• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

What causes dehydration/electrolyte imbalance

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
Thanks for your replies. I agree with you, Luke, this is an HPA axis dysfunction. I find the things that keep me most stable are not screwing up in my diet and a few Buhner herbs. For HPA cytokines he recommends chinese skullcap, knotweed and ginger, amongst others. This do help keep the symptoms a little less severe. Doesn't solve the root cause, though. I'm starting DNRS this week so I'll see how that goes
 
Messages
39
@katarina. How well has the SCIG helped you? How does it compare to IVIG?


I talked about them more here:
https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/what-happens-with-ivig-therapy.78117/#post-2240732

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/conversations/questions-about-scig.72207/

I also had a lot of more minor and random symptom improvements that I didn't get into since the list would be very long and I do not have the energy to get into it. But it has definitely helped me. I'm nowhere near cured and I'm still severe/very severe, but not getting worse at the scary rate like I was before.
 

BeADocToGoTo1

Senior Member
Messages
536
One often overlooked element when adapting to a healthing diet with less packaged and processed foods is that the high quality mineral rich salt (Not the bleached, highly processed table salt!) intake is often too low. The nutritional ketosis video link I had posted before also mentions this.

Another element I did not mention on this thread is checking your water quality. Especially when you are drinking reverse osmosis (RO) water, without minerals added back in, you are drinking de-mineralized water which is very unhealthy. For some reason this is very popular in the US from bottled versions, expensive home filtration systems, to water shops, and the deceptive marketing is allowed to call it potable water. Just look at the World Health Organization (WHO)'s report on this.

You can buy electrolyte pills that you can dissolve in water, without any sugary garbage in it.

Imbalances were a symptom in my case of malabsorption, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), etc. So, if you have not already crossed off any form of malabsorption and tackled that, it is another good area to look at.

It is tough, unless extremely off, to spot deficiencies through the standard blood tests, as the body tries very hard to maintain an electrolyte balance in the blood.
 
Last edited:

BeADocToGoTo1

Senior Member
Messages
536
... I'm usually hypoglycemic because my adrenal function is low and my triglycerides are high which I know is inflammation.

I have constant sugar cravings, another thing that started with the M.E. but I think that is a hidden dehydration/electrolyte issue because often times something like red meat will vanquish it. I guess I always wondered what the underlying cause of the dehydration is so I don't have to try and keep competing with it.

Numbers

Do you know the numbers? How many grams of protein, carbs and fat per day? Your ketone blood level before breakfast? Your glucose level before breakfast? Your glucose level 1 hour, 2 hours after your most carby meal of the day. Your recent HbA1c level?

What is your C-peptide level, since your body may just not be able to produce enough insulin even if your diet is completely healthy? In my case, even now, my pancreas was so damaged that I just do not produce insulin that a normal person would. I only need to look at rice or oatmeal and my blood sugar spikes.

Do you drink any calories? Any alcohol or smoking (I know obvious - but many people are not honest about these things or tend to not take them seriously enough)?

Do you know how many calories your body needs, and how many are you consuming? Too much protein can also be used by the body to produce glucose. We tend to overestimate the amount of protein we need.

Malabsorption

Even when I thought I was eating healthily my blood sugar system was completely unhinged. Trygs were high as well. Hypo episodes that would wake me out of sleep in utter panic through an adrenaline dump.

Fixing the malabsorption was the key to stabilizing nutrient and electrolyte deficiencies. There are many avenues to malabsorption, but things like SIBO, Candida overgrowth, gallbladder issues, pancreas issues like exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, stomach acid issues all played a huge role in my case and should be crossed off the list of possible culprits.