Homemade Electrolyte Replacements (Homemade Gatorade)

My girl­friend’s dog has been sick the past cou­ple of days.  Dehy­drat­ed, lethar­gic, etc.   This got me think­ing when I was doing sev­er­al search­es online for how to ade­quate­ly keep him hydrat­ed.  By doing sev­er­al Google search­es I found a LOT of infor­ma­tion on sick pets, dehy­dra­tion, vom­it­ing, etc.  It got me think­ing, that in a SHTF sce­nario, there may not be any pow­dered,  jarred, etc. com­mer­cial elec­trolyte sup­ple­ments around help ade­quate­ly rehy­drate some­one if they are sick and need assis­tance.  What I found was much eas­i­er to make than I had antic­i­pat­ed.  Addi­tion­al­ly, I am sure there have been oth­er blog posts out there on this.  This is just my dis­cov­ery…

First, let’s define what an elec­trolyte sup­ple­ment is and what it does:

Elec­trolytes are the elec­tri­cal­ly charged par­ti­cles, in this case, ‘ions’ in our bod­i­ly flu­ids.  They are used in the cre­ation of elec­tri­cal ener­gy that our body requires for our body to basi­cal­ly func­tion.  Most com­mon­ly, elec­trolytes help the body in the trans­mis­sion of impuls­es and mus­cu­lar expan­sion and con­trac­tions… If elec­trolytes are not present when the body is over­heat­ed, the body’s per­for­mance is neg­a­tive­ly com­pro­mised and will not func­tion cor­rect­ly…  (This is my lay­man’s def­i­n­i­tion, by the way).

 Why elec­trolytes need to be replaced in the body:

Elec­trolytes need to be restored in the body to help restore the prop­er ratio of your body’s water con­sis­ten­cy to it’s cor­rect pro­por­tion.  i.e elec­trolytes to prop­er flu­id lev­el.  Sort of like a lead acid bat­tery.  You need to have a prop­er bal­ance in order to func­tion cor­rect­ly.  Fur­ther, elec­trolyte and flu­id func­tion are reg­u­lat­ed by the kid­neys, which I just learned also reg­u­lates thirst.  (You learn some­thing new every day).

So, what con­di­tions would allow you to deplete your elec­trolyte lev­els:

The Obvi­ous:

• Pro­longed expo­sure to the hot sun
• Extend­ed phys­i­cal exer­tion and over­heat­ing of the body.  (two hours or more at a time).
• Lack of  flu­id intake due to avail­abil­i­ty or oth­er rea­son
• Being sick.  i.e fever, diar­rhea, vom­it­ing, etc…

The not so obvi­ous:

• Changes in your diet or going on an extreme diet to lose weight
• Side effects of med­i­cines you may be tak­ing.  (Not a doc­tor so I can­not and won’t get into the specifics, you should check with a physi­cian to learn more about what you may be tak­ing affects you).
• Severe burns on the body.  More specif­i­cal­ly 10% of the body and above.…
• Dis­eases affect­ing the kid­neys.  i.e. Dia­betes, infec­tions, can­cer, etc.
• Some types of surg­eries… Again, not a doc­tor so I can­not and won’t get into the specifics, you should check with a physi­cian to learn more about what you may be tak­ing affects you.

There may be more rea­sons, but these were the most com­mon I was able to iden­ti­fy…

So how can you recharge your bat­tery with fresh elec­trolytes?  Gatorade is what most peo­ple I know drink.  They run right out and buy a plas­tic bot­tle full.  If you don’t want to spend the $2.00 — $4.00 per plas­tic bot­tle though, what can you do?  Well, you can eat foods high in potas­si­um, sodi­um, and drink a large glass of water with it to help process/digest it.

A quick Google search revealed a pletho­ra of places to get recipes for mak­ing a “Gatorade like” elec­trolyte sup­ple­ment.  Here is a small list of foods that have sodi­um and potas­si­um that you can eat to replen­ish elec­trolytes:

• For Dogs:  http://www.k911.biz/Petsafety/Dehydration.htm
• Well­ness Mama:  http://wellnessmama.com/2575/natural-sports-drink-alternatives-recipe/ 
• HQ Per­for­mance:  http://blog.hqperformance.com/2012/09/20/better-than-gatorade-homemade-sports-drink-alternatives/
• Liv­ing on a Dime:   http://www.livingonadime.com/homemade-gatorade-recipes/
• Food.com:  http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-gatorade-93652
• DavidHayes.net:  http://www.davidhays.net/running/sportsdrink.html
• One Good Thing by Jillee:  http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/04/make-your-own-homemade-gatorade.html

There were hun­dreds more.  This is just a small cross sec­tion.  One thing is cer­tain, though.  It cost me only a few pen­nies to make a solu­tion for Jake (Girl­friend’s dog) and am on my sec­ond small batch.  Basi­cal­ly, not cost­ing a thing because I had what I need­ed here.   So it is safe to say that if you make your own elec­trolyte sup­ple­ment from what you have at home or from stor­age prepped ingre­di­ents, you’re going to save a lot of mon­ey, assum­ing you buy those $2.00 — $4.00 Gatorades and like prod­ucts…