That would imply you’re not replacing fluids though. I’m a fairly heavy sweater and if I’m not replacing fluids I’ll be in trouble pretty quickly on a moderately warm day. If there’s no electrolyte in what I’m drinking, after a couple hours I’m going to be in trouble.
Not sure what you mean by debunked though. Fairly certain it’s been shown that there are differences in sweat’s salt content between people, if what you say is true I’d think that most everyone would have the same sweat salt content
Thats exactly what it implies. You’re either not replacing enough fluids or enough fluids quickly enough. I know the majority of endurance athletes we work with don’t drink nearly enough fluids to compensate for the volume of sweat loss and internal heat. So they may take a handheld or two for long humid summer runs and then have that salty sweat. But thats just because they havent replenished enough fluids.
I used to take lots of salt stick pills with on course GE and not enough fluids. You can see the salt lines in my finish photos. Fast forward to the past two years where I did the sweat testing and tweaked fluid intake and I feel much better and don’t have the same sweat outcome. And the changes I made were lots more sodium and even more water. This year was the first IM I didn’t end up in the med tent…and it wasn’t bc I’m in better shape lol. Quite the opposite.
Maybe I’ll mess around with some more of my sweat tests/patches on indoor rides. I’ll keep electrolyte intake the same but use the fluid intake as the variable to see if it changes sodium content in the sweat.
If what I’m remembering is true then people won’t have the same salt content in sweat because the amount of fluids and electrolytes they take in would alter that. For my earlier racing: tons of sodium in my diet, lots of electrolyte intake during races, and insufficient fluid intake → super salty sweat.
Alex Harrison did a solid series on this: https://www.youtube.com/@SaturdayProFuelAndHydration