If you have been working out for while or worked out but been away for a while, you may have experienced where lightheadedness and dizziness kicks in and you need to lay down. After few minutes you can walk around but most likely not able to get back to your work out. Often, trainers or people around you start looking for something sugary thinking that your blood sugar level has dropped drastically into a condition and assume you have condition called hypoglycemia.
Hypoglycemia is a condition where the blood sugar level below the normal range which is below 70 mg/dL. This condition is serious issue and requires a medical attention. So, do people who get dizziness should go to ER? Most likely no. It is hard to get into hypoglycemia just with exercise alone. What is more common is the body is not capably to shift the energy system from using glycogen, stored form of carbohydrate, to fat. Here are two common side effect that you may encounter during your workout.
Exercise and Lightheadedness
Majority of times, people who become lightheaded or dizzy during the workout has poor choice of food. Poor diet will lead to malnourished which will also lead to deficient in so many vitamins and minerals causing the metabolism to become sluggish. Declined metabolism means the body is not capable of convert food or stored fat into energy required for the body to move. By exercising in this condition, eventually the body cannot transport appropriate amount of nutrients throughout the body for the physical demand and become lightheaded or can cause minor case of anemia.
Exercise and Dizziness
Dizziness is typically coming from mineral imbalance, especially, when you sweat a lot. Consuming too much alcohol, caffeine, taking medications, and poor nutrition habits can all lead to mineral deficiency with sodium, magnesium, zin, chromium, potassium and so on. Content of sweat is not just a water. They are sodium, chloride, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, cooper, nickel, lead and tiny amount of ammonium. These chemicals are all secreted out of what you have stored in your body from what you have eaten.
In studies, they’ve found that soccer players in 90 minutes can deplete up to 10 grams of salt through there, sweat. So even if you do not exercise as hard as soccer players, you can be losing serious amount of minerals through sweat while you are exercising for 30-60 min.
How to Deal with These Conditions
Thought of exercise causing hypoglycemia is very unlikely, unless you have underlying health conditions that can cause hypoglycemia, such as diabetes. You may have seen trainers or lifters using candies and gummies to replenish what they have lost during or after their workout but usually the energy portion can be restored by the fat they have stored in their body.
What the body needs the most is minerals, which you cannot replenish with junk foods. Banana from stores is also questionable if you understand the difference between ripe and oxidation. If you see green banana turning yellow at the store, the is oxidation. Whereas green banana turning yellow on the tree is called ripe. Huge difference in nutrients.
This is true when dealing with lightheadedness and dizziness while exercising. What the body has lost to cause those two conditions are not sugar, it is minerals. Therefore, when not feeling right during the workout, you should replenish yourself with salt not the sugar.
There has been study showing that consuming 1 teaspoon of salt before working out can help the exercise performance drastically and can avoid those dizziness and lightheadedness during physical activity.
As mentioned earlier, you need to have proper eating habits with natural food sources as much as possible if you are wanting to be healthy, fit and strong. You can never out train the bad eating habits.
Avoiding caffeine and alcohol can also help retain those minerals in your system better. If you are new to the exercise, pre-workout supplement may not be a good place to start for it usually contains caffeine and depletes your water and salt faster.
Lastly, if you have not been exercising for a while, you may need to take the exercise slow and increase the intensity level gradually so your body can keep up with your energy demands. Drop your ego and start with what you can handle.
Train Smart,
Kota Shimada
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