How to Replenish Electrolytes After Drinking

Replenishing starts with knowing what you lost, and the first thing you lost was water. Alcohol suppresses vasopressin, the hormone that tells your kidneys to hold on to fluid, so you urinate more and lose more than you drink (1). That's why the bathroom line at the bar is always long, and why you wake up thirsty.

Electrolytes come into it because they travel in that fluid. MedlinePlus describes them as minerals that carry an electric charge in your blood, urine and other body fluids. Sodium controls how much fluid your body holds, potassium keeps your cells, heart and muscles working, and calcium, magnesium, chloride, phosphate and bicarbonate round out the list (2). You get them from food and drink, and you lose them with fluid, whether through urine, heavy sweating, vomiting or diarrhea (2).

So a night out is mostly a fluid problem with a mineral footnote, and that order decides what to reach for first. For the full picture of what alcohol does once it's in your system, our post on what really happens after you drink walks through it.

Most mornings after, you're mildly dehydrated rather than truly depleted. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that research hasn't linked the size of a person's electrolyte disruption to how bad their hangover is, and that in most people the body quickly restores the balance once alcohol wears off (1). That makes the fancy sachet optional on an ordinary Sunday.

Here's what mild dehydration looks like in adults, per MedlinePlus (3):

• Feeling very thirsty, with a dry mouth
• Urinating and sweating less than usual
• Dark-colored urine
• Dry skin, tiredness and dizziness

The easiest home check is urine color. Cleveland Clinic's rule is that clear, pale or straw-colored is fine, and anything darker means keep drinking (4). Low potassium is rare in healthy people with normal kidneys, and when it happens it usually comes from vomiting, diarrhea or certain medicines, not from a few drinks (5).

For mild dehydration, plain water does most of the work. MedlinePlus puts it simply: replace the fluids and electrolytes you've lost, and for mild cases you may just need to drink plenty of water (3). Cleveland Clinic adds that signs of dehydration can improve in as little as 5 to 10 minutes once you start drinking (4).

Sip rather than chug. If your stomach is unsettled, MedlinePlus suggests small sips of water or sucking on ice chips (3), and a glass every 20 to 30 minutes through the morning is gentler than a liter in one go.

A real meal is the best electrolyte product there is. Potassium, the mineral everyone worries about, shows up in ordinary food in amounts no small bottle can match. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements lists a medium baked potato at 610 mg, a cup of orange juice at 496 mg, a medium banana at 422 mg and a cup of 1% milk at 366 mg (5). For context, the adequate intake for adults is 3,400 mg a day for men and 2,600 mg for women (5).

Sodium is the mineral you lose most in sweat, and it's the easiest to get back: broth, eggs with a pinch of salt, crackers or soup. If you had bar food last night, you've probably covered it already! A simple morning-after plate:

1. Eggs or yogurt for protein, with a pinch of salt on the eggs
2. A banana, an orange or toast with a sliced tomato
3. A glass of milk, orange juice or water alongside
4. A potato or leafy greens at lunch if you still feel flat

One honest caveat: food only replenishes you if you're also drinking. Electrolytes without fluid don't rehydrate anyone.

An oral rehydration solution, or ORS, is for the rough nights, not the ordinary ones. The formula the World Health Organization adopted in the early 2000s is precise: per liter, 75 mmol of sodium (about 1.7 g), 20 mmol of potassium (about 0.8 g), 65 mmol of chloride, 10 mmol of citrate and 75 mmol of glucose (about 13.5 g), at a total osmolarity of 245 (6). The glucose isn't there for sweetness. Your small intestine absorbs sodium and glucose together and water follows them in, which is why a sip of ORS rehydrates faster than the same sip of plain water.

Notice what leads that recipe: sodium, by a wide margin. A real rehydration drink is a sodium drink with a little sugar and potassium, and that's the standard we'll hold our own bottle to in the next step.

When does it earn its place? MedlinePlus says sports drinks and oral rehydration solutions help when you've lost electrolytes, and warns that some sports drinks carry a lot of sugar (3). In practice, reach for a pharmacy ORS packet if you've been vomiting, you have diarrhea, you sweated through a hot night of dancing, or you feel faint when you stand. For a normal night, water and breakfast cover it. Our comparison of The Plug vs coconut water, Gatorade and Liquid I.V. shows how those drinks stack up on sodium and sugar.

We make a 100 ml bottle, so let's open our own Supplement Facts label and be straight with you. Per bottle, The Plug Drink lists 150 mg of potassium, 15 mg of sodium, 30 mg of calcium, 4 mg of zinc (36% of the Daily Value) and magnesium chloride with no amount declared. Here's how that lands against real reference values.

• Potassium, 150 mg: about 6% of a woman's adequate intake and 4% of a man's (5), or 3% of the 4,700 mg Daily Value (7). A banana has nearly three times as much.
• Sodium, 15 mg: under 1% of the 2,300 mg Daily Value (7). The WHO formula works out to roughly 170 mg per 100 ml (6), so you'd need more than eleven bottles to match one small cup of ORS, and please don't.
• Calcium, 30 mg: about 2% of the 1,300 mg Daily Value (7).
• Zinc, 4 mg: a real 36% of the Daily Value, but zinc isn't on MedlinePlus's list of the main electrolytes (2). It's a mineral, not a fluid-balance mineral.
• Magnesium chloride: listed with no amount, so we can't count it and neither can you.

Long story short, one bottle is a small contribution to your potassium, a rounding error on sodium, and not a rehydration drink. It was never designed to be one. The WHO recipe carries about 80 mg of potassium per 100 ml (6), so we actually have more potassium per milliliter than an ORS, but less than a tenth of the sodium, and sodium is what makes rehydration work.

What The Plug Drink is built for is the end of an ordinary evening: 15 calories, 3 g of naturally occurring sugar with 0 g added, no caffeine, and 10.83 g of our blend of 13 Korean botanicals. It's the last shot of the night that happens to carry a little potassium and zinc, next to the glass of water doing the real work. That's a fair description, and it's the only one we'll give you.

The cheapest way to replenish electrolytes is to lose fewer of them in the first place. Alcohol's effect on vasopressin drives the fluid loss (1), so every drink you skip is fluid you keep. The CDC's guidance of 2 drinks or less a day for men and 1 or less for women, if you drink at all, does more for your Sunday than any powder (8). Within that, a few habits keep you ahead of the deficit:

• Drink a full glass of water before your first drink
• Alternate every alcoholic drink with a glass of water, which also slows your pace
• Eat a real meal first, and snack on something with a little salt during the night
• Pick lower-alcohol options when you can, and skip the shots
• Have one more glass of water before bed, and leave a full one on the nightstand

Most of the time, water and breakfast fix it. Sometimes they don't, and the line between a rough morning and an emergency is worth knowing cold. MedlinePlus says to get medical help right away if dehydration comes with confusion, fainting, no urination, a rapid heartbeat or rapid breathing (3). Cleveland Clinic adds seizures, hallucinations and slurred speech to the reasons to call 911 or go to an emergency room, and notes that moderate to severe dehydration is handled with IV fluids in a hospital (4).

If rough mornings are becoming a pattern, that's worth a conversation with your doctor too. It's information, not a verdict, and there's plenty of help for cutting back.