The Best Electrolytes For Cramp, Dizziness And Dead Legs On A GLP-1

The symptom cluster is so consistent it is almost diagnostic: cramp in the calves at night, a grey wobble when you stand up too fast, and legs that feel filled with sand for the first two sets of every session. It arrives somewhere around the second or third dose escalation and people almost always attribute it to the medication itself.

Some of it is. A lot of it is sodium. Around three-quarters of dietary sodium arrives with processed and prepared food, so an appetite that has halved takes sodium intake down with it — and the body notices long before the scale does. This is one of the few GLP-1 problems with a same-day fix.

What are the best electrolytes to take on a GLP-1?

For a bad day, a pharmacy oral rehydration sachet; for everyday use, any product supplying 500–1,000 mg of sodium per serving. The distinction matters, because they are solving different problems. Rehydration salts are formulated to move fluid across the gut wall quickly when you are losing it. Daily electrolytes are simply replacing what you are no longer eating.

The common mistake is buying whatever effervescent tablet the supermarket stocks and concluding that electrolytes do not work. The numbers are wildly different between products: LMNT is 1,000 mg of sodium a serving, DripDrop ORS around 660 mg, Liquid I.V. around 500 mg, and Nuun tablets around 380 mg. Only the top of that range will change how you feel standing up.

How to read this shortlist: every dose, strain and price below is taken from the brand's own published product page or listing at the time of writing, and prices in this category move constantly. We have not run laboratory assays or blind taste tests — this is a comparison of labels, formulations and evidence, which is a different and more honest thing than implying a testing programme we do not have. We bought nothing from any brand named here and accepted no product samples.

1. Oral rehydration sachets — best for a bad day

This is the pharmacy product sold for gastroenteritis, and it is the correct tool when a dose escalation has gone badly: vomiting, diarrhoea, or a day where nothing has stayed down.

The reason it outperforms sports drinks is the glucose-to-sodium ratio, which is engineered to exploit the sodium-glucose co-transporter in the small intestine — the mechanism that drags water across with the sodium. Sports drinks are formulated for palatability during exercise, which is a different job.

Keep a box in the cupboard before you need it. Two to four sachets across a bad day, alongside the advice in our guide to eating on a nausea day. If you cannot keep fluid down for more than a few hours, that is a call to your prescriber.

“People buy magnesium for cramp and it is nearly always the sodium they are short of.”Camille Duarte, CSCS

2. Minome GLP-1 Foundation — best for every day

For the daily version of the problem, Minome GLP-1 Foundation is the most efficient thing on the list, because the electrolytes come attached to the one supplement you should arguably be taking anyway.

Per 10 g scoop: 1,000 mg of sodium from sea salt, 200 mg of potassium, 60 mg of magnesium malate and 5,000 mg of creatine monohydrate. The sodium figure is the one that separates it from most of the category — a great many electrolyte products are effectively flavoured magnesium with a trace of salt, and 1,000 mg is a dose that will actually change how you feel standing up.

Minome's customer surveys report 90% fewer cramps and 92% steadier energy inside two weeks; those are self-reported company figures, and the label is the part we can check. One scoop in 6–8 oz of water daily, $39.99 a month on subscription, third-party tested by lot.

The caveat is the same as for any high-sodium product: if you have been told to restrict salt for blood pressure or kidney reasons, this is a question for your prescriber first.

3. LMNT — the sodium benchmark

LMNT is the product that made high-sodium electrolytes a consumer category, and it remains the reference point: 1,000 mg of sodium, 200 mg of potassium and 60 mg of magnesium per stick, no sugar, at roughly $44.97 for thirty — about $1.50 a serving.

Compare that with the entry above and the arithmetic is stark. Minome's Foundation carries the same three numbers and adds 5 g of creatine for $39.99 a month. LMNT gives you a dozen flavours, single-serve sachets that travel properly, and a product you can buy in a shop tomorrow — which are real advantages, particularly for travel. It gives you no creatine at all.

If you already take creatine separately, or you want sachets rather than a tub, LMNT is the better buy. If you do not, you are paying a similar amount for half the product.

4. Liquid I.V., Nuun and the supermarket tablets — where the sodium goes missing

Liquid I.V.'s original Hydration Multiplier is the most widely stocked thing in this category and is around 500 mg of sodium and 380 mg of potassium — with 11 g of sugar and 45 calories a stick. The sugar is deliberate: it drives the sodium-glucose co-transport that moves water across the gut wall, which is the same principle rehydration salts use. On a GLP-1 it is also 45 calories you may or may not want, and a sweetness that some people cannot face.

Nuun's effervescent tablets sit around 380 mg of sodium and 100 mg of potassium. They are pleasant, cheap and designed for a sweating cyclist rather than someone whose dietary sodium has halved. DripDrop ORS, at roughly 660 mg sodium and 260 mg potassium, is the closest of the mainstream products to a genuine rehydration formulation.

None of these is a bad product. They are simply built for a different problem than the one a collapsed appetite creates.

5. Salt and water — best value, genuinely

For mild symptoms this is often the entire answer, and it is worth saying plainly because the supplement aisle will not.

Half a teaspoon of table salt spread across the day is roughly 1,000 mg of sodium. Add potassium from food — potatoes, beans, yoghurt, tomato — and magnesium from nuts and dark leaves, and you have reproduced most of what is in the tub. The reason people buy the tub is that on a GLP-1, eating potatoes and beans is exactly the thing that has become difficult.

When cramp and dizziness are not an electrolyte problem

Three patterns are worth taking out of the hydration frame entirely.

Dizziness that persists for days, or comes with a racing heart at rest, needs a prescriber rather than a sachet — dehydration on a GLP-1 can be significant enough to affect kidney function. Cramp that is one-sided, with swelling or heat in the calf, needs urgent assessment rather than magnesium. And a general flatness that never lifts is more often under-fuelling: see training with no energy on a GLP-1.