The Effect of Hormones on Electrolyte Levels

You’ve probably heard tons about the importance of maintaining electrolyte levels while exercising. While this is undoubtedly true, it doesn’t explain anything about what electrolytes are. 

Electrolytes are chemicals that are necessary to ensure proper cell function in your body. There are numerous electrolytes that your body requires, including potassium, sodium, calcium, and more. Not only does your body need these chemicals to be present, they must also be available in the right balance. 

This balance is maintained by various hormones, including antidiuretic hormone, aldosterone, renin, and more, which ensure that your body doesn’t get too much or too little of the necessary electrolytes. Another part of ensuring your body’s electrolyte levels are maintained involves prompting a thirst response when your body is dehydrated.

The Interaction Between Electrolytes and Hormones

While your hormones help regulate electrolyte levels, that’s only one part of the equation. The relationship between these two types of chemicals is a two-way street – just like hormonal levels affect electrolyte levels, electrolyte levels also affect hormonal levels. 

Some of the major hormones linked to electrolyte balance in your body include:

Antidiuretic Hormone 

Also known as vasopressin, antidiuretic hormone (ADH) does exactly what its name implies – it functions as an antidiuretic. The greater the levels of this hormone in your body, the more fluid you retain.

ADH is vital in maintaining your electrolyte balance because the higher the water in your body, the more your electrolytes – especially sodium – are diluted. Alcohol impairs the ability of your body to control the level of ADH it produces and drinking too much results in a significant reduction in vasopressin levels in your body. 

As noted, however, one of the best ways to increase your body’s water absorption is to boost sodium levels, thus prompting your body to produce ADH. If you wake up with a hangover, consider taking a little extra sodium to kickstart this process. Since a hangover can also make keeping food down challenging, you should ideally get your extra sodium through a capsule, like Klaralyte. 

Renin

Produced in your kidneys, renin helps regulate your blood pressure and also boosts sodium absorption in your body. Should your sodium levels drop too low, your body promotes the production of renin. 

Renin’s other role is in stimulating the production of aldosterone, another hormone that plays a part in regulating your electrolyte balance. Like renin, aldosterone plays a key part in promoting sodium retention. In fact, renin and aldosterone work with a third hormone, angiotensin, to collaborate to manage your blood pressure and sodium retention. This, in turn, helps regulate your blood volume and ensures your systemic vascular resistance levels are right.

Cortisol

Cortisol is best known as a stress hormone and can trigger a stress response from your body if levels are out of balance. Additionally, cortisol imbalance can also affect your sleep cycle. 

There are several factors that can result in high levels of cortisol in the body, with one of the most common being low sodium levels. Low sodium levels mean high cortisol levels, and high cortisol results in sodium levels dropping. Additionally, low cortisol levels in the body can lead to difficulty in regulating your sodium and your calcium levels, such as with people who have Addison’s disease. 

Aldosterone

Aldosterone is perhaps one of the most important hormones when it comes to electrolyte regulation in the body. Produced in the adrenal glands, this hormone helps maintain both the electrolyte and water balance in your body.

This hormone promotes sodium absorption in the body when levels are too low. Additionally, if your potassium levels are too high, it boots potassium excretion. Sodium and potassium levels in your body play a major role in regulating your blood pressure – high levels of sodium increase your blood pressure, while high potassium levels reduce it.

People with diseases that affect their ability to regulate their blood pressure, such as POTS, often produce low aldosterone levels. This is part of the reason why such patients are encouraged to have a high sodium diet – it helps counteract the effect that a lack of aldosterone has on their blood pressure. Additionally, people on a ketogenic diet also need to boost their sodium intake since this diet inhibits aldosterone production. 

No matter the reason, if you’ve been advised to increase your sodium intake, there are several options available to you. These include stocking up on salty snacks and – if it’s palatable to you – increasing the amount of salt in your food. However, not everyone can handle the taste of extra salt or changes to their existing diet. 

If you’re looking for a convenient way to improve your sodium intake, consider Klaralyte tablets. Each tablet contains 250mg of sodium, as well as 50mg of potassium. You can take it as necessary, depending on your body’s needs – all you need to do is swallow it down with a glass of water, and you’re good to go! 

Parathyroid Hormone

Parathyroid Hormone (PTH) plays a key role in regulating the levels of calcium in your blood. If your blood calcium levels are low, the hormone stimulates bone breakdown to release calcium into your bloodstream. 

Additionally, it increases the amount of calcium reabsorbed by your kidneys and increases the absorption of dietary calcium while also reducing the amount of calcium excreted by your body. The level of calcium in your blood plays a key role in the way your muscles and nerves function. If there’s too little calcium in the blood, you will experience muscle aches and spasms, tingling in the lips, fingers, and feet, seizures, abnormal heart rhythms, and more.

Conclusion:

Hormones play a key role in regulating the level of electrolytes in your body and are essential to ensuring normal bodily function. However, it’s important to remember that the electrolytes must first be present in the body for these hormones to do their job. 

The action of daily life causes the body’s store of electrolytes to become depleted, something that is hastened when your body is under stress, including through illness, exercise, and other such situations. This store must be replaced in order to ensure that you stay at the top of your game. 

Electrolytes can be replaced through careful attention to your diet, including the right foods and drinks. Additionally, specialized electrolyte drinks and tablets such as Klaralyte tablets can make it easier for you to replace the electrolytes lost through exercise.