Homemade Electrolyte Drink

After last weeks bad experience with salt loss, I decided to make my own low-calorie, higher-salt electrolyte drinks and try them out on on this Sunday's hiking.

I got some ideas from this link.  The key discovery is coconut water as a base as it has high salt and potassium (although 200cal/litre).   I didn't add much sugar as I wanted to keep the calorie level down.

For each drink I tried to get the salt content similar to sweat at 900mg/l, but I overshot slightly.  Also after I'd finished I decided 700mg would have been safer, so I packed some plain water and Pocari Sweat to lower the average salt concentration.

Before

The line-up for Sunday (left to right):  

Coconut water.  (200cal/l)

Gingered water with lemon juice.  

Watermelon and coconut water  (150 cal/l)

Pureed strawberry and coconut water 

Pocari Sweat (240 cal/l)

Plain water

After

Conclusions from the field test:  

1. I had no issues with cramp etc.  Despite hiking for 9 hours and sweating 7+ liters.   
2. Water-mellon and Coconut Water was the most refreshing.
3. Coconut Water was also nice and very easy to make (just top-up salt 250mg/l)
4. The 1g/l salt content was a little too high.  Packing some lower-salt drinks and plain water was a good idea.