Andy Smith 00:00 
This episode is brought to you by Nuchido Time Plus, the next generation NAD Plus boosting supplement. You've probably heard about NAD Plus, it's a trending topic in the wellness world right now. But what exactly is it? NAD is a natural molecule found in every cell of the body. It's essential for energy production, repair and recovery. When NAD levels drop, which happens as we age, you can feel it. More fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and slower recovery after we exercise. We only allow browns in this podcast that I truly believe in. And I've been taking Nuchido Time Plus now personally for three months. I've noticed so much more energy and clarity throughout the day. And on the inside, I know that my cells are being looked after. And what makes Nuchido different is it doesn't just give your body precursors like NMN or NR or pure NAD Plus like injections, which your cells just can't utilize. Instead, it's a multi-ingredient formula designed to fix the root causes of NAD Plus decline. Nuchido Time Plus is the only supplement proven in human clinical trials to reactivate the enzyme that powers NAD Plus production in your cells. So your body starts making its own NAD Plus again, just like it did when you were young. It's also been shown to reduce inflammation, boost energy, improve sleep quality and even help reverse biological age. If you want to optimize your cellular health, head to nachido.com and use the code PEMFPOD at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. A quick disclaimer before we begin. The PEMF podcast does not contain any medical advice. And the content provided is for informational purposes only. If you have any health concerns, please visit a healthcare professional. Welcome back to another episode of the PEMF podcast. On here, we talk a lot about PEMF and how that works by inducing microcurrents into the tissues. But those currents simply don't flow well without proper hydration. Hydration isn't just about drinking more water. It's about making sure your cells actually hold onto it. And there's where electrolytes come in. So today I'm joined by Mark, CEO of Repowr or Revive, which we'll talk about, which are daily electrolytes. And we'll dive into why water alone isn't enough. How electrolytes fuel recovery and energy and how staying properly hydrated can supercharge the effects of PEMF and other wellness tools. So welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Mark Myerson 02:21 
Thank you for having me, Andy.

Andy Smith 02:22 
Yeah, no problem. So let's start from the beginning. I take electrolytes every now and then. I take them usually when I've had a drink before or something the night before. So and I've been scared about taking electrolytes before bed in case they keep me awake. So I think I'm doing it all wrong. But talk to me. What start from the beginning? What is an electrolyte?

Mark Myerson 02:44 
So an electrolyte is a charged particle and if we sort of go back to school science, you know, electrons have electricity and they flow electrons on negatively charged particles. So, you know, when something has a positive or a negative charge, you know, we say it's a charged particle and your body uses these charged particles to create signals which flow in exactly the same way as a battery. And so, for example, nerves are conducted along our nerve tissue with signals that pass electrical charges and that's how, you know, our body moves and our nerves fire. So, you know, without these things in our body, we would die. We can't function, you know, especially the brain which has all the neurons are nerves and, you know, people know there are billions and billions of neurons in your brain.

Andy Smith 03:52 
So what's different from, say, just drinking plain water to drinking water with electrolytes in? What's the main difference? What's happening that water can't achieve?

Mark Myerson 04:03 
So what, I think the best way of understanding this is that if you, if you lick your sweat, or even your, you know, take a, take a lick of blood, it is salty.

Andy Smith 04:15 
Yeah.

Mark Myerson 04:16 
Right. Your body exists, your fluid exists in, in a substrate that is not just liquid water. It has, it has other particles, glucose, electrolytes, and other things that make you human. Now, if you, if you simply drink water, you're actually dehydrating, you're actually diluting your electrolytes. You don't have to drink them at this, having them at the same time, they can come from food. But if you, if you only drank water and you didn't get electrolytes, all you would do is pee it out because your body is trying to maintain that concentration of sodium and potassium in your fluid that makes your body work and also helps you maintain pH balance. And that's very tightly regulated by your body. So what, what you'll find is that if you, if you drink water alone and you don't get the electrolytes, you simply pee it out because your body cannot dilute electrolytes beyond a certain point, your kidneys will just flash it out. It has to maintain that concentration of electrolytes in order to work. And another way of thinking about it is that if somebody comes to the hospital dehydrated, they don't put water into your veins, they put saline solution. Saline solution, if you, if you have a, you know, sip of contact lens solution, it is salty as can be. So there's actually a very high concentration of, of salt in saline solution because that's what belongs in your body. And if you, if, if the hospital gave you water, you would die. So, you know, it's like an interesting analogy for example, for people to understand that gives you just the sense that, you know, your body is salt and you need to replace those minerals. Your body can't make them either. They don't come from anywhere other than the food and minerals we consume ether as food or drink.

Andy Smith 06:15 
Okay cool so where can electrolytes come from naturally in food like can we change our diet to get more electrolytes just through our diet and if we do that do we should we still supplement electrolytes or can you completely like eradicate that need.

Mark Myerson 06:34 
you can get all your electrolytes from, from food. So that, but the issue is it's hard to do that. So electrolytes, if you break them down, the main ones are sodium and potassium, you know, and sodium is by far the most important. Again, going back to the hospital in the ER ward, saline solution does not have potassium and it does not have magnesium. So really what you need, sodium is the most important electrolyte and it what, it is what helps maintain fluid volume. If you don't have the sodium, you will pee out the water. So that's the most important thing. And, and sodium is part of salt. Sodium chloride is salt. It's not the only form of sodium. You can get sodium citrate and other forms, but the most common form is salt. And salt has long been valued by humans, even in ancient times. It makes food taste better. Our bodies crave salt for a reason. We need it. So salt is very palatable when added to, you know, the right food, food tastes very bland when it's not salted. But you do have to add it either to your food or your liquid. Now, if you're eating food with enough, if you're eating salt with your food and there's enough, you don't need electrolytes, but you do need to in total in a day, you need to get enough sodium from somewhere. And because, you know, the guidelines of, you know, the historical guidelines around health have always been focused on low sodium for the last 50 or 60 years. That is kind of being debunked by the latest science, by many of the biohackers, by a lot of people looking at the data and realizing that low sodium diets probably haven't done us any good. And there's a sort of a movement away towards adequate sodium. Adequate sodium is much more than people think. So if you take, if you just take an example, if a guideline is five grams of sodium per day in total, sodium chloride, which is salt, the equivalent is 13.8 grams of salt. You need 13.8 grams of salt to get five grams of sodium. People always confuse them. So people think sodium is salt, right? And it's not sodium is only about 40% of salt. So in order to get five grams of sodium, you need 13.8 grams of salt a day. Try and get that, you know, unless you're eating potato chips all day and processed food, whether salt is hiding in everything, you just are not getting enough. So that's where supplementation comes in. It's really useful because you just can't get enough. And the same is true of potassium. And the same is true of magnesium. You know, magnesium, again, there's lots of data and people talking about the fact that our soil where magnesium comes from has been so depleted that even the vegetables, the leaves that we used to eat and get adequate sodium from 50 years ago do not have the same sodium today. And so because our soil is so depleted, the foods that we are eating that should give us enough are not giving us enough. And in foods like bananas, which are rich in sodium, many health people realize that, you know, fruit has got quite a lot of sugar.  So they're avoiding those things. Once again, if you're not getting enough, you need to supplement. And magnesium is quite simple. Nobody's getting enough. Everybody's deficient in magnesium. And it's such an important mineral for our bodies to work. There's so many things that magnesium does that if you're not getting enough, your body simply doesn't work as it should. And you often don't feel good, fatigue, tired, don't sleep well, muscle cramps. So those three main electrolytes you can get from food, but it's hard. Our food doesn't contain enough. And if you're healthy, you're not getting sodium from all the processed food. And therefore, supplementation, especially in water is a really useful thing to go and do as as a daily habit. And then of course, if you're exercising, it's a different thing because you're now losing to your sweat, you're losing water and sodium at an accelerated rate. And there is no other way to replace it other than a liquid supplement that has enough.

Andy Smith 10:49 
So a bit of a personal question in terms of like how much salt do you try and add salt to every meal because I'm asking this because my granddad, we used to take the piss out of him because he would every single meal, you know, he would empty half a salt shaker onto his meal. There was all these links between high salt content and heart conditions in the past. He lived into his 90s, but he did have a triple heart bypass. So whether it was linked, I mean, is there too much salt, you know, do we have to also kind of behave when it comes to adding too much salt to our foods or, you know, best way to answer that really is like with you supplementing with your electrolyte. So you also adding salt to your meals.

Mark Myerson 11:36 
Yes, I am. Because if you take a product like Repowr, that thousand milligrams per sachet is only one fifth, it's only 20%. If you're aiming for your five grams of sodium a day, a sachet of Repowr is only 20% of what you need. So in order to get the balance of 80%, I don't want to take more than, you know, one sachet is enough for me unless I'm exercising a lot. And so I'm adding salt to everything. I generally don't count, but I'm being very deliberate about not being shy to add it. And doing so according to taste, you know, if something is too salty, it also doesn't taste good. But you want to be liberal with your use of salt. If you're not eating processed food, which contains a lot of salt, and often because it's sweet and salt together, you don't realize that there's sodium inside, you know, a chocolate bar or whatever else you're eating.

Andy Smith 12:30 
Yeah. Yeah. So that makes sense. So actually high processed food is containing more salt, which means you kind of need to supplement it less. But yes, the health, the health implications of eating processed food is counterintuitive. So.

Mark Myerson 12:45 
other reasons, exactly. And so this whole, this whole health movement of people, what and whatever you believe in, I think we all agree that health starts with not eating processed food, especially not ultra processed, right? Everyone's talking about that. And I think most people would agree on that, you know, eating food in the form that it's made, and that it's grows, and that if you eat animal products, that it comes naturally, is what humans have been have evolved to do well. And and so if we if we cut out that as a first step towards improved health, you're going to be cutting your sodium by a lot and therefore, you know, you need to replace that otherwise you're not going to feel good and your body won't work as it should. So just not to be scared of salt and to add it liberally to food, according to taste, to probably supplement with something like a Repowr in your liquid so that you're not diluting your electrolytes when you're drinking water. And then being mindful that when there's extra sweat sauna exercise, you know, late nights with with alcohol, those are the times when one needs extra above what you have normally in a day.

Andy Smith 13:52 
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's one of the only times I've ever reached for electrolytes in the past is because, you know, a drunk alcohol the night before or something, I feel dehydrated and it is one of them things that you can like have an electrolyte sachet and the, the feeling immediately after the benefits is, is incredible. So you can feel what it's doing, how it's hydrating the body. Um, but you know, that's not the only time we should be using electrolytes. You know, we should be, it's interesting. We said that, you know, your sachets of electrolytes is only typically 20% of, of what you need on a daily basis. So if you're salt salt, yeah. So you could have more of those per day or you can supplement it in the food. Um, people listening to this

Mark Myerson 14:42 
And Andy sorry just to go back to that potassium that we have in Repowr is much less than 20%. So the sort of daily guideline, which most people agree on for potassium is about 4.7 grams a day. Repowr only has 200 milligrams. So that's a fraction of what you need. And the reason we don't put more potassium in is that it can, it can mess with, with nerve signaling and heartbeat when it's in a liquid form and you're drinking it too quickly. So we prefer people to get more potassium from food. It's also more easily available from food than sodium is. Sodium, you really have to add it. Natural products don't come with a lot of salt. They do come with potassium. So you have to add the salt. And we don't want people drinking too much potassium too quickly for that reason. And magnesium is once again one fifth, about 500 milligrams of elemental magnesium per day. Perhaps two thirds should come from food. It's hard to get more, even if you're eating a really healthy diet and eating magnesium rich food, it's still hard to get that 500 milligrams. And so the supplement either comes from a Repowr sachet or from taking a magnesium tablet.

Andy Smith 15:52 
Okay, and you know in the past I've avoided putting salt on my food because of all the you know health scares about what salt does to the heart and all these different things but we're starting to learn that you know there's huge health benefits and especially if you get a good salt. You know one of my favorite meals is a good steak and it's probably the only meal that I really do put good quality thick salt on top you know like rock salt. If I'm having a steak with rock salt on top what do you think that is doing in terms of my daily percentage of intake is that quite a big chunk or would you still add on top of that? Does that make sense?

Mark Myerson 16:38 
Yes. Again, people are underdosing salt. So even if you take that great steak and you put on salt, you may be, let's take a teaspoon, right? You've got five grams in a teaspoon. You liberally put it on your steak. It tastes great. And that five grams is only two grams of sodium. You still have a lot to go during the day. So if you had that for breakfast and lunch and dinner, you'd probably be getting close to the five grams, but... No, it's interesting. It gets pretty introspective because you know it's like yeah it's just not enough. People are really and it's the measurements and these examples I think are really important. It brings it to life that people are not calculating correctly.

Andy Smith 17:22 
Yeah, okay.

Mark Myerson 17:23 
I mean, it's funny that we should calculate, right? Because, you know, with only animals, you know, most animals just eat their natural diet and they get what they need because your senses in your body have evolved to give you what you need. You crave things that your body needs. But I think in our false food environment where everything has been distorted, we kind of need to be a little bit more mindful of what we're eating, because it's so far from our natural environment where you went for days without food, you foraged for vegetables and fruit that grew. There was an animal and meat lasted for a few days. You know, that kind of evolutionary past is long gone and the food environment we exist in is just so different from what it used to be. So I think we do have to think about these things.

Andy Smith 18:12 
Yeah, okay. And someone might be listening to this podcast thinking, well, you know, I've never taken electrolytes. I don't really use salt in my food. And, you know, why do I need this? Why do I need to add this in? So do you know the kind of common symptoms or signs that people might experience day to day if they are deficient in, you know, salt or these electrolytes?

Mark Myerson 18:37 
Yes. I think there's two telltale signs. The one is mild headaches. And it's really interesting for people to experiment with. If you get a slight headache, reach for the electrolytes first before the paracetamol or the ibuprofen because you may find that the headache just goes away and it goes away really quickly. So that's a sure sign that you are slightly under hydrated. I wouldn't say dehydrated, but certainly lacking. The other is muscle cramps. You know, late afternoon, your thumb or your calf or your toe is cramping, then you probably need a little more sodium in your diet. So those are two telltale signs. The people who are sort of on low carb or lowish carb or whole food diets where they're not getting a lot of sodium, sometimes fatigue. People talk about brain fog, just not feeling sluggish and you know, not energized and sharp. If I can say that is a nice context to experiment with maybe being a little bit more mindful of hydration, adding any electrolytes to your water and seeing how you feel. But Andy, I'll say that not everyone feels different when they take electrolytes. So sometimes you feel those symptoms, sometimes you don't. And sometimes you feel the difference when you take electrolytes on a daily basis. Unless exercises always feel, if you're exercising a lot, you almost always feel better when you hydrate, same as those late nights and alcohol. But in day-to-day life, I think the best thing is to just be mindful of these symptoms and to experiment and see how you feel.

Andy Smith 20:27 
Yeah, OK. And you mentioned people that are exercising. So athletes, are they using electrolytes often? Is that something that they should like think about as a as a no brainer?

Mark Myerson 20:40 
Yes, it is a no brainer because because with with exercise, the stress on your body causes magnesium depletion more than normal. And you're also losing fluid with sweat and you're losing sodium as the primary electrolyte that is lost in sweat. So, you know, what's also interesting is that people are very different, you know, so a heavy sweater might lose 1500 milligrams of sodium in one liter of sweat, and someone who's a light sweater might use might lose 500 milligrams. So that's a three times difference in the loss of sodium in the same amount of water that you're losing in sweat. And so the heavy sweater, you know, white stains on your cap and t shirts that you can see after a long run or a cycle or a gym workout. Those people may have to replace much more sodium than somebody that doesn't lose a lot. But if you are, if you're engaging in exercise, which many health conscious people are doing, then you definitely need to have electrolytes. The biggest change has been that the electrolytes for health conscious people have tended to do without sugar. The real issue is that is that energy and electrolytes used to come together. You know, 10 years ago, there weren't these no sugar electrolytes. So we can talk about that. If you like this idea of combining sugar and electrolytes, so athletes generally understand it. But the big change is, you know, how much people are very mindful of calculating how much they need to replace. And they're also ditching the sugar. In many cases, not always in a race situation where you are flat out and you are losing using a lot of energy, you'll need to replace it. It doesn't come as part of the electrolytes with sophisticated athletes. They are using energy differently and replacing their energy with different kind of products.

Andy Smith 22:41 
Yeah, yeah. So let's yeah, let's talk about that because I've got one of your boxes here that I've picked up from the Health Optimization Summit where we met you recently and it advertises zero sugar, zero carbs, zero calories. As you say, you know, athletes are using these quite frequently and they often pull products out of their bag, you know, the little gels and all that sort of thing that are like super high in energy, sugars, all these sorts of things. So why have you guys decided not to include sugar?

Mark Myerson 23:12 
The reason we don't include sugar is very simple. Firstly, we're a health company and we formulated the product, not really for athletes, but for people who are health conscious. What surprised us with the launch of the product is that many athletes started using it because firstly, they understand sugar, they understand being health conscious, they don't want sugar all the time, especially in training runs or cycles or in the gym. And we also saw that many athletes recognize that the ratio of our electrolytes in our sachets is closer to what is physiologically necessary and that became a performance thing. So as athletes realize that they need to consume sugar, not as part of hydration, but as part of energy, understanding that these are different systems in your body. When you sweat and you exercise, you always need electrolytes. You don't always need energy. If you're doing an hour workout, you have plenty of energy on board in your body, your stored glycogen and your fat that you don't need to be consuming energy, but if you're doing a marathon and you're flat out for four hours, you absolutely need to consume some kind of carbohydrate energy. So the understanding that that energy is not always required, it's a different system in your body and you want to be calculating these things separately. So many energy products that have electrolytes don't have enough. So you also find that when you consume them together, you just don't get the ratios and the components correct. So I think that's been the biggest change and that has resulted in many athletes using our product because it works for hydration and they're getting their energy separate elsewhere and they understand that consuming sugar all the time is not good for your health and you don't need it, especially in the shorter workouts.

Andy Smith 25:09 
Yeah, no, that's good. And, you know, when we get guests onto the podcast, I do a lot of research beforehand and work out, you know, what is this product we're talking about? And I've started looking into electrolytes. And, you know, I've had your stuff before, I think it's great. But as I say, I'm kind of misusing it in terms of only using it when I'm really dehydrated and not kind of on a daily kind of supplement level. But I've just got a sauna at home as well. And so I was going to jump in the sauna last night. And I thought to myself, you know, this is about 8pm. So I thought, you know, I've done some research and electrolytes are super amazing after sauna use, which you've just mentioned, you know, heavy sweating. But I thought to myself, you know, I can't take it now because by the time I get out the sauna, I've done my session, it's going to be about half eight, quarter to nine. And drinking electrolyte is going to keep me up all night. So is that correct? Because after reading on a little bit, there was no reason why it's going to, you know, I just I just associate electrolytes. I don't know whether it's the word or something, it just feels to me like a morning product, something it's going to like give me a caffeine boost. But then when I was reading into it, it said no, absolutely, like you can you can use this before bed. It's not a problem. So what's what's your spin on this?

Mark Myerson 26:27 
And the, I agree with you. Electrolytes for me is a morning thing. And, and it's also, remember the morning is after you slept and when you're sleeping, you're not eating and you're not drinking and you are losing fluid and you wake up in the morning and you pee and you're, you're, you're slightly dehydrated or under hydrated when you wake up. And so to start your day with electrolytes and a lot of people now, I think are listening to their body and not eating, you know, whether you call it intermittent fasting or just not eating when you're not hungry, people are skipping breakfast until much later in the day. And so the idea of getting your brain and your body to function well, that coffee and hydration combination is a great morning routine along with sunlight and grounding and you know, some of those things I think is, is a sort of biohacking routine and it makes people feel good. It makes sense to me physiologically. But the later part of the day, I use electrolytes only when I have sweated. And so the sauna is the perfect example. If you go and do, you know, you've had a day where you haven't managed to exercise and five o'clock you get on your indoor bike and you, you sweat for an hour, it's a great time to take electrolytes because you're simply replacing what you lose and you're going to feel better later at night. I find with a sauna that I am very thirsty after the sauna. And I know that drinking water, again, it's, it's just diluting my remaining electrolytes. I've lost sodium. I think you should be taking an electrolyte product after the sauna. You don't necessarily have to have a whole litre, you know, take, take half a litre if, if that's what you feel like, and it won't, in fact, it will enhance your sleep, at least in our product. The magnesium is great for sleep. And I'm finding that I'm not, you know, because it's got salt, the salt helps you hold onto the water, meaning you don't go to the, you don't want to go to the toilet at 3am and disrupt your sleep. So I think that, that in the context of sauna, that's absolutely fine to take it and you should, I think it's advisable because you're simply replacing what you, what you lose. You, you're properly hydrated when you sleep and you're not going to cause yourself to go to the toilet. But even if you weren't doing that exercise, I don't think that an electrolyte product like ours with a big amount of water is the best sleep thing. You, you better off with a magnesium supplement that, that is magnesium threonate that helps relax your brain. And, you know, as long as you're decently hydrated, I wouldn't go looking for that unless you've had a big night, the alcohol changes.

Andy Smith 29:13 
So actually, that's a quick good question I was going to say to you is if you have had a weak moment and started drinking some alcohol one night, is it better to have the electrolyte before you go to bed or first thing in the morning? Or both? So what's going to avoid me the hangover?

Mark Myerson 29:31 
I mean, the answer is nothing will avoid a hangover because if it was, yeah, you know, there's so many claims about hangover cures and it doesn't exist, but it will make you feel better because dehydration is part, it's not the whole part of why one feels bad. You know, there's a lot of gut issues, you know, alcohol producers, these aldehydes, which are really poison in your body and it takes a while to clear that and you don't feel great. But but dehydration is a consequence of too much alcohol. And so a hydration product with electrolytes will help. It won't take the hangover away depending on how much you drink. But but anecdotally, you know, we hear lots of feedback from customers that say they feel better. And if you wait until the morning, it's way too late. You're already feeling crap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to be having it before bed. And you're ideally sipping it, you know, from when you, you know, even having it with you so that when you finish wherever you're at on the way home, you start sipping slowly and you can even concentrate it a little bit more. So instead of having, say, one of our sachets with 750 mils, you say you put it with 500 mils, which means it's saltier, stronger, but you are less prone to going to the toilet later at night.

Andy Smith 30:50 
Yeah, okay. So I made a mistake the first time I opened a Repowr and I put it in a small tumbler glass of water, thinking it's just one of these like, you know, like an aspirin or something, you put it in a little bit water and you neck it and it's going to help. It was like, it was very salty. So it wasn't until one of my colleagues said to me, no, you know, you need to put it into like nearly a pint of water. And then, you know, that's that's going to help a lot more. It's going to taste better as well. So you mentioned your morning routine as well about having electrolyte and a coffee. First question this is which one first and then there was someone I saw online that was putting electrolytes in coffee is is that a thing? Can that be any good?

Mark Myerson 31:37 
Okay, so, well, unless you're having a liter of coffee, no, it's probably not the best way of having it. And also the taste profile for me is very different. You don't want, yeah, to me, I don't want a lemon-lime flavor in my coffee. I mean, you might be using the raw electrolytes, but I think it's best to separate it. I like coffee first. I think it's part of maybe my habits, my brain needs a kickstart, but you don't want to have three coffees and wait five hours before you start hydrating. So to me, as long as the timing of coffee and electrolytes is not too far apart, doesn't matter which one's first. Okay. But you don't want to leave your hydration for too long after you have woken up.

Andy Smith 32:21 
Yeah, no worries. And just a bit about you.

Mark Myerson 32:25 
Andy just sorry for interrupting, you're just going back to your, you're putting it in a small glass. We have this issue all the time. We've tried to put on every label on the inside of the box, 750 mil, 750 mil, but it's quite amazing how many people just don't read labels or instructions.

Andy Smith 32:43 
I'm the typical one that did it. A lot of these small sachets and things, you know, it's important about getting the sachet into your body and it's like the easiest way to do that is put it in a small bit of water and neck it back and that's the exact same angle I took with this and made that mistake. So we learn, we learn. A little bit background...

Mark Myerson 33:07 
Yeah, to have the water if it's diluted in the right ratio, it helps your body regulate. So your kidneys will be able to deal with electrolytes in water, rather than just throwing it down. And there's an interesting association and the salt and blood pressure issue. What most people definitely don't know. And if you read Rick Johnson's book, he's got an amazing book, he's probably one of the world's foremost blood pressure and metabolic experts. He's a doctor in America, he's written a brilliant book called The Fat Switch. And there's another name why nature wants us to be fat. But he explains beautifully that salt with water, sodium with water is much more benign for your body. In those people that are salt sensitive and do have blood pressure links with sodium, which is not many people. But when you take it in water, your body can regulate it better and it is more benign. It is less likely to cause you any harm if you have it with water. Your kidneys can do their job.

Andy Smith 34:15 
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Andy Smith 34:55 
And that's a good question actually because, you know, electrolytes is another supplement. It's, you know, it's not as cheap as you can get table salt for, for example. So, can people, should people just be putting table salt in water and getting the same benefits of electrolytes that way, or is there a reason why we shouldn't be doing that?

Mark Myerson 35:17 
No, there's no reason. Um, it's a great little hack. It's cheap. Um, and, and it, it helps. There's no difference in having, you know, Repowr, which is salt, but it just had, we have other things. We make it taste good. It's convenient. You get the magnesium and potassium as well, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting a bit of salt in your water. I don't like the taste personally. One of the things I do like about our product is that it helps me to drink water. It makes it taste good. Um, taste is a big issue. The trick is trying to do that with healthy flavors and not causing people harm because the flavors have got hidden, hidden ingredients and things like that. Um, so for me, it works, but there's apps. If you can, if you don't mind the taste, absolutely nothing wrong. And as we talked about earlier, you struggle to get enough salt in your diet. So adding a little bit to your water is a great way to up your, your daily intake.

Andy Smith 36:15 
Yeah, yeah, that's good. And you know, what I like about these ones is, like you say, the flavor with this is the peach I've got. At the show we met you had watermelon and all sorts of different flavors. So when you mix it with the right amount of water, it tastes good. And like you say, you're getting

Mark Myerson 36:30 
Yes, Andy and ice, the temperature also makes a huge difference.

Andy Smith 36:34 
I hadn't done that yet, so.

Mark Myerson 36:37 
It's beautiful with ice!

Andy Smith 36:37 
Yeah, okay. I'll try that

Mark Myerson 36:40 
make it as cold as you can. For some reason, most people even enjoy it more.

Andy Smith 36:44 
Oh, okay. I'll try that today then. I'll report back a little bit about you, Mark. How did you get into this? How, you know, how did you start and end up in, you know, running an electrolyte business?

Mark Myerson 36:57 
Andy, that's a very good question. Just to give you a little context, the first part of my career was in financial services. I was in the insurance industry. I lived in Singapore for many years. I was always fascinated with health, but as I got older, my mid-40s, I found that my own health, I was putting on weights half a kilo every year and I just didn't feel great. And my sort of quest to understand a little bit more about health and about... human body led me on a really deep dive to reading books and listening to podcasts. And in the world that we live in, there's amazing access to information. It isn't easy to piece it all together. But I think if one reads enough and is curious and asks questions and talks to people, you start to see a pattern emerging of what it means to live a healthy lifestyle. And also what a difference that it can make to your future disease risk, your longevity, your being able to use your body, increase your health span, not just your lifespan. So all these things to me were fascinating. And as I put them into practice, I changed my diet, you know, I used to eat fruit, you know, half a kilo of grapes at 10 o'clock at night. And I thought that that was a really healthy thing. Wake up in the morning and a big plate of granola with honey. I thought that was a really healthy thing to do. And just not understanding insulin and blood sugar and all these effects on your metabolic health. And what I found, Andy, is that as soon as I changed my diet, I started losing weight for the first time in my life. I ended up losing about 13 kilos. All my biomarkers, my HbA1c, my insulin, everything went into the healthy range, even though my doctor told me I was not unhealthy before, but I knew that was wrong because I didn't feel good. And I was putting on weight, my blood sugar was going up. So everything went into the healthy range. I lost weight, I felt better. And amazingly, I was not hungry. I just couldn't believe the change in my appetite from a guy that I used to have breakfast at seven o'clock. At nine o'clock, I was hungry again, I needed a snack. I had lunch, 2-3 p.m., I'm crashing, I'm feeling terrible, I need a snack again. So I was eating six or seven times a day, I was hungry all the time. And when I changed my diet, I just could not believe the difference in not being hungry. And that's a sign that your body's able to utilize fat and use energy appropriately, which is metabolically much healthier. And then, you know, if you layer on resistance training, I think the world in which 10, 20 years ago, exercise were all about cardio. And now there's much, much more emphasis on resistance training and maintaining muscle mass, and amazing doctors like Gabriel Lyons and people like that that are educating people around strength training, even for women. And then, you know, we start with the fasting aspects and autophagy in these concepts. And then of course, other practice, meditation, sauna, all of those things. And what I could see is that electrolytes were almost a cornerstone of all these practices, people actually needed electrolytes. They weren't so nice to have. It's like if you did all these things, if you did not take electrolytes, you didn't feel good. So I was fascinated by this, this one unique supplement, we could see element in America, element he doing an amazing job of educating people around a higher sodium, no sugar formulation. It was no secret what the formulation was. In fact, the founders of element actually published the recipe in a PDF document. And it was downloaded 500,000 times. And what was fascinating is in that story, people started emailing Rob Wolf, who's a founder of element and said, the recipe is great. It's simple. Yes, but I don't want to do it every day. Can you make a sachet? So, you know, I was I was a very avid follower of the story. I understood the space. And, you know, was really frustrated that in South Africa, where I live, you just couldn't get this healthier version of an electrolyte with good quality salt, the right level of magnesium. And also what you don't put in with no color, no coloring. And I'm amazed at how many products look red or blue or, you know, that stuff is not good for you. And even if it is natural, you can put beetroot juice in your product and make it red and say it's natural. The idea is to trick you. It's to trick your senses, which to me is, is going in exactly the wrong direction. That's what the food industry historically has done to people, tricked you and deceived you. And to me, the the ethical, the ethos of our company was to do things transparently, do it in the right way, make sure it's healthy. So it's what you don't put into the product as well. That was fascinating for me. So anyway, during COVID, I experimented with a formulation. I managed to find an amazing formulator that helped me to buy the flavors commercially, to source flavors that were clean and to sort of get the commercial scale of it to work, which I had no experience in doing. But I have, you know, started my own businesses before. And I just thought, you know, even if we sell 10 boxes, I'm doing this, I'm passionate about it, and we'll just see what happens. And I think we, yeah, with the Revive brand in South Africa, we were lucky with the timing, 2021 people, people were starting to catch on to hydration. And I was just amazed that when we put the product out there, the right kind of people understood it. And it just gave us a momentum. That was very exciting. And, and yeah, we feel very, you know, humbled by it. You know, people say we good at marketing, we aren't, we just put one foot in front of the other. And I think we just managed to stumble upon a very good product in the right category. And then we evolved to our international expansion and the Repowr brand, but sorry to give you a long, long answer. That's really the answer Andy.

Andy Smith 43:22 
So why did the name change from Revive to Repowr or is it just the two different markets?

Mark Myerson 43:28 
Yeah, we have two brands. So the Revive name turned out to be very popular with many other supplement companies and others. And so it was difficult to trademark and that name was stepping on other people's toes. In the UK, there's a company called Revival, different to Revive, but similar enough. So it was a very crowded trademark space. And so we have two brands, we use Revive in some markets and we use Repowr in others. It's exactly the same product, the same style of logo, the RE at the top. So we've tried to keep the same brand identity with both names.

Andy Smith 44:08 
No, cool. All right. We've started doing like a bit of a quick fire in our podcast, so I want to ask you a couple of questions and they're just very short answers from you if that's all right.

Mark Myerson 44:18 
Sure.

Andy Smith 44:19 
So, first one, what hydration myth, sorry, the worst hydration myth you've heard.

Mark Myerson 44:26 
Drink eight glasses of water a day.

Andy Smith 44:30 
One thing you wish everyone understood about hydration?

Mark Myerson 44:34 
Sodium is really important to retain the water.

Andy Smith 44:37 
One sign someone definitely isn't hydrated well?

Mark Myerson 44:40 
Your pee is very dark, dark yellow.

Andy Smith 44:43 
One go-to travel hack for staying hydrated on long flights?

Mark Myerson 44:47 
Take Repowr and don't drink alcohol.

Andy Smith 44:49 
good one. And most underrated electrolyte?

Mark Myerson 44:53 
Sodium.

Andy Smith 44:54 
Coffee first or electrolyte first?

Mark Myerson 44:56 
Doesn't matter as long as it's in the morning.

Andy Smith 44:59 
for hangover cure electrolytes before bed or morning after?

Mark Myerson 45:02 
Both

Andy Smith 45:02 
And favorite Repowr flavor?

Mark Myerson 45:04 
Cucumber mint at the moment. But it changes from time to time. It used to be blood orange. It's now cucumber mint.

Andy Smith 45:13 
Oh, nice. So both those I'm still yet to try. So I'll I'll get some of those off you afterwards. OK, I'll start to...

Mark Myerson 45:18 
Absolutely

Andy Smith 45:19 
I'll start to wrap this one up. But let's talk about a couple of things that listeners could do to fit electrolytes into their lives. Like a couple of practical things for you for, you know, for our listeners to just take away from this episode. So what can they do, you know, in their in their diet or in their food? And how can they get more electrolytes in through through drinking? What's, you know, a couple of couple of quick hacks from you.

Mark Myerson 45:45 
I think experiment with using a product like ours, and you know, one of the most common pieces of feedback we get from customers is they say it helps me drink more water. And I've been trying to do that, I don't like the taste of water, and you know, I can drink a little bit, but not enough. And not only do you get the electrolytes, but people feel good about being able to drink enough water. So I think that's really an important thing. And the other thing is look at the vegetables which have potassium. And you know, bananas is the one which most people understand has potassium. But you know, swapping bananas forever gets the good fats in ever, you don't get the sugar. And you know, so if you want to have a snack, just take a whole ever and put some salt in it and spoon it out. And you know, something like that is I think a wonderful hydration hack as well as being a healthy, you know, food to have. And then magnesium, just focus on that, maybe getting 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams of magnesium every single day. And then the rest from food, things like Brazil nuts, your green leaves have magnesium, not enough. But you know, it doesn't have to be a Repowr, Sasha, it can be just a magnesium tablet. But people need that extra magnesium.

Andy Smith 47:12 
Another one I wanted to cover with you actually is...

Mark Myerson 47:15 
Andy just a question on magnesium when magnesium is deceptive because how many people I've seen or I've talked to where they said they are taking 500 milligrams of magnesium. My first thing I say to them is, no, you're not. I say, yes, I am, my pill, the tablet is 500 milligrams and what's hard to understand about magnesium is that it comes with another molecule, a malate, a glycinate, a 3O8, a citrate and the magnesium portion is the much smaller component of that tablet. So if you're taking magnesium malate in a pill, that 500 milligrams is only giving you 47 or 50 milligrams of actual magnesium. People think they're taking 500, they're only getting 47 or 50. It's about 10% to 14% of the size of the tablet is your actual magnesium. And so again, people are not measuring correctly and as a result, just not getting nearly enough of this really important mineral. In Repowr, when we say 100 milligrams of magnesium, it's actually 714 milligrams of magnesium malate to get you the 100 milligrams of actual elemental magnesium.

Andy Smith 48:31 
Yeah, okay, it's really interesting. And one other area that I just wanted to touch on is that fasting is quite popular at the moment. People are doing fasting for days to put their body into ketosis. One of the things you can obviously take during fasting is water, but is it recommended and can you do electrolytes and stay in ketosis? Is that possible?

Mark Myerson 48:59 
Yes. Okay, great, great question. So firstly, the, the, the healthy diets and the fasting, not only are you not getting your minerals, and you need water, but your body is losing sodium and water more than normal. There's a process called naturisis. And that is literally the the loss of fluid and salt in a fasting or in a low carb diet situation. And so so not only are you not getting enough, but you're losing more. And so there is a thing called carb flu or keto flu, which people have this, this sort of flu like symptoms, fatigue, muscle aches, cramps, not feeling great, headaches, slight headaches. It's a sure sign that you are deficient in electrolytes. And so, so I would say that it is essential to have electrolytes when you're doing these practices. But how do you not break a fast? The reason you don't break a fast is that the formulation of the electrolyte must not have sugar or calorie containing things which technically break your fast, although people debate and argue a lot about what exactly breaks your fast and whether a milligram of this or that is bad for you. So I think the idea is that in a fast you want non-caloric clean electrolytes without chemicals and hidden sugars and things like that. And if you are actually measuring ketosis, if you're picking your finger and you're measuring your BHB, or you're measuring your blood sugar, you can watch and see what is it before you take the electrolyte and what happens after and there shouldn't be a change. So if the product is clean, if you had a product full of sugar, you would be out of ketosis, your ketones would drop within half an hour, you'd find that you are not making ketones anymore, or you'd find that your blood sugar would go up. And so that's a sure sign that the product isn't appropriate for what you're doing.

Andy Smith 51:03 
No, thank you so much. This has been a real education for me because, you know, I really do take electrolytes before this and doing all the education and research around it, it's definitely something I'm going to start putting into my diet a lot more so, and more so. But no, thanks for sharing all your knowledge today. Just for our listeners, you know, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. Please leave us a five-star review. It allows us to get more amazing guests like Mark and bring all their knowledge to this podcast. So thanks again for your time today, Mark. It's been a real education.

Mark Myerson 51:35 
Thank you, Andy. A real pleasure to talk to you and thank you for inviting.