“Salt is the enemy.”
We’ve all heard some version of it.
Too much salt is bad for you. Cut your sodium. Stop adding salt to food.
And for a lot of people, there’s a perfectly good reason that advice exists. The NHS recommends adults consume no more than 6g of salt per day, and points out that much of the salt in the average diet already comes from packaged and everyday foods. Excessive salt intake is associated with higher blood pressure.
But that doesn’t mean sodium itself is inherently “bad”.
And once you start talking about people who train hard, sweat heavily and eat predominantly whole foods, the conversation becomes a lot more interesting.
We recently covered this in depth on the Wolf Supplements YouTube channel.
[WATCH THE FULL “SODIUM IS THE ENEMY” VIDEO HERE]
Salt and sodium aren’t quite the same thing
Salt is primarily sodium chloride.
Sodium is an essential mineral and electrolyte. Your body uses it as part of normal fluid balance, nerve signalling and muscle function.
So the useful question isn’t really:
“Is sodium good or bad?”
It’s:
“What does this person’s overall intake and lifestyle look like?”
That distinction matters.
Why salt has such a bad reputation
Think about a typical modern diet.
Bread. Sauces. Ready meals. Takeaways. Processed meats. Snacks. Restaurant food.
A lot of these foods can already contain significant amounts of salt before you’ve even reached for the salt shaker. The NHS estimates that a large proportion of the salt people consume comes from foods they buy rather than salt added at the table.
For someone eating that kind of diet and doing relatively little exercise, deliberately trying to increase sodium intake probably isn’t where the focus needs to be.
Now compare that with someone who:
- eats mainly minimally processed food
- trains most days
- does endurance or combat sports
- trains in hot conditions
- sweats heavily
That’s a very different situation.
Sweat isn’t just water
When you sweat, you lose fluid.
But you also lose electrolytes - particularly sodium.
And the amount lost varies massively from person to person.
The international consensus on exercise-associated hyponatraemia notes sweat sodium concentrations can vary roughly from 10–70 mmol/L, which equates to approximately 230–1,600mg of sodium per litre of sweat.
That’s an enormous range.
Then you have to factor in how much each person actually sweats.
Someone losing half a litre per hour has a completely different situation from someone losing 1.5 litres per hour.
That’s why blanket hydration advice is rarely ideal.
A simple way to estimate sweat rate
You can get a rough idea of your fluid losses without laboratory testing.
Weigh yourself before training, keep track of how much you drink, and weigh yourself again afterwards.
As a rough working estimate:
1kg of bodyweight lost ≈ 1 litre of fluid.
For example:
You start training at 80kg.
You finish at 79kg.
During the session you drank 500ml.
You therefore lost roughly:
1 litre from bodyweight + 500ml consumed = 1.5 litres of fluid
If that session lasted one hour, your estimated sweat rate was around 1.5L per hour.
It doesn’t tell you exactly how salty your sweat is, but it gives you a far better starting point than simply guessing.
More water isn’t always better
This is another part of hydration that doesn’t get discussed enough.
The answer to dehydration isn’t simply:
“Drink as much water as possible.”
Exercise-associated hyponatraemia can occur when someone consumes excessive amounts of hypotonic fluid relative to their needs, diluting the sodium concentration in the blood.
The international consensus identifies overconsumption of fluid relative to sodium as the primary mechanism behind exercise-associated hyponatraemia. It also makes the important point that simply drinking a sports drink containing sodium does not protect someone who is still drinking excessive amounts of fluid.
So again:
Balance matters.
Not just water.
Not just sodium.
Both.
What about blood pressure?
This is where the subject becomes unnecessarily tribal online.
There is good reason public-health guidance warns against excessive salt intake.
Eating too much salt can raise blood pressure, which increases cardiovascular risk.
We’re not arguing against that.
What we are saying is that population-level guidance and sports-hydration requirements aren’t necessarily answering exactly the same question.
A sedentary person eating lots of processed food is not in the same situation as an endurance athlete sweating heavily for several hours.
Both of these statements can be true at the same time:
Chronically excessive salt intake can be a problem.
Significant sodium losses during prolonged exercise can also matter.
Nutrition is usually more nuanced than Instagram makes it look.
The “clean diet” problem
This was one of the reasons we became interested in sodium in the first place.
A lot of people in the fitness world clean up their diet considerably.
Takeaways disappear.
Processed snacks disappear.
Ready meals disappear.
Their diet becomes something more like:
eggs, meat, fish, rice, potatoes, fruit, vegetables, yoghurt and other relatively minimally processed foods.
Generally speaking, that’s a positive change.
But at the same time, their incidental salt intake can fall dramatically.
If that person is also training hard and sweating frequently, it makes sense to at least think about sodium intake rather than automatically assuming more is always bad.
So how much sodium do you need?
There isn’t one universal answer that makes sense for everybody.
Your requirements can be influenced by things such as:
- overall diet
- sweat rate
- sweat sodium concentration
- exercise duration
- exercise intensity
- temperature and humidity
- fluid intake
- individual health circumstances
That’s why we’re big believers in looking at the person rather than blindly copying somebody else’s hydration protocol.
Does this mean everyone should eat more salt?
No.
That’s absolutely not the takeaway.
The general UK recommendation remains that adults should consume no more than 6g of salt per day, and people with certain medical conditions may be given specific advice about sodium intake.
The point of this article is much simpler:
Sodium isn’t inherently the enemy. Context matters.
Someone consuming a high-salt processed diet may need to reduce their intake.
Someone exercising for prolonged periods, sweating heavily and consuming relatively little sodium may need to pay more attention to what they’re losing.
Those aren’t contradictory positions.
They’re just two different situations.
Want to go deeper?
We cover the full subject in our YouTube video, including sodium intake, sweat losses, hydration and why individual requirements can vary so much.
[WATCH: SODIUM IS THE ENEMY — FULL VIDEO]
You can also read our more detailed article on Hydration Supplements for Endurance Athletes: What the Science Says.
And if you’re looking for hydration products, you can browse our Hydration & Electrolytes collection or read more about Wolf Hydrate.
No Half Measures.