A Lesson On Hyponatremia

Working at the New York City Marathon on Sunday, I did some learning. I wound up helping a bit (more as brawn than brains) with some runners who were in trouble. Some had taken only water on their journey around New York City.
At one point, while we were walking a man who had just finished, I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade. My intent was to give it to him to replace salts in his system. I was emphatically told, "No" by the medical people. "Salt only," they said. The problem with hyponatrmia is that salt has been washed out of the athlete's body by sweating and urination, and the concentration of salt in and around their cells is too low. [Breaking the word down - hypo means low, nat comes from the Latin for sodium (remember salt in high school chemistry was NaCl?), and emia is standard ending for a condition in the medical world.]
So, the key is to get salt in AND not get any fluids in. It's a lasson that I'll remember.
Meantime, if YOU are running a marathon, take ADE!