Do you mind me asking a couple questions? If not, do you have any related diagnoses? Hypertension?
Generally, lower sodium is going to impact your body's ability to retain blood volume. That is, hydration. Sodium consumption is necessary during longer/harder efforts to retain fluid volume in your blood, which is critical to maintain stroke volume for your heart. If your stroke volume goes down due to dehydration, heart rate goes up, for the same amount of physical work. You become less efficient metabolically, and have a lower rate of work at which fatigue will onset.
In short workouts, this is minimally important.
Anything over 2 hours and it gets more important, quickly.
On days you sweat heavily for >3 hours, you're likely to be losing >2000mg sodium in sweat a lone so a catch-all recommendation of "2000mg/day" is usually misplaced unless there is an existing diagnosis.
Disclaimer: I'm not an MD. I'm not well versed in all medical diagnoses, though I'm usually somewhat familiar. Please don't take any advice I give without chatting with your physician.
PS. Common symptoms of low-sodium consumption and endurance training:
- Thirst
- Peeing lots
- Headaches
- Faintness due to low BP, because your body won't retain the water in the blood stream enough to keep BP up.
If you plan to be sweating heavily for >4 hours I highly recommend talking this through with your doc and seeing if they'll allow for higher sodium consumption. Hyponatremia isn't something to mess with.
Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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