Salt Pills Do Little to Enhance Performance of Endurance Athletes

More salt doesn’t mean better performance for endurance athletes, reveals a new study. Saint Louis University researchers found that salt pill consumption neither hurt nor helped performance for endurance athletes. Edward Weiss and fellow researchers found that sodium supplementation did not appear to impact thermoregulation. When the findings were considered together with the known health concerns associated with too much salt consumption, Weiss urged a conservative interpretation of guidelines calling for sodium replenishment for athletes.

Assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at Saint Louis University said that while moderate sodium consumption was perfectly reasonable and should be encouraged, high sodium intake was associated with health concerns, like hypertension, so he recommended that athletes use caution with sodium supplementation, especially when daily intakes already exceeds the upper safe limit of 2300 mg/day for most Americans.

The study is published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine.

Source-ANI