 Hey, everyone, Dr. O here. Because this is such an important topic, I wanted to cover fasting and electrolytes on its own as a troubleshooting topic. So why does this happen? Why do we have to be so concerned about staying hydrated and our electrolytes when we're fasting? So it's actually the same thing when you go on a low-carb diet or you go on a crash diet. If your calorie intake or food intake drops, then your insulin levels are going to drop, and this is great, but there's this sophisticated relationship with the hormones in your body. I don't want to understand, but as insulin levels drop, so does another hormone called aldosterone. So aldosterone's job is to reabsorb sodium so that you reabsorb water. Its goal is to decrease urine production and keep that fluid in your body. So when you're fasting or going on a low-carb diet or cut your calories a lot, insulin levels drop and aldosterone levels drop. So now you're going to be losing more sodium and losing more water, but let's pause and talk about why that's a good thing. If you're losing excess fluid volume, it's going to take pressure off your body. So you're going to lose weight. It's going to be water weight. Everyone knows that when you first start a diet, you lose a ton of weight the first week and wish it happened every week after that, but most of that is water. Hey, getting a few pounds of extra fluid off your body is great as long as it's extra fluid. And this is also why fasting is going to help your blood pressure. If you get rid of that excess fluid volume, then you're going to get rid of high blood pressure. So this is a good thing, but we have to understand that enough to deal with it. So it's actually called the natrioresis of fasting. There's not going to be a test on that, but basically fasting is a natural diuretic is what that's saying. So fasting, low-carb diets, low-calorie diets all would lead to this excess sodium loss. And this is why if you're doing a therapeutic fast because you have epilepsy or something, they would closely monitor your blood sodium levels because you don't want to lose too much. If you don't replace this sodium, you can develop a situation where you have low serum sodium in your blood. And that's called hyponatremia, low sodium levels. The symptoms of hyponatremia, so see if these sound common, headaches, fatigue, weakness, and brain fog, so some of the most common problems that are associated with fasting, dieting, low-carb dieting, keto dieting, they're all related to this, this loss of sodium. But unfortunately, if all you do is listen to the advice to drink more water, you're actually diluting your sodium even more. So I would never tell you to just drink water. Every time in this course that I've told you about hydration, I've said hydration is water plus electrolytes. So keep that in mind. So what does the science say about this, electrolytes, and specifically with fasting headaches, but all the symptoms I just mentioned. This is called fasting headache and it's a study conducted in Denmark's general population. They found that a lifetime prevalence of fasting headache was about 4.1%. So in a solid number of people. In most cases, these headaches occurred after 16 hours of fasting. So if you're doing a 16-8 fasting protocol, you may never have to worry about this. So the most common causes of this headache are actually hypoglycemia and caffeine withdrawal. So I recommend, if you're fasting, that you keep consuming caffeine. I drink coffee, I drink tea, I'm drinking tea right now. I drink diet soda that has caffeine. So because yeah, if I stopped drinking caffeine, I would definitely get a headache, but that's not a fasting headache. It's a caffeine withdrawal headache. And then hypoglycemia, I've mentioned earlier in the frequently asked questions section that if you're concerned about this at all or you have these kinds of symptoms, you should be monitoring your blood glucose and make sure your blood glucose levels with your little finger meters that your blood glucose stays above 70 milligrams per deciliter. So there's a lot that we don't understand about this topic, but hydration, proper hydration is going to be your best defense against all of the most common symptoms that come with intermittent fasting. So what do you do? Everyone's going to be different, but you need your water and need your electrolytes. We've talked about water before. You should be drinking enough water that you are urinating every two or three hours or more frequently. Your urine should also be pale yellow. But how do you get your electrolytes? You certainly want to make sure you're eating a lot of foods that are full of minerals and full of electrolytes when you are eating. But during a fast, I recommend getting sodium, potassium and magnesium. I use a magnesium pill from Now Foods by Don Amazon. I use a potassium powder from Now Foods, also by Don Amazon, no affiliation there. And then I add salt to my water. You can buy electrolyte replacements and those things are fine. There are something called fasting drops from a company called Keto Chow that you can also buy on Amazon, no affiliation. But there are other ways to get your electrolytes. But personally, I just add salt to two big glasses of water throughout the day. I take a magnesium pill and I take my potassium powder. And then I say plenty hydrated. Water. I drink other fluids too, but I drink a lot, a lot of water. So if you stay hydrated, you shouldn't have these problems like headaches and the brain fog and the fatigue and the weakness. So super, super important. This is the most important troubleshooting tip that I can give you. If someone's having a problem with fasting, the first question I ask them is about hydration status. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.