well as the people, the older adults it's in this study, they were physically active.

[00:30:43] I think the mean VO two max was 42 and there were around six years old, which is quite hot. Um, so. It would be more interesting to kind of change the design. Maybe we go for a prolonged kind of heat wave simulation or like a walking study, or we [00:31:00] kind of simulate more like what a lecture utilities work or a miner would do.

[00:31:04] And then see if the same responses hold up. Cause very well might happen. This might be an important kind, um, kind of increasing our knowledge of what happening on the physiological scale. Right. But whether that actually translates to kind of real life environments is a whole other question. And that's what I'm interested in.

[00:31:21] Kind of following up mostly.

[00:31:23] Carl Lanore: [00:31:23] Um, we have, uh, Steven rushing come, uh, made a comment and this is an interesting one. This is a compound that most of us know about glycerol or even glycerin. Um, any thoughts on glycerol or glycerin in effecting hydration? So are you familiar with its use?

[00:31:42] Robert Meade: [00:31:42] Yeah, very, very, um, peripherally.

[00:31:45] Um, I know the, maybe it was not glycerol, but the, the, some of that was, uh, studies from the U S army. And I can, uh, I can definitely send you the links for those have done research, at least from a thermal regulatory perspective on, um, these kind [00:32:00] of, I guess, what you would call, um, plasma expansion methods, so ways you can increase blood volume.

[00:32:07] Um, and over hydration, I think were the, they showed that and I'm, I have to double check this, but over hydration I had no, or a cause note of changes on our ability to like lose heat or regulate core temperature, but were they enough? There was some effect of it might've been glycerol, but it might've been.

[00:32:27] And another, um, um, another, uh, protein. I can't remember the name. Um, so there is some. Thoughts there from a performance perspective though, I can't really speak to the

[00:32:37] Carl Lanore: [00:32:37] glycerol and glycerin are actually sugar alcohols. Believe that that's the, that's the considered they're used. They're used in sports a lot when someone has to make weight and they literally will, you know, sit in a hotbox and not drink water, use diuretics and they get on the scale and they've made their weight.

[00:32:58] And then literally overnight. [00:33:00] By drinking, um, a 16 ounce glass of water with one to two tablespoon, folds of glycerin or glycerol. And they do that all day long. And the next morning they've got an eight, they got like eight or 10 pounds back on them and it's all in the muscle. So all in the muscle. Yeah.

[00:33:16] He's amazing stuff. So, yeah, that's a, you know, a lot of guys use that. So while we're on it, just to just real quick, if you're one of those people who wakes up all night long to pay. Try try some glycerol, a glycerin. Seriously, you won't wake up in the middle of the night to pay your body will just hold the water.

[00:33:34] Robert Meade: [00:33:34] Yeah, this is, this is actually how I'm. Basically increasing osmolality of the blood, essentially. That's what it does is it will pull fluid and help hold that fluid. We talk about osmosis and kind of osmotic pressure. Um, I remember, uh, one of the comments, uh, uh, last a while back was on the, um, the sodium and sports drinks.

[00:33:54] Yes. The, the thought that those are isotonic is a little bit of a [00:34:00] misnomer. They're actually, they're not isotonic to blood, but conduct to sweat. Um, and it's not so much. I think, um, as far as I understand it, that they're designed to put back the sodium you're losing in sweat, your body sodium stores is pretty large.

[00:34:14] And for the most time in our training, be tough to drive it down. What it's actually doing is. If you drink just plain water. And I guess this is just another kind of, um, area where this becomes confusing. You have this, all the water, let's say they enters the vascular system. You have a driving down of osmolality and the body says, Oh no, we're, you know, we're now hyperosmotic we need to flush out some of this water.

[00:34:38] So by adding a little bit of salt and it doesn't need to be too much, it just helps that. Pro or prevents that process from happening. So

[00:34:45] the

[00:34:45] Carl Lanore: [00:34:45] water you

[00:34:45] Robert Meade: [00:34:45] are absorbing is not immediately being kind of processed for Excretia

[00:34:51] Carl Lanore: [00:34:51] right. That's interesting.

[00:34:53] Robert Meade: [00:34:53] Good glycerols would be kind of the same thing. It would be kind of non, as far as I understand it, non osmotically or non, um, [00:35:00] kind of active, but still would just stay within the vascular system and help, you know, Any water you are taking in.

[00:35:06] And especially that, because you've lost so much, you're trying to make weight. That sort of thing, um, will help it just stay where it needs to be to rehydrate and kind of increase that body weight.

[00:35:15] Carl Lanore: [00:35:15] So the only, the only,

[00:35:17] Robert Meade: [00:35:17] you know, pre pre cutting levels,

[00:35:19] Carl Lanore: [00:35:19] right? The only individuals who lose weight and keep it off a jockeys.

[00:35:25] Cause I worked at the racetrack when I was a kid and they would sit in the hot box and sweat out five pounds. And that, but they, but then they wouldn't replenish it and they didn't even know anything about electrolytes back then. And they'd get on the horse and they'd ride and they wouldn't be as strong as they want it to be on the horse.

[00:35:40] They would say it they'd get off. They'd be dizzy, but they had to make weight. You know, it's really funny. It just, just another athletic performance, um, venue that, uh, requires, uh, to, to lose body water quickly. Yes.

[00:35:55] Robert Meade: [00:35:55] So I actually did, um, I did. A couple of years of [00:36:00] powerlifting and a, you could either compete in a two hour, um, after your way in or 24 hours.

[00:36:06] And I would never do the two hours. There's no way I'm trying to, uh, you know, lift heavy weights after only having two hours to replace any body while I lost though,

[00:36:13] Carl Lanore: [00:36:13] right? No. Yeah.

[00:36:14] Robert Meade: [00:36:14] Not, not, not interested in that.

[00:36:16] Carl Lanore: [00:36:16] No. Cause you know, you're not going to, you know, you're not gonna be able to perform the way you want to perform.

[00:36:20] It's amazing. We're going to take a last on this particular discussion, and then we're going to be joined at the top of the hour, uh, to talk about an electrolyte blend, which fits nicely into this discussion. Uh, so stay tuned. We'll be right back with more superhuman radio. Ever again, this is the superhuman channel doing reps with the weight of the world.

[00:36:48] Welcome back. We're talking with Robert meet. He's a doctoral student at the university of Ottawa about hydration and older men, but really this [00:37:00] is a topic that young athletes have to pay attention to too, as well. I should say. Because being dehydrated affects your performance, it affects your sleep. It affects the microbiome in your gut.

[00:37:11] I mean, it affects bone mineralization. It affects everything. And, um, and, and your, and, and you're right. Social cues have changed, change how we drink, you know, and, and unfortunately our ability to ignore signals from the body has become a comment. Common thing today. Uh, and so people don't even know when they're, they're really thirsty or not, and then they turn to diet soda instead of water.

[00:37:40] And it's just, it's, it's really interesting when you look, you know, chronic kidney disease, um, has been thought to, uh, dehydration is understood to play a role in chronic kidney disease. However, It's changing now, the [00:38:00] opinions of what is good for CKD and what's bad for CKD. It used to be that high sodium intake was shunned.

[00:38:07] No, no, no. You got to cut your sodium down. So your kidneys don't work so hard. I've had renal specialists on this show and we've talked about this. The kidneys worked the hardest when you're not getting a constant. Influx of minerals and water because they have to then blockade and sequester, excuse me, electrolytes from escaping in the body.

[00:38:30] That's when they work the hardest. When is the dam working the hardest when it's holding the water back, when they open up the spill Wells, the dam isn't working hard because everything is just rushing out. So now they know that if somebody has CKD, they tell them to take 600 milligrams of sodium bicarbonate, three to four times a day.

[00:38:49] And that's because the added sodium allows the kidneys not to have to work so hard because sodium is really the primary mineral that the body is trying to manipulate model [00:39:00] modulator. So we're learning now how, and there's so many dehydrated people out there. They don't even know they're dehydrated cause they don't train.

[00:39:07] They're just average people. What do you think.

[00:39:10] Robert Meade: [00:39:10] Yeah. Um, I don't know. There's a preface of course that, uh, my field is not in, in kidney. Um, I do read quite a bit about it, cause it is, it is very interesting. No formal training though. Um, Kenny is you're right. It's it's um, It's an, it's an amazing Oregon. Um, it does a lot more than we kind of give it credit for.

[00:39:28] And as far as I understand it, or I guess the, the big kind of, um, thought for a while was this whole thing with the salt sensitive hypertension can lead to, um, you know, kidney issues. I think more recently, we're starting to kind of, like you said, um, recalibrate our thinking on that. And it might not be necessarily that, you know, we eat too much salt.

[00:39:48] It puts too much strain on the kidneys. The kidneys become damaged. It might almost be the reverse that there's some damage we're doing, whether it be, you know, not eating right or developing atherosclerosis or whatever it is, um, [00:40:00] that makes our kidneys become salt sensitive. Um, I actually, I, I, I read a study I'm not too long ago.

[00:40:06] And essentially if you, um, the. The chance of someone becoming or the chance of a kidney recipient becoming salt sensitive or developing hypertension after the donation is directly proportional to the family risk of the person who donated the kidney. Um, so just, there's a lot more going on there than we give it credit for.

[00:40:28] Um, but I think now a lot of the research, and I know there is actually a clinical trial coming out of Ottawa, not so much looking at necessarily the effect of, um, sodium intake itself on 'em, you know, hypertension and kidney dysfunction, but, uh, that, that sodium potassium ratio, um, and just kind of, yeah, it speaks to the broader point that, and we had mentioned this in the last, uh, the last segment, is that okay?

[00:40:52] You're what, 60, 65% water, all of the, um, of, of biochemical reactions and [00:41:00] all the nerves are going on in your body as is happening in this medium. So, um, it plays a role in everything. It means it's very important at the same time. It also means that hydration interacts with every system in the body and it makes it, you know, a really hard thing to kind of figure out what, you know, make heads or tails of what's going on.

[00:41:19] I think.

[00:41:20] Carl Lanore: [00:41:20] So about about five years ago, I had dr. James D NYCLA Antonio on the show after he had written the book, the salt fix the book was, was fascinating because it, it actually showed scientifically the inconsistencies. Why, what happens to the body when you do a low sodium lifestyle? And so after, after doing that interview, I happened to be at the gym and a bunch of us guys who trained and we go and sit in the sauna afterwards and we shoot the breeze and talk.

[00:41:54] And my friend bill, who's a over the road truck driver for, for FedEx. [00:42:00] He said no for ups. I'm sorry. He said to me raising my blood pressure medication that this guy trains, he does CA does like an hour of cardio. He looks amazing. He's my age. He's in his early sixties now. And he goes, you know, the last few times I've been to the doctor, they just keep bumping up and bumping up my blood pressure meds.

[00:42:19] And so I said, um, are you on a low sodium diet? He goes, yeah, I don't eat any salt. He goes, I don't salt. Anything if I don't even food, if a food has salt, you know, with like the first five things on the label, he says, I don't even, I don't even buy it. And I said, huh, how often do you sit in the sauna like this?

[00:42:35] He goes out four or five days a week. I said, why don't you buy this book? The salt fix by dr. James D Nicholas Antonio. Read it. I said, and maybe you should start salting your food. Now this is a w this is an N equals one anecdote, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Right? So we, we see each other all the time.

[00:42:57] About four months later, he comes back to me. He goes, you're not going to [00:43:00] believe this. I said, why? He goes, I'm off my blood pressure medication. I said, How'd that happen? He says, I started putting salt on everything. He said, my doctor kept lowering the dose and now I'm off it completely. And I said, so all you did differently.

[00:43:14] He says, all I did differently was I started salting my food. Now, if you told this to a physician, they'd go out how to be something else. That's a lot of nonsense that can't be salt changes, hemodynamics, blah, blah, blah. I think we've gotten it wrong for a long time. And I think that we've literally tortured people.

[00:43:31] Tortured them and hurt them in the long run by trying to get salt out of their diet, completely to fix a problem that was secondary to the salt. You know, when we talk about the angiotensin converting enzyme, it's sensitive to salt, you know, that metabolic derangement syndrome, you know, now everything affects you differently, everything.

[00:43:55] Hmm.

[00:43:57] Robert Meade: [00:43:57] Yeah. That makes sense. [00:44:00] Um, I think a lot of times you start off by sort of treating the symptom and it's not often, or sometimes you're missing a piece. Um, and then there are, you know, the body is we're discovering things. All the time, um, angiotensin converting enzyme, a great example. It actually, uh, apparently exists within the vasculature of the body.

[00:44:22] Um, and so that's actually one of the, I know one of the kind of lines of research right now is that it could just be not again the salt content, but that sodium potassium ratio, literally in the walls of the vasculature that is potentially causing hypertension. Some people, I mean, when you look into the literature, we, we, as, you know, Just scientific enterprise or whatever you want to call it.

[00:44:42] Um, we really don't understand hypertension, um, to the degree that would be good to help treat it. So,

[00:44:50] Carl Lanore: [00:44:50] yeah. And yeah, and yet they prescribed medications for it. Exactly. You're exactly right.

[00:44:56] Robert Meade: [00:44:56] Yeah. Yeah. Um, and in certain, and certainly these medications [00:45:00] do work for, you know, I, I'm not sure on actual numbers, but most of the people.

[00:45:05] But all these problems can be again, like high blood pressure could be caused by, you know, there's many factors, the vasculature, um, you know,

[00:45:14] Carl Lanore: [00:45:14] onset of onset of insulin resistance. That's, that's the number one reason why people are on blood pressure meds because they're, they're already becoming diabetic.

[00:45:22] And that's the number one reason. Most of these people, they address their, their insulin resistance low and behold, their blood pressure gets better. You know, so what do you want people to take away from your research, Robert?

[00:45:37] Robert Meade: [00:45:37] Um, this research, uh, I suppose just, you know,

[00:45:41] Carl Lanore: [00:45:41] we do

[00:45:42] Robert Meade: [00:45:42] it, it is an important step forward, I think.

[00:45:44] Um, uh, not a small step. It's not a leap by any means, but it just goes to show how kind of complicated hydration, um, and this kind of study is, um, just maybe if everyone. When it gets hot outside, if you're going for a run, [00:46:00] just pay attention to it, you feel how thirsty you are, you know, are you losing too much weight?

[00:46:03] That sort of thing. I'm certain you're training, just feeling will be better. Um, but then understand as well that, um, In terms of our, um, kind of messaging that we hear all the time about hydration. Um, it's very complicated and, uh, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done. Yes,

[00:46:20] Carl Lanore: [00:46:20] it is a lot of, lot of moving parts when we talk about hydration.

[00:46:23] Listen, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

[00:46:26] Robert Meade: [00:46:26] Yeah. Thank you for having me.

[00:46:28] Carl Lanore: [00:46:28] All right. We're going to take a quick commercial break. And when we come back, we're going to be joined by Tyler, Tyler Cartwright. And we're going to talk about an electrolyte product that I'm crazy about. So stay tuned.

[00:46:37] We'll be right back with more superhuman radio. Fit that out right now. This is the superhuman channel.

[00:46:48] welcome back. No, I didn't know. We were doing the element interview on the tail end of this interview. We just did about hydration, [00:47:00] but thank you, Elisa. Profumo because she's a genius. When it comes to booking the interviews, how are you Tyler?

[00:47:07] Tyler Cartwright: [00:47:07] Doing wonderful. I was going to say, I think that the conversation's already been had, so I was just going to hang out for 30 minutes.

[00:47:12] Carl Lanore: [00:47:12] No, right. It was like, I was, I was like, how do I save some of this stuff when Tyler comes on, because it's pertinent to the earlier interview, but, but it's okay. It's okay. So, you know, I am a huge proponent of, of understanding our evolutionary edicts, you know, 40,000 years versus 2.2 million years. Okay. So we've evolved under the access of certain things and under the pressure of certain things.

[00:47:44] And we have always consumed water that had minerals in it always for two point something million years. Now we have a modern sanitation and filtration and all this other stuff. And. [00:48:00] People think that because they're drinking spring water. Oh, well this is spring water. No, it's spring water. That's been highly processed, highly filtered.

[00:48:07] That's why your, if your Springwater says low sodium, it's no longer Springwater because I was at, we went in Ireland and we drank from a 6,000 year old aquifer that they bottled water at. So we could see the label. I mean, there was sodium calcium, magnesium by carbon it's that will all these minerals in there.

[00:48:31] And I gotta be honest with you. I told Alisa, like, when I drank that water, I felt, I felt hydrated. If I could, if you could feel like I, I didn't feel like I was always thirsty every five seconds. And then you come to the United States and I contacted DIA park once and they will send you. They're mineral chart and it's all the middle charges zero to either zero or up to this.

[00:48:58] And so I contacted the customer [00:49:00] service, says, why does it say zero two? Why does it say you're 114 milligram per liter of this? She has both because the filtration process removes a lot of it. So we really don't know. It's like, this is, this is the range that it could be. This is not mineral water. This is not a spring water anymore.

[00:49:19] Tyler Cartwright: [00:49:19] It really isn't. I mean, you know, anything that we do to remove minerals, I mean, filtration that we do right. Is going to take whatever was in the water out in some cases that may be good, right. Pathogens and things that can kill us are wonderful to get rid of. But it's sometimes I think a little baby with the bath water, it's just kind of gets thrown out whether you intend for it to, or not, because you can't filter one without the other.

[00:49:42] It's the, you know, love and marriage, it's a Sinatra song. Right.

[00:49:46] Carl Lanore: [00:49:46] So, yeah. Yeah. So you guys came up with element. And one of the reasons I love element is because it's just about minerals. There are several other products on the market that claim to be a mineral additives for [00:50:00] your water, electrolyte additives, to your water, they all have artificial colors or natural colors.

[00:50:06] They have colors in them. I don't know why they all have B six in them. I've talked about B6 on the show for a long time. We more people have B6 toxicity toxicity than they know, because everything is fortified with B6 today. And it's synthetic B six. And when I saw this didn't have any B six and I was like, Oh my God, this is fantastic.

[00:50:26] And the other thing is, there's no sugar in it. Like, why does your, why, why does your water have to have a taste other than the minerals themselves? I don't understand that.

[00:50:38] Tyler Cartwright: [00:50:38] It's fine. Anyway, we go to trade shows sometimes and people come up and they're, you know, they try the flavored stuff with us and we do some flavored things, all using Stevia.

[00:50:46] Um, you know, and then we'll have a container of the raw formula that's there. So it's literally just minerals added to water and they're like, Oh, I bet it tastes like the ocean. We take a drink and see, and honestly, people take it and they go, [00:51:00] and it sits in the back of their throat for a second before they swallow.

[00:51:02] And then they just think to themselves, huh? And you can see the little hamster with the wheel turning in their forehead. Like you just see like the light bulb is slowly getting brighter over their head and they go, wait a minute. That doesn't taste overpoweringly salty. I'm like, well, yeah. It's yes. It's going to have some salty taste to it because there's salt in it.

[00:51:22] Go figure, but you don't need to drink the ocean. You just need to replace the minerals that both we're not getting in our diet because you know, a host of reasons. Um, you know, and secondly, that we're, you know, we're not really putting back into our diet nearly to the level that we need to from maximum human performance.

[00:51:42] So.

[00:51:43] Carl Lanore: [00:51:43] Well, let's talk about that for a second. So this is something that I find shocking that most people don't know either. So the average person, when they train will sweat three to four liters per hour, and even afterwards the [00:52:00] rest of your day. Cause you know, when you train you sweat the rest of the day, right?

[00:52:02] It raises metabolic rate. They'll end up sweating out 10 liters. In a day, most of it just gets whipped away. It just keeps your skin cool. You don't feel it. You don't build a beads or droplets of it. And it's estimated that hard training athletes to easy training athletes will expend up to 2,300 milligrams of sodium per liter.

[00:52:26] Now think about this. On every single stupid box of food, they recommend that you only get 2200 milligrams of sodium a day. Is it any wonder that people are developing chronic kidney disease? If they actually need 2000, 10,000 to replace what they went through and they've given themselves 2000 and where is that sodium coming from?

[00:52:49] It's robbing it from bump bone mineral.

[00:52:54] Tyler Cartwright: [00:52:54] You know, it's, it's funny. Funny is not the right word. It's pissing me off is what it does, [00:53:00] but this idea that we should just ignore the data, right. A cell like Alan Aragon and his research review last month, I guess, put out an article that's like, thank God somebody else is finally carrying this torch for awhile.

[00:53:12] The clinical data on sodium intakes and relative risk and CVD risk. Show that an arrange of about four to six grams per day for the average person, that those risks are at their, their lowest they're at the trough of a J-curve or a U curve with a really long tail. Um, but yet we're still advocating for quite frankly, completely instantiate unsubstantiated.

[00:53:41] No data to say, Hey, don't eat more than 2000 or 2,400 or 1800 milligrams of sodium a day. And I'm like, okay, here's the thing. One of the biggest challenges we have is we don't appreciate that sodium and potassium kind of work like a tug of war rope to keep stuff in the middle. And so we have six oil. We have really poor [00:54:00] farming practices, really poor agricultural practices that have been brought about by price pressures and land pressures and a host of other things.

[00:54:07] And the data that we're using to calculate how much of this stuff is in our food is from the Atwater data from the 1940 long before we got into confined animal agriculture, long before we got into monocrop, you know, soil pillaging, you know, sort of infrastructure, um, No, actually a little shout out here.

[00:54:27] Uh, Rogers and Rob Wolf just released a book talking about a lot of these very

[00:54:32] Carl Lanore: [00:54:32] topics,

[00:54:33] Tyler Cartwright: [00:54:33] but we have no freaking clue. What's actually in the mineral composition of the vitamin composition of the foods. If we're getting to the foods that grandma and grandpa used to eat, right? We're not talking about the box stuff where it's more synthetic than it is natural.

[00:54:47] Um, you know, we have no idea. And what we found, especially coming from my background and training and eating lower carb. You just tank, you just die. If you don't [00:55:00] keep that sodium level to a point that would cause doctors to scratch their head like caveman and try and figure out what's going on. You know, there are days when I'll train, you know, two hours in jujitsu within an hour, hour and a half, two hours in the gym.

[00:55:13] And it'd be nothing for me to consume 15 to 20 grams of salt in the course of a day. And it should absolutely flabbergast people, but I'm also intentionally taking in potassium. I'm eating diet. That's, you know, that's very lightly refined. That's intentionally focused on nutrient densities, but not synthetic nutrient density is where we can avoid that kind of thing.

[00:55:33] Right. And so, okay. I tried to take somebody and put them into that environment. Even a fairly well trained person. And I put them against an E Willy well-trained person with a higher dose intake of sodium and potassium. The equally well-trained person with the higher intake of electrolytes is going to still be running like when the Energizer bunny banging that drum.

[00:55:57] When the other guys are just falling over in the floor and pass it down. [00:56:00] It's it's crazy. Just the anecdotal data alone. Is absurd, but I mean, call you're you're an older dude. Like me, you remember what you did in football practice when you were done? What'd they do, they handed you

[00:56:12] Carl Lanore: [00:56:12] salt tab,

[00:56:13] Tyler Cartwright: [00:56:13] right. And what happened magic, right.

[00:56:15] Perked right up. And you went right back on the field. Cramps went away. Um, And I actually had an opportunity years ago to try a hermetically sealed unopened bottle of the original formula of Gatorade.

[00:56:28] Carl Lanore: [00:56:28] It had, it had niacin, right? It had niacin. It was, it

[00:56:32] Tyler Cartwright: [00:56:32] was the nastiest tasting saltiest compound I've ever put in my mouth.

[00:56:37] To the point that lightened the lips puckered and they were dry through the course of the day. Right. And the conversation I had with the gentleman that had it, he said, you know, before it got sold, like the patent and all the stuff, it was an electrolyte drink, but now it's

[00:56:52] Carl Lanore: [00:56:52] sugar water. Yes. In fact, doctor dr.

[00:56:55] Heizer lives here in Louisville, and he worked [00:57:00] with the university of Florida that developed Gatorade and the original blend had. Niacin in it because I'm niacin suppresses free fatty acids from the liver and increases growth, hormone production. If you take a 100 to 200 milligrams of real niacin, not the slow niacin, right?

[00:57:25] Uh, every 15 minutes, you will have a massive increase in growth, hormone production during your training. I did it. I tried it. I walked around the gym looking like a lobster for a while, and I was itchy as hell all the time, but he said they had to take it out because the players didn't like the flushing.

[00:57:41] The flushing feeling that, you know, the itchiness and all that sort of stuff, but yeah, it was, it was actually a scientific blend. Now it's now it's akin to soda with some salt in it.

[00:57:50] Tyler Cartwright: [00:57:50] Well, and what frustrates me is, what's the message that you see, right? Like the commercials, even as far back as when I was in high school, right.

[00:57:58] It was, you know, be like, Mike [00:58:00] drink the Gatorade. It was, you know, you can jump like LeBron, if you drink the Gatorade. And I mean, we look back as adults and go, Oh, that's stupid. Nobody can really have you met kids. Like there. I love him. I'm the proud father of a nine year old. They're not terribly adept at separating reality from fantasy.

[00:58:18] Right? And so you get them hooked on this drink early on because drink companies know the same thing to credit card companies know that there is loyalty and brand identity. It's the reason that they spend millions and millions of dollars supporting paying athletes to be on weenies box is paying out, needs to be Gatorade drinkers.

[00:58:38] Um, it's utterly absurd in the amount of electrolyte that you would need to get. We actually did the math on this on a, on a, on a single pouch of element in 16 ounces of water you wouldn't need. I think it was

[00:58:51] Robert Meade: [00:58:51] five.

[00:58:52] Tyler Cartwright: [00:58:52] 16 ounce or five 24 ounce Gatorades. I can't remember which the number was, but we actually did.

[00:58:58] It's like instill, literally you're [00:59:00] taking 35 to 40 grams of sugar, times five. In what world should you be drinking? 150 grams of sugar in a single intake.

[00:59:11] Carl Lanore: [00:59:11] It's crazy. I use elements in the morning before I go train. I literally, I fill up my jug and I, and I pour two packets in there and I sip it through the morning before I go to the gym.

[00:59:24] I use it before training because the James de Nicola, Antonio, who I mentioned earlier, you know who he is, right. The salt. Yes. I mean, he talked about like using salt as a pre-workout. Just take it before you go to the gym, it's the God's honest truth. You train longer, you feel better, you feel stronger. And like, people will say to me, my God, that's so much salt.

[00:59:47] And I think to myself, yeah, it's going to be on my shirt at the end of the session. You know, it's going to just pull it out of my body. It's not like as though it's going to stay in there and hurt me or something like that. And when you look at that, that was one of the things that a lot [01:00:00] of the early paleo guys, Rob Loren Cordain.

[01:00:03] There was a problem because there were these nonsequitors right. So Rob was real big, big Omega threes early on. And one of the things I credit Rob with is when he, when he realizes he got something wrong, he goes, Oh, I got that wrong. So here's the new day ADA. He doesn't dig his heels in and, and protect his, his little fiefdom.

[01:00:23] And I have a lot of respect for Rob for that reason. He's been on the show numbers times, but. Early on. It was like, well, wait a minute. If I eat like this, if I eat like a caveman, I'm going to be getting 6,500 milligrams of sodium a day. Oh God. Yeah, wait a minute. So there was this, there was this disconnect between what modern dietary recommendations were and how our paleolithic ancestors ate.

[01:00:46] But the reality is it's because the modern dietary recommendations, a complete hogwash.

[01:00:53] Tyler Cartwright: [01:00:53] Yeah, you're absolutely spot on. And an interesting little side note, one of the early stuff on the early pieces, and I will [01:01:00] double down and, you know, rubs a personal friend and has been for years long before we decided to launch element.

[01:01:05] Um, you know, I have never met a more willing. Student to learn things than I ever have in that man. And he has taught me more than I think most people have probably forgotten. Um, you know, but, but it's, it's interesting. You, you look at some of the recommendations, especially like dr. Cordain and I want to give a shout out that the guy was pushing the envelope of what was out there, but.

[01:01:29] Paleo man only ate lean meats and issued salt and mineral licks or mineral deposits. And I'm like, Oh shit, I'm sorry, but

[01:01:38] Robert Meade: [01:01:38] that's,

[01:01:38] Tyler Cartwright: [01:01:38] there's no data from which you can make those conclusions. And, you know, unfortunately I think that that narrative stuck early in paleo. And I think that when we consider modern lifestyles and how to apply paleo.

[01:01:52] If you want to go down that path, you do probably need to eat some leaner cuts of meat. Cause you don't live with tapeworms and bacteria in your gut all the time. You [01:02:00] don't live in an outdoor cave where you're being chased down by snakes on a regular basis and being exposed to 110 degree hot days.

[01:02:08] There's a reason that they could get away with not counting calories and doing all the, you know, the stuff that isn't really. Germane to

[01:02:16] Carl Lanore: [01:02:16] how we live right now.

[01:02:18] Tyler Cartwright: [01:02:18] And, you know, I think the same situation exists with respect to a product like element. No, we don't have natural sources of water. We don't normally do, but they're difficult to get ahold of.

[01:02:30] We don't have, you know, mineral dense, vegetable, mineral dense animals, because they're eating grass from mineral dense soil. We don't have those things anymore. And so we need to be intentional and, and, and methodological, if you will, or focused on how. We, we ingest those electrolytes and people have gotten know a little twisted up with things like, well, why don't you use Himalayan [01:03:00] salt?

[01:03:00] Why don't you use, you know, for the same reason, Carl, that I don't for the same reason that you said just a second ago, you don't really know what you're getting when you get that stuff and you have no idea.

[01:03:12] Carl Lanore: [01:03:12] W

[01:03:12] Tyler Cartwright: [01:03:12] how it was mine, where it came from and like a great example. I'm good friends with the guys at Redmond salt.

[01:03:18] They make a great salt product, but when it comes to supplementation, it's the one area in life where you don't need to guess. You need to be intentional when you're, you know, when you're, you're using a peptide, when you're using supplements, that is the one time where I'm like, look, don't go whole food.

[01:03:36] Don't go lightly refined. Let's get a concentrated, known specific amount so that you can titrate that dose around your training, around your lifestyle, around your recovery, around all of these things. And it's funny that people go well, well, you know what, where is it coming from? And how does it look like.

[01:03:52] The ground actually comes from the ocean. Like I know I'm like, it's not, yeah. Assault only kind of comes from [01:04:00] a handful of places. So you're either blasting it out or you're harvesting it out of the water bottle, user, whatever. And so, you know, there is just such a misrepresentation of the data on electrolyte requirements in general.

[01:04:12] And honestly, powerlifting has been telling us this for years and nobody was really listening. Um, you know, guys like Stan efforting have been shouting about this, uh, deepest quality. I mean, there's been so many people in that fitness and health space that have gone. I feel better. I trained better. I recover better.

[01:04:28] I sleep better when I have a proper amount of electrolytes. I mean, going so far back as the old, uh, you know, lemon saltwater shot thing that you would do in the morning sometimes before you'd get up and get through your day, it's absurd.

[01:04:41] Carl Lanore: [01:04:41] And it was the salt, it was the salt water. That was the magic that the lemon.

[01:04:45] Tyler Cartwright: [01:04:45] Yeah, absolutely. But lemon just made it taste less salty, but, you know, but the thing is, is like, there is okay. There are a lot of things in nutritional science that I take issue with, but it is [01:05:00] criminal, what we are doing with respect to the narrative and the message around electrolytes in general and sodium and specific.

[01:05:08] Right. No, it's it's, it's laughable. I mean, and somebody that they was like, well, what about somebody with a heart condition? It's like, well, my father is a heart attack survivor, and he is seeing a cardiologist who put the last name together. When my dad mentioned that we have an electric company and he's like, Oh my God, I have boxes of it here.

[01:05:28] And I give it away to every heart patient that I have. That's on Lasix to know

[01:05:32] Carl Lanore: [01:05:32] things about feeding the teeth.

[01:05:33] Tyler Cartwright: [01:05:33] He's literally giving away boxes of this stuff every month, because he's helping people to realize that the sodium and the potassium in, in proper balance are what keep fluid levels appropriate.

[01:05:47] So you don't go hypotensive. You don't wind up hypertensive and, you know, kind of to the point that that Robert was making earlier. Absolutely. There are people that are salt, sensitive hypertensives, and we absolutely should pay [01:06:00] attention to those folks. We should focus and understand not everybody is a cookie cutter, rubber stamp.

[01:06:06] Complete thing I get to say, because I'm not a doctor and I'm not a nutritionist. I have a suspicion that those people are metabolically dysfunctional in some way. And that the salt sensitive hypertension is actually a consequence of a

[01:06:18] Carl Lanore: [01:06:18] metabolic

[01:06:19] Tyler Cartwright: [01:06:19] radiological problem. Exactly. It is not, it is not the problem.

[01:06:24] I

[01:06:24] Carl Lanore: [01:06:24] mean, think about it, their car, their carb sensitive. Theoretically, if you're metabolically deranged, you're carb sensitive. Why not be sodium sensitive too? I mean, you know, it makes perfect sense. These people are already broken and sure. Giving them a lot of sodium just brings out how broken they are.

[01:06:40] So that being said, there are people who say they're sensitive to sodium that if like I have a friend. We'll go out to eat. And the next day he'll say to me, all of that food must have had a lot of sodium in it because I feel puffy today. Is there a break in, like if you've been living an inappropriately, [01:07:00] low sodium way of life, is there a rebound period?

[01:07:04] Like you add sodium, get ready. You're going to hold water, but in like a weekend, two, a two weeks into it, it all regulates itself out.

[01:07:11] Tyler Cartwright: [01:07:11] So one of the things that happens, um, in general, and, and I'll answer the question first, um, I think that there is a loading period that needs to happen if you're used to eating low sodium and all of a sudden you go to having six grams of salt that you're going to swell up, like the Macy's they blend, um, you know, you're going to feel you're going to feel awful.

[01:07:30] Um, and you'll probably spend most of the day in the bathroom. Yeah, but when you start it's like with anything, right? You don't, you know, somebody excusing trst right. If somebody is doing palette therapies or somebody is doing, you know, whatever, you know, you don't jump into the middle of jujitsu with nothing but black belts and expect not to get your butt kicked by the time you come off the mat.

[01:07:48] Right. You don't. You know, you don't go into a power lifting, meet and compete forklift, weight classes above your weight, because you want to challenge. You're going to get destroyed. Right? The reality is you [01:08:00] don't stop are going from 1800 milligrams a day to 8,000 milligrams a day. And wondering why they used to use saltwater as an enema.

[01:08:08] We'll find out real, real fast. What happens. However, I think that what's interesting is if you look at the studies on, on non deranged kidneys, right? So. Folks that are not suffering from chronic kidney disease, the amount of sodium and potassium that at those kidneys can excrete over the course of even five or 10 minutes is absurd.

[01:08:27] Right? It's in the range of about 20 grams.

[01:08:31] Carl Lanore: [01:08:31] Wow.

[01:08:31] Tyler Cartwright: [01:08:31] So just let that, so again for a minute, and think about the implications when we say, Oh, it's hard on kidneys to have six grams over the course of a day. And you know, a lot of the swelling that I've noticed in a lot of the blood pressure issues seem to happen more when somebody is completely out of bounds and a really, I don't know, like a relative relationship between sodium and potassium.

[01:08:53] The again, getting back to the point, they need to be kind of like two ends of a rope, pulling everything to the middle. If you're eating [01:09:00] six grams of salt, we're getting, you know, two grams of potassium total a day. Okay. You're probably gonna feel a whole lot better. If you start upping potassium in your diet or finding ways to supplement more potassium people do well in about a one to two, up to about a two to one range as a general rule with coaching clients.

[01:09:17] So we had, but there are some folks who just. Blow out the sodium. I mean, I've got a client, who's a runner. Who's I think at about six to one, she's taken about 18 grams a day assault right now, blood pressure is almost borderline low. You know, we're having to feed her medicinal carbohydrate just to keep her blood pressure from dipping down.

[01:09:39] When we first got to working with her, she was metabolically inflexible. PCLs everything under the sun. And guess what happened when we give her salt, she blows it up and her blood pressure skyrocketed and you know, she was like, Oh, I'm done, I'm done I'm out. And then magically, you know, we, we, uh, we get her healthy, we get her [01:10:00] stable.

[01:10:00] And then all of a sudden she is perfectly capable of handling huge loads

[01:10:03] Carl Lanore: [01:10:03] of soda. How does she feel with that high sodium intake?

[01:10:07] Tyler Cartwright: [01:10:07] Uh, she, the other day ran 25 miles. Um, before heading back to the house and picking up her kids and going for a, uh, like a hike in the park or whatever. And I was like, uh, yeah, I, I wouldn't drive 25 miles right now, roughed up.

[01:10:25] We use the reality, like she's killing it. There's no fatigue and you know, the dirty little secret. And I think you alluded to it right as I was coming on in the background. Um, One of the things that people don't appreciate is, is sodium's involvement in the sleep wake cycle and sodium's involvement with respect to the HPA axis.

[01:10:48] Carl Lanore: [01:10:48] I tried to, I tried to get someone on the show last month, they just published a show about how sodium interacts with circadian rhythm. And they're super cosmetic nuclei and she wouldn't come [01:11:00] on. She doesn't have the time she's writing a grant, but it's like sodium is so important and it's been demonized and, and actually speak about kidneys because I talked about this in the earlier interview, but when someone has chronic kidney disease, the way that they stop the progression of the kidney diseases to get them to take either sodium, bicarbonate or sodium.

[01:11:20] Right now think about that. And the reason I, it makes perfect sense. We've talked about it on the show. Um, uh, the, the, the kidneys are filter. And if you can imagine them making their, the filter hole smaller or larger in order to regulate fluid flow. Well, when did they working the hardest? When they're those little holes in the tiniest, it has to push stuff through.

[01:11:47] When did, are they doing that when they're trying to blockade electrolytes from escaping, because you're not getting enough coming in, but when you get a lot of salt in your diet, the [01:12:00] kidneys don't have to work. They just open up. They'd like, Oh, we got, we got sodium coming in. Like every couple minutes here.

[01:12:07] And they open up, they're not working hard. They work less. When you have adequate intake of electrolytes, they don't work harder. And that has been. My my opinion is that has been a health destroying misinformation that physicians have been passing around for decades now. And I believe it goes, think about this too, Tyler.

[01:12:29] If your film, if glomerular filtration rates slow down in an effort to keep salt from escaping, isn't that going to raise your blood pressure? It

[01:12:41] Tyler Cartwright: [01:12:41] should because you're retaining fluid quite frankly, because you're trying to, and that's the thing people don't appreciate is how tight the bounds are with sodium and potassium and Sarah, like, I mean, you know, the, the lane is very narrow.

[01:12:55] It's like the, the death road or whatever, and like Peru river, it is with like the big mountain pass, [01:13:00] like. Left side's death, Rightside's death. And it is a very, very narrow road that you're driving down. That's how good the body is it excluding or retaining sodium and potassium people just don't appreciate that.

[01:13:11] And so they have this, this message applied concept that, Oh, I shouldn't have sodium much. And also the one that's like, I shouldn't have it at night. And I'm like, well, look, I mean, here's the reality

[01:13:24] Robert Meade: [01:13:24] I

[01:13:24] Tyler Cartwright: [01:13:24] have. Talk with a number of people. Most recently, I think was, was Chris master John briefly about, you know, the idea that sodium taken before bed actually helps with some of the, I've got to get up at three o'clock in the morning and go take a leak.

[01:13:39] Um, that happens that we just go, Oh, it's just a symptom of age and it's the prostate. And it's all this stuff. Not really. It's probably a similar, again, not a doctor, but it's probably a symptom it's your kidneys are having to work their butt off to try and retain stuff. And then when they finally have, when the insulin load goes down, everything settles down [01:14:00] after a while and you go through part of that sleep wake cycle, all of a sudden your body's like, Oh shit, Yeah.

[01:14:04] Now I've got all of this fluid. I've got to get rid of it. You're going to protect this, but where does it go? It wakes you up and gives you a dream where you're peeing nonstop and you get up and you go to the restaurant and you handle your business, right? And then you sit up there in the bed for an hour and you wonder why your sleep is crap.

[01:14:18] And while your recovery is crap and you haven't had eight solid hours asleep in two years, five years, 10 years. And so how do you answer? Well,

[01:14:29] Carl Lanore: [01:14:29] how can I use element? How can I use element before bed? How much do I take. So

[01:14:35] Tyler Cartwright: [01:14:35] I typically will do a whole pack, but I did have to work myself up to it a little bit there.

[01:14:39] Robert Meade: [01:14:39] Um,

[01:14:40] Tyler Cartwright: [01:14:40] I, I think I would tell people to start probably with a half a pack, and I know that's a little tough to do because it's, it's a, you know, but the easy path is just kind of sprinkle it onto like a milligram scale. If you've got one handy. Um, and then is poured into, into liquid and just see how you do with that dose before you start to make [01:15:00] modifications.

[01:15:00] But, you know, honestly, I see it, a lot of folks just throw a single pack in at night and then they'll throw another one in when they get up and get going in the morning. A lot of times, like using the chocolate for coffee, um, is a great option if people are coffee drinkers, um, you know, or for that matter, uh, steam, some people using the orange relinquish of a coffee, kind of a thing too, but, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, I use about two to three packs a day.

[01:15:24] I'll use one around training time. I'll use one in the morning and I'm most nights I'll use one at night as well. That seems to keep things just kind of chunking right along like it's supposed to. And it's been a strategy that's worked for a lot of our clients and folks in our communities as well.

[01:15:38] Carl Lanore: [01:15:38] I'm actually helping a guy.

[01:15:39] Who's got real sleep disturbances and we've done a lot of work on him already. He's not snoring. He doesn't have obstructive sleep apnea. GABA gets him to fall asleep, but he gets up and he, his problem is he pees two, three, four times a night. And I'm going to, I'm going to turn them on to this. That's why I asked how do you, and, and an easy solution to split a pack.

[01:16:00] [01:16:00] I would just mix the whole thing, drank half the solution and put the rest in the refrigerator until tomorrow, then, you know, shake it

[01:16:07] Tyler Cartwright: [01:16:07] up, keep it shaken

[01:16:08] Carl Lanore: [01:16:08] up. Yeah. So shake

[01:16:09] Tyler Cartwright: [01:16:09] it well.

[01:16:11] Carl Lanore: [01:16:11] Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. All right. So those of you watching and listening, uh, element is now a sponsor of super human radio.

[01:16:19] And as always, always patronize the sponsors because they make the show possible. And if you go to SHR network.biz/l M N T, and that's all caps, capital L M N T S HR network.biz/l M N T you'll be taken to the website. This stuff is, is so ridiculously inexpensive that like trying to come up with a coupon code is nonsense.

[01:16:44] How, w how do you guys handle shipping? Is it.

[01:16:48] Tyler Cartwright: [01:16:48] So there's a couple of things we'll do for your listeners that are outside of the U of S we actually will do free shipping on orders over a hundred bucks. We were just going to eat in the shorts, the, you know, thing, they may see a charge, but it's actually that we're [01:17:00] handling the duties in the import nonsense.

[01:17:02] We are actively working to try and grow localized presences in those countries. Just to give people a little bit of a break on that. Um, with respect to folks in the United States, shipping is free. Um, you know, anywhere in the United States. So, you know, we also have got a return policy. That's as simple as tell us you hate it and we'll give you your money back.

[01:17:22] Done. Uh, not very many of those. I'll say it that way over the last two years. But, uh, you know, we stand behind our product and if you don't like it, just let us know and all of it, all we've ever asked, we don't even want it back. Just give it to somebody you think benefit or the mind, enjoy it and see what they think.

[01:17:38] And, uh, yeah, a great option. If you, in a gym, if you're a jujitsu guy, if you're a runner or whatever, give it to somebody that's in that sport, give it to somebody that can actually use it. And see what they think. I mean, I'd love to hear back from those folks.

[01:17:52] Carl Lanore: [01:17:52] Yeah. And if you do, if you do try it and you like it, or don't like, it email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

[01:18:00] [01:18:00] Um, but I like the raspberry, but I'm starting to like the orange salt too. Um, it, it, it, I like the flavor of that you have, so you have some tropical flavors too, right? So

[01:18:13] Tyler Cartwright: [01:18:13] do we actually, yeah, so, so my business partner, yeah. Is Lisa guessing your, um, who's a Mexican gentleman and, uh, we wanted to kind of have some fun and pay homage to the fact that, uh, You know, a lot of the flavors that we enjoy, we're, we're sort of Mexican and fused.

[01:18:31] And so we ended up doing a combination for the chocolate salt, which is a little savory, but also we have a mango chili and then also a lemon habanero, which are both kind of inspired by, you know, heat plus sweet or heat plus plus that salty element as well. So. I have been told by the way that for what it's worth the limit, having Euro sprinkled on watermelon is amazing and TIS the season for those late watermelons.

[01:18:56] Just that might be worth a try for those of you [01:19:00] that are watermelon folks.

[01:19:01] Carl Lanore: [01:19:01] Yeah. And that's another thing. Can you season your food with it?

[01:19:05] Tyler Cartwright: [01:19:05] Absolutely. We have folks with the lemon or the SMI the mango chili right now. Uh, there's been a bunch of folks on like Facebook and other places saying, I just put this on my chicken wings, like I'll air fresh chicken wings, and I'll throw this stuff on there.

[01:19:19] And it's fricking amazing. And I was like, I'm willing to try a lot of chicken wing flavors cause I'm a chicken wing dude, but I just can't get my brain around, you know, around it. But, you know, sweetened heat is really what a lot of chicken wing flavors carry. Right. You know, so it makes some sense. Um, you know, I've, I've thought.

[01:19:39] For a while. I will say that I have used the orange and some Asian type dishes. And I've also used the citrus in like some Mexican dishes to give it sort of that lemon lime thing. But yeah, so there's a lot of folks do in just that and also for using them as like popsicles for the kids.

[01:19:54] Carl Lanore: [01:19:54] That's a great idea.

[01:19:55] That's really, really a good idea. I like that a lot. Again, go to SHR [01:20:00] network.biz/. L M N T and the LMN T are all caps and try it. You will not be dissatisfied since I've given up caffeine. I've had to find new things to do as pre-workouts. And this is one of them. I love it. I love it a lot. I want to thank you for being a sponsor.

[01:20:16] And I also want to thank you for making time to come on. I

[01:20:19] Tyler Cartwright: [01:20:19] appreciate it. Kroll. Thanks

[01:20:21] Carl Lanore: [01:20:21] care. And then, uh, tomorrow we have the blueprint power hour. So be sure to tune in for that, where we will answer your questions about training nutrition. Uh, drugs, everything, anything that you want to talk about and, uh, that's it for today.

[01:20:36] Thank you for watching. Don't forget. Share the show helps some people get healthy and live longer. We'll see you tomorrow with more superhuman radio. [01:21:00]