The Electrolyte Delusion: New White Paper by Paul Eftang

Yes, glucose can help sodium absorb quicker. This is really useful if you've lost a massive amount of sodium to diarrhea. This is exactly what the WHO ORS formula was made for, and it excels at that. That was the whole premise of the white paper. The key there is clinical diarrheal disease. That's what the WHO set out to treat with their formulation. The SGLT1/glucose cotransport mechanism was specifically validated for situations where normal sodium absorption pathways are compromised, like diarrhea, cholera, rotavirus. That's because the sodium-glucose co-transport pathway remains intact even when other sodium absorption mechanisms are damaged. This is the reason why the WHO added sugar, because that's the best way to reach faster absorption in a damaged gut. However, athletes are not children dying of dysentery in Africa, and we were not trying to formulate for damaged guts with InfiniLyte. What athletes lose to sweat is very different than what you lose when you go through a bad case of diarrhea. Our formulation was tailored to athletes, and the slow and steady loss of electrolytes and minerals as you sweat.

But let's talk the SGLT1 transporter for a second. Everyone is assuming that you need sugar to take advantage of the sodium-water cotransport mechanism. However, SGLT1 is not the only route. The sodium-hydrogen exchanger (NHE), paracellular absorption driven by osmotic gradients, and sodium-amino acid cotransporters (SNAT) all operate independently of glucose in a healthy gut. The zinc and boron glycinate in InfiniLyte will release glycine, which takes advantage of the SNAT cotransporter. Then the phosphate from the magnesium glycerophosphate provides NaPi-IIb cotransport. Then the bicarbonate in the potassium bicarbonate will help metabolic acid load, which is relevant for athletes accumulating lactate during high-intensity exercise, and I guess for anyone eating a modern diet that skews acidic. The the calcium beta-hydroxybutyrate will deliver an exogenous ketone body that enhances BDNF expression, reduces neuroinflammation via NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition, and burns with less ROS production than glucose. This is especially good for people in a fasted state exercising, which is what I do. This is actually the primary reason we didn't put sugar in the base formula, apart from customer feedback asking that we didn't: InfiniLyte is good for those that are fasting or on keto. I personally fast 22 hours a day, so most stuff we formulate takes maintaining a fast into account, because I am using all these formulas myself.

That being said, we did formulate a sugar-based version of InfiniLyte. We just have not released it yet. It will have dextrose in it. We just know most of our current customers prefer a sugar-free formulation, so we started with that. The fact that it is the one I wanted as well didn't hurt. LOL