Electrolyte supplements are everywhere. Who benefits from them and when?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Social media is filled with influencers rating electrolyte supplements or even telling followers how to make their own. But experts say many of the claims about the health benefits of these drinks need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Electrolytes are electrically charged substances that help regulate chemical reactions in the body. In the context of hydration, they balance fluid levels inside and outside of cells, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic.

We lose some electrolytes through sweat, primarily sodium chloride — which is what is in table salt. Drinking too much plain water when sweating very heavily can dilute the salt in your body even further, throwing things out of balance. Electrolyte drinks and powders are meant to hydrate and replace the lost salt. They often contain other electrolytes like potassium and magnesium. Many also contain some form of sugar.

In general, the kidneys in a healthy person do an excellent job of keeping our electrolytes in balance. Extras simply come out in your urine, said Vanderbilt University nephrologist Hunter Huston, who also consults for a UK-based company that provides electrolyte replacement plans for endurance athletes.

Taking "an electrolyte-enriched drink, just for health purposes, probably isn’t doing much," he said.

Today “rapid hydration” and “advanced hydration” drinks are taking off, but who actually benefits from them and when?

It was 1965 at the University of Florida and then-assistant Gators football Coach Dwayne Douglas had something on his mind. As Robert Cade, the school's first kidney researcher, later explained, Douglas asked him, “Doctor, why don’t football players wee-wee after a game?”

“That question changed our lives,” Cade said.

The obvious answer was that the football players couldn't urinate because they were losing so much fluid through sweat. Cade’s research team determined a player could lose as much as 18 pounds (8.16 kilograms) during a game. But it wasn't just water the players were losing. They were sweating away sodium and chloride and losing both plasma volume and blood volume. The losses were sapping their strength and stamina.

Cade mixed up a briny solution to replace the water and salt players were losing. Sugar would help the gut absorb the sodium. The first batch made him vomit. Some lemon juice made it taste a little better. It still wasn't delicious, but soon the team’s performance improvement could not be ignored — especially in the second half of games when the opposite team's players were starting to wilt in the Florida heat and humidity.

Cade, who died in 2007, said he never dreamed Gatorade would be purchased by regular consumers.

While it seems that everyone is drinking electrolyte supplements these days, not everyone actually needs them.

A good rule of thumb is that if you are exercising for less than two hours, plain water is probably fine, said Vanderbilt's Huston. The average healthy person can tolerate losing around 2% of their body weight in sweat before they really start to feel it, he said. “That’s increased thirst, it’s fatigue, it cramping.”

Everyone is different, though. Some people sweat very heavily or have sweat that is especially salty.

In the world of extreme sports like ultramarathons, athletes often get professional help to test how much they sweat and get a tailored nutrition plan.

“Most folks that are exercising, that are, say, doing a marathon, are gonna be way past that two hours, and it does then make sense to be thinking about, ‘What’s going to be my fluid and electrolyte replacement plan?’” Huston said.

Darren Rovell has followed the rise of sports drinks from a niche market to the mainstream. He is the author of “First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat Into a Cultural Phenomenon” and was an investor in the sports drink Bodyarmor.

When he was a runner in high school, he said, they were given Gatorade to drink and told the reason it tasted bad was because it was good for you. “And then at some point in the nineties, it got to be sugary.” After PepsiCo purchased the brand in 2001, “that really became the first time where you see Gatorade everywhere in front of your face including in a pizza place, and it starts to be, ‘OK. Is this just a different type of soda?’"

Rovell says electrolyte brands market the idea that drinking their products will either make you an athlete or, if you already are an athlete, give you a performance edge.

“It all starts in the aspiration of being better, but you know we do have to check ourselves,” he said.

The supplements out today have an incredibly wide variety of electrolyte concentrations, said Patrick Burns, who practices emergency medicine at Stanford Health Care and occasionally runs in ultramarathons. With some having five times the sodium of others, consumers should not assume all supplements are the same.

Burns also warned that people should be careful about supplementing potassium, because it can be dangerous in large amounts.

He noted that many brands now offer zero sugar varieties, even though the glucose in sugar is what allows for rapid absorption of the sodium.

“They’re not internally consistent, at all, with what they’re trying to sell you,” he said. “For optimal absorption, you need some sugar in with your salt.”

“Electrolytes can help, especially with heavy sweating or exercise, but for most people, they’re not something you need every single day, and you definitely don’t need large amounts of it,” the Cleveland Clinic's Zumpano said.

For a healthy person who is not sweating intensely, the beverages probably won't hurt you, but they won't help you either.

“You’re getting extra sugar, and there’s no reason (for) rapid absorption of sodium because you’re not sodium depleted," said Mark Segal, a professor of nephrology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Most people get all the salt and potassium they need from food, he said.

As far as making your own electrolyte powders, the experts said it can be done, but you have to know what you are doing. They advised against using a recipe from an influencer.

“How do you know how much you need?” Zumpano asked. “There's a large margin of error there. I'd probably just avoid it.”

FILE - Gatorade bottles and coolers are seen on the sideline before an NFL football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, Dec. 14, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Jerome Miron, file)

FILE - New York Jets linebacker Jermaine Johnson warms up before an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Dec. 14, 2025, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)

Electrolyte supplements in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Electrolyte supplements are poured into glass of water Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with President Donald Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.

The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.

The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, the summer of 2025 when the Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall's government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.

The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.

More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.

Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats' and Republicans' views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents' opinions are still moving. “Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.

Trump's return to the White House was fueled, in part, by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump's favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views soured quickly.

Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and just after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.

Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.

“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents," said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. "That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump's coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”

Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump's coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.

About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.

The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.

Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall's government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.

Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.

“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”

Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans' frustrations with Trump, including independents.

About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.

More than a year into Trump's second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.

The analysis found that Americans' views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country's economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.

The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.

——

This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump's second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.

FILE - Voters stand in line outside a polling place at Madison Church, Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

FILE - An American flag flies in the wind as a voter leaves a polling site after casting a ballot on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/David Goldman, file)

FILE - A man wears an "I voted" sticker on his shirt, printed with the American flag and the U.S. constitution, after voting at Wa-Ke Hatchee Recreation Center in Fort Myers, Fla, on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)