Electrolytes (Sodium + Potassium)
Also known as: oral rehydration salts, Na/K replacement, sodium chloride + potassium chloride.
Ethanol suppresses vasopressin (ADH) at the pituitary, increasing free-water clearance and producing a net loss of sodium and potassium across a night of drinking. A pre-bed electrolyte load preempts the morning deficit. This is the single highest-leverage non-prescription intervention in the entire protocol — nothing else delivers comparable felt benefit per unit cost. Tier 1 because skipping it cancels most of the gain from the supplement layer.
Where this fits in the system
What it does
Alcohol shuts off your kidneys' "hold water" signal. You urinate out more water than you drink, and you lose sodium and potassium with it. By morning you are net hyponatremic and hypokalemic — which is most of what acute hangover feels like, mechanically. Pre-bed electrolytes preempt that deficit instead of trying to climb out of it the next day.
How it works
Vasopressin suppression
Ethanol acts on the posterior pituitary to suppress arginine vasopressin (ADH) release. ADH normally signals the kidney to reabsorb water from the collecting ducts. With it suppressed, free-water clearance rises sharply — you produce more urine than the volume of fluid you ingested, even after accounting for the water content of the drink itself.
That excess urine carries sodium and potassium with it. Plasma sodium drops mildly; intracellular potassium loss is harder to measure but follows the same pattern. The classic hangover triad — pounding head, fatigue, brain fog — overlaps cleanly with mild hyponatremic-hypokalemic symptomatology.
Why pre-bed beats morning-after
The peak diuresis happens during drinking and the first few hours after. By the time you wake up, you have already spent the night running a deficit, and rehydration alone (water without electrolytes) can briefly worsen the picture by further diluting plasma sodium. Pre-bed dosing intercepts the deficit before it fully develops; morning-after dosing replaces what you can.
Buying guidance
Three viable formats:
- LMNT. 1000 mg sodium + 200 mg potassium per stick. The cleanest dose-per-serving in the consumer market. Sugar-free.
- Liquid IV (sugar-free) or equivalent ORS. Lower sodium per serving but widely available. Use two sticks for the Afterburner dose.
- DIY. ¼ tsp regular table salt + ⅛ tsp lite salt (potassium chloride) + 500 mL water + lemon juice. Roughly equivalent to one LMNT serving at a fraction of the cost; the lite-salt potassium chloride is the key to matching the K side of the dose.
Avoid sugary "sports drinks" — the sugar load is counterproductive (NAD⁺ is already constrained by ethanol metabolism; adding a fructose load makes it worse), and the sodium content is usually too low to matter.
Deep science · Electrolytes — deep dive
The diuresis math
Eisenhofer 1985 and subsequent work quantified the response: each 10 g of ethanol drives roughly 100 mL of additional urine output beyond the fluid volume of the drink itself. Five drinks ≈ 500 mL of net negative fluid balance, before any sweat or insensible loss. Sodium loss tracks the urine volume; potassium loss is proportionally larger because intracellular shifts add to renal excretion.
Why sodium dose this size
1000 mg sodium ≈ 43 mmol Na⁺. That replaces the rough deficit of a 5-drink night and is well below any threshold for hypertensive concern in healthy adults over a single evening. The Mayday dose is doubled because by that point the deficit has compounded — hyponatremia + hypovolemia + cellular dehydration are all present.
Why potassium dose this size
200 mg potassium ≈ 5 mmol K⁺ — modest. Higher single doses risk GI distress and (rarely) cardiac arrhythmia. The protocol prefers smaller, repeated potassium dosing across stages over a single large bolus.
Why this is the highest-leverage lever
Most "hangover supplements" target acetaldehyde or oxidative stress. By morning, in healthy ALDH2*1/*1 livers, both are already substantially resolved. What's left is the metabolic and electrolyte aftermath. A protocol that fixes the cofactor side (NR) and the electrolyte side without anything else outperforms a protocol that targets acetaldehyde with everything else and skips these two.
Layer interaction
Electrolytes are mechanistically independent from every other ingredient on this site. Magnesium glycinate is the closest neighbor — magnesium is a third electrolyte that alcohol depletes — but it sits in a separate category because the felt-effect window is sleep architecture, not next-morning function. Run them as parallel layers, not as substitutes.