[mrfusion]

I have a lot of older tennis friends and they suffer through cramps all the time. I ask if they’re getting enough sodium after sweating for hours and they say they’re on low sodium diets for blood pressure.

Folks you need to replace your sodium when you sweat!

/soapbox

[Datagenerator]

Doing strength exercises for many years now, increased sodium reduced muscle cramps and lowered recovery times. If you experience nightly cramps, increase the regular sodium and magnesium citrate intake and reduce when symptom free. Unrelated, doing breathing exercises just before going Max helps to execute in near tranquility.

[nradov]

There's a strong genetic factor in the link between sodium intake and blood pressure. Some people are very sensitive to it, others can consume larger amounts without causing hypertension.

[adrian_b]

There are also sex differences in sodium handling ability.

Older women who have taken blood pressure medication for many years, e.g. 10 to 20 years, have risks of losing the ability to control well the concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood.

If they follow a low-sodium diet, they have a high risk of hyponatremia (too little sodium in the body). Depending on the diet, hypokalemia (too little potassium in the body) is also possible.

If these conditions are not diagnosed promptly, severe illness or even death are the consequence.

Unfortunately, I was not aware of these risks. My mother belonged to this risk group, but nobody knew this and her periodic blood tests were perfect, because they included many other tests, except the sodium and potassium concentrations in blood, which are mandatory to detect this problem.

My mother had very serious problems because hyponatremia was detected too late, so I believe that more people should become aware of this risk.

There are a lot of old women taking medication for high blood pressure, so all should know that a periodic cheap test for sodium in blood can easily prevent reaching a stage when complete recovery becomes difficult or impossible.

Also, any low-sodium diet should actually measure or compute how much salt you eat, because too low sodium is even more dangerous than too high sodium.

[leke]

I can't really remember the last time I sweated though, even though I do cycle 30-40 mins a day depending on the season.

[Retric]

People sweat regularly without any noticeable moisture droplets etc. As long as evaporation >= perspiration rate nothing builds up. It’s why a tight watch will often have moisture behind it even though you don’t seem to be sweating.