BY THE SWEAT OF YOUR BROW

Sweat! We all do it, but there’s a world of difference between the make up of an individual human’s sweat: more specifically, the amount of sodium in it. Knowing where we fit on the saltiness scale is important, as failing to replace the sodium we exude during exercise is a shortcut to poor performance.

We need to consider our sodium when we are pushing ourselves and sweating for more than 90 minutes. If we don’t replace the sodium we’re losing, it’s going to impact on our performance. Sodium is basically what keeps water in our bloodstream. If we sweat it out and don’t replace it and we’re just drinking water, we’re further diluting our blood sodium levels. It won’t kill us or put us in an ambulance, but it will affect our performance and we’ll feel terrible afterwards. The average person loses about 920mg of sodium per litre of sweat, but about 20 per cent of people are high or very high, 1.200 to 1.400mg.

Signs to suggest you’re a salty sweater are white marks on training clothes or on the neck and arms, which is salt residue, where the water has evaporated and left the salt behind. Or, if your sweat tastes really salty or stings when it gets in the eyes.