Two nutritional trends have serious health and performance consequences. We discuss the why, what, and how of protein and sodium intake.
Episode Transcript
Chris Case 00:00
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of fast talk. Your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Chris case here with Trevor Connor and Griffin McMath, this week, we have something new for you. We’re calling this type of episode fast chats. These will be short, succinct conversations around topics we’ve been talking about amongst ourselves here at fast talk labs. Many of the things we’ll discuss may turn into deeper, more comprehensive discussions for full length episodes in the future. But first, we want to give you a taste of what we’re thinking about today. We start with a conversation about protein. There’s some new science around how much we need and when we most need it. And there’s also a wild trend to add protein to nearly every food item on the market, from popcorn to ice cream. What are we thinking? Well, today, Trevor Griffin and I all share our thoughts on this hot topic. Then we roll into a related conversation on another trending nutrition topic, sodium, similar to protein, the marketplace is flooded with items packed with added sodium. How does sodium intake affect our health and performance, and how do we calibrate our needs when we’re adding, perhaps unknowingly, so much sodium to our diet while simultaneously pumping electrolytes into our water at every turn on every ride and every run. It’s time to quickly talk about what we’ve been thinking about. Let’s make you fast.
Jared Berg 01:27
What if you could optimize your nutrition to perform even better in your sport? Well, you can. I’m Jared Berg, and I’m a registered dietitian and exercise physiologist with fast talk labs. I can help you with your personal sports nutrition, or you can take control of your own nutrition through my new eight week sports nutrition course. Learn more@fasttalklabs.com look for athlete services and sports nutrition.
Griffin McMath 01:50
Well, I think it’s time to talk about something that’s been getting newspaper headlines. It’s been getting so much attention in the food world, especially CPG products. This particular thing we’re talking about today is starting to pop up in everything, things you would never even suspect it to be in trendy. You would call it trending. I think it’s beyond trending. It’s contagious. It’s taken over. What is it? What are we talking what are we talking about? Trevor protein, protein and not the kind we’re finding in trendy popcorn, but as it relates to endurance athletes. So setting the table here, let’s talk about protein as the macro, not specifically red meat or something else, and we’ll talk about source, but let’s talk about protein as this compound of building blocks of amino acids. So we all understand the scope that we’re talking about today. Yeah, yep, all right, so when we talk about protein and athletes, I think a lot of people immediately think of lifters and CrossFit and people bulking up, not necessarily those who are trying to go the distance. Can we first break up that connotation and make it relevant to endurance athletes.
Trevor Connor 03:03
Protein is more than just building muscle mass. Protein has numerous roles in our body. I mean, to give you an idea of how important protein is, we talk about our DNA. And our DNA defines who we are. 90 something percent of our DNA just codes proteins. It basically tells your body, build this protein, build that protein. So proteins are used to build muscle and to build other tissue, but they’re also used as signalers. They’re used by the immune system, using almost everything in our body. So we all need proteins. And as endurance athletes, you might not be thinking, I need to put on a lot of muscle mass, but you are doing a lot of muscle damage that needs to be repaired. When you are training. You need to support your immune system. You need those signaling proteins to say, do adaptations? You hear me on the show talk all the time about PGC. One alpha is the master regulator of endurance adaptations. That’s just a protein. So we need these in order to be able to adapt and improve and to stay healthy,
Chris Case 04:00
yeah. And to bring this around to something very current, I just read happens to be on outside, and it’s by Alex Hutchinson. He did a review of a review paper that was in sports medicine, and the conclusions of that paper were that while the recommended intake for a male is point eight grams per kilogram. That is like the minimum that you must have to remain healthy. Now you bring that to the athletic context, and it’s higher than that. This study is actually recommending 1.8 grams per kilogram for males on training days, and then upwards of 2.6 grams per day on recovery days. So then they get into the whole timing of things. On training days, you need more, of course, than the recommended. But then on the rest days, when you are doing all that repair of the damage you’ve created on training days, you need even more than that. So these are significantly higher numbers than what is out. There in the lay
Trevor Connor 05:01
literature. Well, this is one of the big debates that you can see in nutrition, where you’re going to have all sorts of people that are going to give you wildly different recommendations, from very high protein intake to there are people now that are saying protein is bad for you. We there’s studies associated with cancer and other diseases, which we’ll get into in a minute. I have serious issues with that, and saying you need to eat very low protein general recommendation in the nutrition world is what’s called nitrogen balance. So when you break down amino acids, there’s nitrogen bound to every amino acid. It’s part of the definition of an amino acid. We need to get rid of that nitrogen. So basically, you want nitrogen in nitrogen out. You want that in balance, but what you’re hearing in the sports world is that’s actually not adequate for our needs for both, as you said, for training and repair. So you need to be above nitrogen balance. I’ve read a bunch of studies that pointed out that when you’re in nitrogen balance, proteins are going to be used for tissue repair, but amino acids have a lot of important signaling roles, and if you just eat nitrogen balance, a lot of those signaling roles aren’t served. So there are people out there in the nutrition world, outside of sports, who are saying, actually eating to nitrogen balance is not right. We actually need to eat above it.
Griffin McMath 06:18
I think going back to the RDA of point eight. That’s for people who are sedentary, that’s just to exist at baseline function. And so I wish it was more common knowledge to look at those numbers and go, Okay, this is what I need to exist. This is what I need to wake up tomorrow morning, and then anything after that we have to reevaluate. And for the situation with endurance athletes, you’re talking about 1.8 right? And looking at regardless of sex, here ranges of 1.6 to 2.2 even, right? And what’s appropriate for that individual, but also timing, I really appreciate that you brought that point up and understanding. I know a lot of people who lift specifically are told to consume a large amount of protein within 30 minutes after a workout.
Trevor Connor 07:03
One thing I do want to bring up, when you’re talking about 1.8 and over two, we do need to be careful. Our body’s only able to excrete so much nitrogen in a day, and it’s right around two to 2.2 where you hit that point you eat protein. Above that, you start going into what’s called Rapid starvation, which can kill people. It’s basically a nitrogen poisoning. So you got to be careful about consuming too much. But I do remember seeing studies about this, because you see weightlifters trying to get these huge, you know, the huge, mega protein shakes, whatever they’re called, right after weight lifting, they showed, yes, consuming amino acids. Consuming protein right after lifting does promote or help the tissue repair and hypertrophy, but doesn’t take much. It’s been while since I’ve read these studies, but I remember it being around eight to 10 grams of protein, basically the in the study that I read, they said about half a cup of
Chris Case 07:58
yogurt. Yeah. And is it a myth about you have to have it 30 minutes afterwards, or it doesn’t really help. I mean, isn’t
Trevor Connor 08:04
that right? Does promote anabolism, so yes, having a pretty soon within that 30 minutes does help. That’s been shown,
Griffin McMath 08:13
I think, talking about the nitrogen perspective, and I’m so grateful that you brought up the Hey at this point, it could be like poisoning your body, with this trend of protein taking over, people need to be really especially athletes who are already intentionally consuming protein, making sure that everything else they’re eating doesn’t have all this added protein in it, the popcorn, the ice cream, the pasta sauces. Look at this. You have 100 grams. We have to be really careful now in looking at what we’re eating,
Chris Case 08:43
does that speak to the question of the source of the proteins? There’s good sources, there’s bad sources. What is the protein that’s being injected into the popcorn? So
Trevor Connor 08:54
I am really glad you brought this up, because this is the big one for me. You know, I don’t like talking about foods, simplifying them down to proteins, carbohydrates and fats, right? That you really do need to look at the sources. There is what’s called protein quality. We have a certain number of essential amino acids, and we need them in a particular ratio. And so foods are ranked in terms of how much a food contains all of the essential amino acids and whether it has them in the right ratios. So the closer it is to the right ratios, the higher the quality. And you can find all sorts of apps that will show you that different quality. But I think it goes beyond that. I’ll first use a ridiculous example that everybody would understand is, again, we lump all foods into carbohydrates, and you have people saying, well, plant based carbohydrates are good for you. Well, broccoli is a plant based carbohydrate. I agree with you. Broccoli is good for you. Candy is a plant based carbohydrate. It’s not good for you. So we have to be careful about just going well, plant based carbohydrates are good for you or not good for you, because what’s the actual? Food, and it’s the same thing with protein. And this is why I think a lot of the research gets confusing. Because people go, Well, protein is good for your protein is bad for you a certain amount of protein. What’s the source? Yeah, going to a fast food restaurant and buying a really crappy burger, that’s protein. Sure, it’s a lot of other stuff too. And that’s the thing. What else is in there. It’s wrapped in a package of goo, and so we have to be careful about the source. And the thing that I get concerned about is people go, Oh, I need a ton of protein. And instantly go to the protein powders that often also have a lot of sugar and a lot of other things in them. And yeah, you’re getting the amino acids you need. But what else is in those more natural sources of protein that you aren’t getting, that you do need. So I still push people to get the protein through more natural sources I consume when I’m training hard, probably 150 160 grams of protein a day, and I haven’t had a protein powder in 10 years.
Griffin McMath 10:57
Yeah, I think for protein excess, I’m less concerned about having the source conversation with someone, because I’m more concerned about the damage just that quantity is doing when someone is having a insufficient intake of protein. Obviously the quantity matters, but then I’m also curious about the quality and the sourcing, because then we’re looking at all these other things that are deficient at the same time. You
Trevor Connor 11:22
know, one of the examples that I love to give there was this book by Dr T Colin Campbell that’s really become the Bible for veganism. And in the book, he talked a lot about animal source proteins and how bad they are for you. And he did studies on mice where he would basically feed them animal protein and they would start developing cancer, and he could turn the cancer on and off by feeding them this proteins. But a lot of people kind of took that at face value and didn’t go, what’s the source? And when you look at the source, he was feeding them casein, which is a milk based protein, and was feeding them high quantities of casein, and it’s not a very high quality protein, and there are other issues with feeding that much casein. And so that does bring up questions about the study. So if you want to look at animal based proteins, why weren’t you looking at actin, myosin, which is the primary proteins that you find in muscle tissue.
Athletica.ai 12:20
Every athlete wants to peak at the right time. Athletica helps make that happen with real time adaptation and science based planning. Your training evolves as you do so. When race day comes, you’re ready, go visit athletica.ai. And use the code fast talk for 15% off a six month subscription. We’ll see you there
Chris Case 12:41
all of this conversation makes me as someone who is not I’m not paying attention too much to what I’m eating. I’m fueling myself more on I wouldn’t necessarily call everything cravings, but a general sense of what is good or bad, and to some degree, cravings about what I want and need. How good is that as an indicator of what somebody needs? Is it woefully inadequate in a lot of cases? Is it a athletes who know their bodies usually do have a good sense of it in terms of nutrition? Do you just take it on a case by case basis, if you were making recommendations or working with somebody as a nutritionist, or what? I think this
Griffin McMath 13:22
is a great question, and I really appreciate you having pause about using the word cravings, sure, because what I would use that as an umbrella term are likely physiological signals your body is telling you and then psychological patterns of how you refuel your relationship with food. Now, there are a variety of different experiences that can lead up to someone understanding a signal from their body, or some type of thought, like a mental pattern that would initiate eating something, but the precision that people have, or the accuracy about what that signal might actually mean is not always spot on, and it might be indicative of something else that’s happening in it. It could just be your blood sugar and the fact that you aren’t eating regularly, and you go into these crashes, and then you’re constantly in this state of survival and picking up. So it depends on the person, it depends on whether or not the signals that they can send are informed if there’s a state of disease and if someone can trust their body being in their body alone. Now an endurance athlete, unless someone has patterns of disordered eating, may be a little bit more attuned to their body than the average person. They’re also already innately in an environment where people are talking about feeling where the education is a little bit higher, because they know that they need a little bit more. So I think it’s important to understand that this isn’t necessarily a craving, but it’s a signal from our body that we’re in deficit of some sort. Now if it’s. Someone who has a uterus and different hormones there, who might be experiencing certain types of hunger, it could be a cue to other types of nutrients that are in deficiency. So it depends, but calling it a craving might be inaccurate for
Trevor Connor 15:18
a variety of reasons. What about the fact that endurance athletes generally eat more than the average person because they’re training more and they just have hunger more often. We need to our bodies have more needs. Yeah, we’re burning more calories, so if you want to stay in caloric balance, you have to eat more, and there’s a lot of damage that’s being done. So your body needs those things to be replaced. I’m going to say this a little simpler, which is I have always believed that hunger is not an on off switch. Hunger is our bodies telling us that we need something. Unfortunately, right now, food engineers have gotten really good at creating foods that really satisfy a particular craving or hunger, but it’s not necessarily what the body was actually craving, what the body needed.
Chris Case 16:04
Can you give me one example of that? There’s probably many.
Trevor Connor 16:07
Well, you go to the snack food aisle, everything is a combination of salt, sugar and fat in some particular ratio, with a food additive to it. They have shown the two biggest cravings in humans are salt and sugar. So we create a lot of foods with those things, but those foods have very little nutrient density to them. They have very little other value to them. So you’re getting a big insulin hit, you’re getting a whole lot of calories that your body’s going to store as fat. You’re getting a lot of salt, which has all sorts of other health implications. And you might not be getting the B vitamins or the polyphenols or whatever it is that your body needs. So we have to get better about going, Okay, I’m hungry, and boy, that bag of chips looks really good, but that’s not actually what my body needs right now. What does the body actually need?
Chris Case 16:54
Yeah, I mean, in terms of evolution, there’s a reason why those things are so desirable at certain times, but we’re not living in those conditions anymore.
Trevor Connor 17:04
There’s a simple reason we need salt to survive. We need a certain amount of sodium, or we die. We do need glucose. It powers our brains in evolutionary time, both of those things could be hard to find. So we evolved to say when we came across something that was salty, when we came across some sugar. Get it in us, yeah? Get it in us. But there was never a concern about over consuming, because it was something that was much harder to find scarce, yeah. So now we have the issue that it’s available all over the place, right? And we have cravings that tell us every time you see this, eat it
Griffin McMath 17:36
well. And I think it’s really important to touch on the added sodium to a lot of these protein packaged meals or snacks or recovery bars. An athlete has a protein shake in the morning, and it’s targeted for athletes, so it might be a little bit higher in sodium, in case they’re a high sweater as well. They might have jerky in the late morning, because, like, oh, it’s time for a little bit of protein to my day. They might have a protein bar in the afternoon, and then a recovery meal right after a workout. And when you think about all of the added sodium that comes with all of these higher protein substances that they’re fueling with, this is before they’re even considering, oh, I need to take salt capsules, or I need to do all this with salt, because of what’s happening in the salt conversation right now. So I think that you can’t have the protein conversation without considering this kind of Peter Pan shadow that sticks with it, which is the added sodium conversation.
Trevor Connor 18:33
Well, I mean, I just this weekend, set up these feeds for research and got sent this study that I have sitting on my desktop that I can’t wait to read. And it’s titled, this is dietary salt promotes neurovascular and cognitive dysfunction through a gut initiated th 17 response. So you’ve heard me on the show talk about these inflammatory th 17 cells that cause all sorts of health issues if they’re chronically elevated. And this is a study showing, yep, salt elevates th 17, and is actually showing how that can lead to cognitive dysfunction. It is amazing. The number of things that you see when you consume too much salt, just the negative health impacts it has on us.
Griffin McMath 19:13
Yeah. So when people are focusing on, oh, I need to take all this protein intake, they tend to go to the back nutrition label, zoom in on the protein, ignore a lot of other things and say, Whatever comes with it, it’s fine. I’m getting the protein. And then later on, during their workout, they’ll add a bunch of electrolytes to their mix without recognizing Have you counted the sodium that you’ve had today? Are you in the 1000s before you’ve even intentionally added electrolytes to your water? Because it can get out of control really quickly. Yep, sounds like
Chris Case 19:41
another episode.
Suzy Sanchez 19:44
Hey listeners. I’m Susie Sanchez from USA Cycling. If you like what you hear on fast talk podcast, you’re the kind of coach we want as part of our certified coach program, fast talk Labs is producing 50 courses on physiology, training, athlete management and the business of coaching. All three. USA Cycling coaches, visit USC cycling.org backslash coaches to learn more.
Speaker 1 20:06
Let’s get salty. Ooh, oh, you had to start that one, didn’t you? It was right there. You
Chris Case 20:11
started it. So why don’t you continue being salty? If that’s
Griffin McMath 20:14
a challenge, you challenge the right young woman. Yes, go for it. So one of the hot topics that is definitely circulating the endurance world is sodium and this desire that we need to constantly be adding electrolytes to our water, that we need to be watching our mineral intake, that we need to be considerate of our sweat output, and what difference does that have? So can we talk a little bit about what’s the conversation that’s happening right now and then, what does the latest science actually say?
Trevor Connor 20:45
This is an interesting one, because there is a trend right now saying that we need more salt, despite the fact that for how long doctors have been saying we consume too much salt, we need to get our salt consumption down. And I am very much on the side of the doctors had this right, and this current trend towards more sodium is not a healthy trend. And I’m sure at some point in this episode, we’re going to dive into all the negative health impacts that salt has. But first I’m going to say the important thing, Chris, I know you love hormesis, the hermetic effect. Yeah, if we don’t have sodium in our diet, we die. Yeah, it is a critical nutrient that we need for our health. So I’m not saying that sodium is entirely bad for us. It’s about having the right quantity. So if we don’t have enough, we die. If we have too much, it can lead to many different negative health consequences. So it’s really about finding that right amount. And I think the place that I’m going to start is actually with a ratio. Sometimes it’s not about the absolute amounts that you consume with something, but it’s the ratios of what you consume. And this is one of them as well. This is one of the most important ones, which is the sodium to potassium ratio in our diet. Every time you have a chip, eat a banana, is that what you’re saying? Yeah. Wouldn’t that put the banana right on
Chris Case 22:01
the chips in the banana. Yes, yeah.
Trevor Connor 22:04
The natural human diet, what we’re built around is a ratio of at the low end, five to one potassium to sodium, up to about 10 to one potassium to sodium. Typical Western diet is one to two. Yikes. We don’t get enough potassium. We get way too much sodium. And to give you an idea here, when you get too much sodium and not enough potassium, that actually acidifies your blood. So it’s highly acidic. Very short explanation is because we need potassium to get sodium out of our cells. If we don’t have sufficient potassium, then sodium is pumped out of our cells with hydrogen ions, which is basically acid. And when you acidify your blood like that, your body starts leaching calcium from your bones to get the pH back up, and that is one of the major causes of osteoporosis. And so there’s a lot of research now showing with osteoporotic women, you put them on a potassium supplement, they start regrowing bone tissue.
Griffin McMath 22:56
You know, there are so many other things that athletes might be counting throughout the day and prioritizing when it comes to sodium. I feel like I see a lot of athletes look at that for when they’re intentionally trying to bring in, like, electrolyte powders. But do you think they’re taking into consideration sodium that comes from the rest of the day? I honestly don’t
Trevor Connor 23:17
know. I think everybody’s gonna be different. I think some people track it. Some people don’t. I do think we hear a lot that, oh, you need more electrolytes. This prevents cramping. And jury’s still out on that of whether electrolytes are the issue of cramping. We’ve done a couple episodes on it, and the current theory is this altered neuromuscular control theory, which has nothing to do with electrolytes, but there’s also, well, you lose sodium and sweat, so you need to be replacing it. And there’s just been this trend towards you can’t get enough sodium. I’m now hearing like there’s this one sports drink mix that I think is 800 milligrams of sodium per serving.
Griffin McMath 23:53
I mean, just carry a salt lick with you at that point. Seriously.
Trevor Connor 23:56
And look, we have a huge craving for salt. So everybody wants to hear, yeah, eat a lot of salt. I will also tell you, in the science community, there was some studies that came out in 2016 that showed a U shaped relationship of salt and heart disease and all cause mortality, meaning people on a very high salt diet had higher rates of heart disease, but people on a lower salt diet also had high rates of heart disease. And they saw the low point in that curve was up around three, 4000 milligrams of sodium, which is well above the RDA. So there was this push in a lot of the nutrition world of, oh, we’ve got it wrong. We need to eat more sodium. There was a serious issue with those studies they were using, I believe, the NHANES data. So there’s a big collection of data, and looking at what people ate and looking at development of chronic disease over, I think it was a 20 year period, so over a long period, they didn’t control for people that had already been diagnosed with heart disease. And the issue is. Is, what’s the first thing your doctor tells you to do when you have heart disease? Yeah, lower it. Stop eating salt. So it wasn’t the low sodium diet that was causing heart disease. It was the heart disease was causing the low sodium diet. And somebody then went and repeated the study and controlled for that, and it was a straight line relationship. The less salty ate, the lower your risk of heart disease. But there’s still a lot of people in the sports world who cite those studies and say, No, you need to eat a lot more.
Chris Case 25:25
Maybe this is a silly question, but if you are consuming sodium in the foods that you eat, and you’re having other protein shakes that have added salts throughout the day and things like this, how do you know, as an athlete, whether you should just go with water on your rides, or if you should put the electrolyte powder into your drinks or not. Does it balance out over the course of the day based on your consumption over the course of the day? Or do you need it at certain times more than you need it at other times?
Trevor Connor 25:58
I think you need to experiment personally. I do agree that if you are doing a very long endurance activity, and particularly if you’re doing in the heat, that you are going to lose a fair amount of electrolytes, and you do need some replacement. I don’t think you need the giant, mega doses that a lot of people are promoting. I go down to that race on the equator, which is this brutal five hour race, I take some noon along. I have a couple of those tablets, but you would actually be shocked how little I take. It’s not the mega doses that a lot of people think and I get through the race just fine. It’s an n of one that might just be me. I
Griffin McMath 26:31
think that’s so important to consider too, because so many people, when they’re looking to purchase electrolyte powders, they just look for the one that has the most without recognizing that might only be appropriate for those very long endurance events, for really high heat workouts. So purchasing some of those electrolyte packets that have lower doses actually might be appropriate. But I think now about how often, when I go to have a workout, do I ever, at this point, take just water. And I don’t know if I do, because I think we have this concept so drilled into our brains that you need electrolytes. You need this I don’t know how often I just have flat out water anymore.
Chris Case 27:13
I just ran my first ultra 50k congrats. Thank you. I drank only water the entire four and a half hours, no way. And I only went through four packs of blocks, and you got fourth place overall. Fourth place overall. Again, an n of one. I know what I’m doing. For me, was it ideal? I don’t even know that, but I didn’t have cramps, I didn’t have problems. I was strong until the finish. So that’s the tricky part here. Is everybody’s different. What’s your sweat output? Like, I didn’t sweat, yeah. I mean, I did, of course, but I don’t sweat. Trevor, can tell you,
Griffin McMath 27:49
wait, that’s an important thing to note, though, because that’s part of the recommendations. Yeah,
Trevor Connor 27:53
there is the recommendation of replace what you lose, and there’s an asterisk on that, which we’re about to cover in a minute. But I do think that’s a good policy. If you’re somebody who sweats a lot and you’re losing a lot of salt, you need to be replacing that. And certainly not saying just drink water. There was issues with hyponatremia, where you had people that were sweating out a lot of salt, were just replacing water, and unfortunately, people died of this. So yes, I am not at all saying don’t replace the electrolytes you should be trying to replace, but it can be hard to measure. How much are you losing. The only thing that I’m suggesting here is be careful about this idea that we can’t get enough sodium and that you should be doing these mega doses, because I think that has a lot of negative health consequences and doesn’t help performance.
Chris Case 28:41
What about the pre hydration mixes that you over consume in large quantities prior to an endurance event of some kind to preemptively store?
Trevor Connor 28:53
You know, when I used to go down to Tobago, I had one of those pre hydration, high sodium drink mixes. I would use it there again. I would be careful about every time you’re going out for a training ride, taking that absolutely, yeah, it’s one of those. I think that is something to use in an extreme situation. You’re at an important race, it’s 100 degrees out, yeah, I would think about it, yeah, it’s a training ride. It’s 73 degrees out, yeah, not necessary. It is not necessary, or vast majority of anybody, yeah. But the thing for people to be aware of is, I mean, the number of studies of the different effects that salt has on your health are actually getting extraordinary. Yeah, I have a study that was just sent to me. I’m just going to read the title to you. It’s dietary. Salt promotes neurovascular and cognitive dysfunction through a gut initiated th 17 response. We know that salt elevates th 17. Th, 17 is a very inflammatory T cell and chronically elevated th. 17 precedes all autoimmune diseases. It’s been associated with cancer. It’s been associated with heart disease. This study is now associating it showing basically the mechanism about. How it can promote cognitive decline, and salt contributes to this. Another really important thing to know about salt is it’s been shown that it accelerates the breakdown of telomere length. And telomere length, a lot of people in the science community are now saying that is the primary factor in aging. So salt will speed up aging, essentially. If this is true, another impact, and I’m just going to rattle off a few. I could give you 2030, different ways salt impacts our health, but we can only excrete so much sodium through our kidneys, so when you consume more than you can excrete, your body has to do something with it. And what they have discovered, and there’s a fairly recent study, is what they call the third compartment in our epithelial cells. So epithelial cells are the cells that line different parts of our body. So all your skin cells are epithelial cells, but in your arteries and blood vessels, the cells that line those are also epithelial cells. And what they’ve discovered is these epithelial cells will store the sodium when you have too much in your system, your body can’t excrete it that has multiple effects inside your vascular system. It gets stored in those cells that impacts blood flow. It causes kind of a chaotic blood flow that is the first step in developing cardiovascular
Griffin McMath 31:17
disease. I think that’s one of the things for me that’s really important to talk about also is the kidney damage. So let’s say you’re an athlete that’s monitoring your sodium intake and electrolyte powders, and that’s the only level or time that you’re monitoring the sodium but you’re ignoring all the other times throughout the day, especially for someone who doesn’t have a very intentionally healthy or whole foods diet, when you have all of these high processed food diet or you think, Oh, just because I exercise, I can eat a bunch of junk because I exercise, so it balances it out. That’s not how it works with sodium. So you might be excreting. You might be processing this, but long term, as an athlete who carries out that lifestyle for years, the damage to your kidneys, it’s gonna happen. It’s not this acute transaction, and it forgets what damage it’s had to process. You’re constantly bombarding your kidneys with an excessive load of sodium to deal with,
Trevor Connor 32:14
one other to throw out here talking about that third compartment our bodies really like to store salt in our skin cells, and I’ve been looking at the research on this because I found it fascinating. This is fairly new, and there’s a couple consequences of this. One is that then impacts the skin cells ability to produce natural antioxidants, which means the skin cells are then less equipped to deal with sun damage. And so I did see studies on this saying that when you are storing too much sodium in your skin cells, that’s going to lead to rapid aging of the skin cells. It’s going to lead to wrinkling. So everybody’s like, what are the miracle creams to keep my skin looking young? It’s eat less salt.
Speaker 2 32:55
Beauty Tips, cover, a Vogue cover, Connor.
Trevor Connor 32:59
It’s simple. It’s easy, but the whole thing about replacing, here’s the question I have, and it’s an honest question, because I don’t think the study’s been done yet, but they will look at people’s sweat, how much salt is in your sweat, and then say that’s what you need to be replacing. So you have people that are called these heavy sweaters, that are getting rid of a lot of salt in their sweat. Does that mean that they are getting rid of the sodium that’s in their blood, like the essential sodium, or are these people that actually consume a lot of salt in their diet, and so a lot of sodium is being stored in their skin cells, and that’s what’s being excreted, and this is actually a good thing, and you shouldn’t be trying to replace all that.
Chris Case 33:37
Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Is those people where, if you’re a cyclist, and you ride up behind them, and their jersey is white because it’s coated in salt, does that mean that they’ve had too much in their diet, or is that just the way they’re built? You
Trevor Connor 33:52
know? And this is a really important question. I’ve looked for studies on this, I couldn’t find one. So it is truly a question, and I hope that research gets done because it is really important research. Because what that means is, if those people are going to get in the sweat analysis, be told, Oh, you have a lot of salt in your sweat, you need to be replacing this much. They’re getting bad advice,
Griffin McMath 34:12
yeah, yeah. Well, and how do they know to make sure we’re really tracking the independent variable? What did you have while you were exercising? I’ll never forget the first time I was at the end of a marathon finish line and watching these people cross over and thinking, what are on all these people’s faces? Like thinking they got sprayed with something by the end, and really it’s just a coating of salt. It was wild. I’ll never forget
Chris Case 34:36
that was another episode of fast talk. The thoughts and opinions expressed on fast talk are those of the individual. Subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer, to find your favorite podcasts and be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we love your feedback. Join the conversation@forums.fasttalklabs.com or learn from our experts@fasttalklabs.com for Trevor Connor and Griffin McMath. I’m Chris case, thanks for listening. You.
