Does anyone take electrolytes when fasting?
Just want to preface this with - I'm type 2..
My routine is to essentially take a day off eating every fortnight or so, which results in a 36 hour fast. Beyond that I'll skip breakfast or lunch most days just to avoid a repeating schedule.
but I've found that (from long before being diagnosed) I would get cramps in my feet and calves during the night. This has improved enormously as I've gotten deeper into low-carb high-fat and fasting, but to get to the point - on those fasting days, while I feel great, I was starting to get crampy again, and it was getting worse, and clearly around the fasting.
Which makes sense, of course.. you don't stop sweating just because you're not eating.
so I now have about a gram of Himalayan salt a day. Himalayan, simply because it's got to have more stuff in it than chemical NaCl - sea salt should also, but the point being that even expensive crystalline Himalayan is incredibly cheap compared to anything advertising as "electrolyte" - when the vast majority of electrolytes is just salt, and stuff that you can easily get in food.
My sense is that salt is demonised along with fat, but what really happens is that when you cut carbs, there is simply less sugar in your body, so you "let go" more salt... and it's this that needs to be replenished. People sell "electrolyte" because it sounds more expensive, and more healthy, than "salt" - but it's mainly salt.
Anyway - short version - 20 twists of salt = about 1gm, so I do that into a small glass of carbonated water with a splash of raw apple cider vinegar and call it a tonic...
