Hydration STATION

Electrolytes are having a moment, but do you need them? We reveal everything you need to know

- Joanna Ebsworth

Once reserved for endurance athletes and those working at super-high intensities, it now seems everyone from your gym buddies to wellness gurus is supplementing with electrolytes.

Indeed, the inaugural 2025 Hydration Report from electrolyte brand Humantra, shows 24 per cent of UK adults now take electrolytes regularly. Yet the same report reveals 55 per cent of UK adults still don’t know what they are or what they do. So, just what are electrolytes? How do they work? And can they really benefit your training, recovery from exercise and overall health?

WHAT ARE ELECTROLYTES?

The simplest way to think about electrolytes is as a collection of electrically charged minerals that spark chemical reactions around the body when dissolved in water.

‘The most important minerals are sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium,’ says performance nutritionist and Puresport scientific advisor Dr Sam Impey, ‘and these are the four you'll find most often in electrolyte drinks because, by volume, they're the most commonly found electrolytes in the human body.

‘Each mineral plays a key role in our biochemistry because they are involved in hundreds of different chemical reactions that make us who we are,’ continues Impey. ‘Magnesium alone is involved in over 300 chemical reactions and processes in the human body, from your brain through to your muscles and the gut. Meanwhile, calcium is essential for bone health, and also causes muscle contraction through depolarisation, a process where a neural input runs along muscles, tells a certain setup of the muscle to move some calcium in and out, and sparks an electrochemical gradient that causes a muscle to begin to contract. They do a lot!’