curiosity, I'd like > to know, based on whatever is currently known, what's the likely absolute > largest quantity of electrolytes that could possibly be lost during the > most terrible endurance ride known to human kind and have the horse still > capable of going on.
Maybe Michael or Gayle know off the tops of their head---I don't and just don't have the time today to crunch numbers to make a guess. In any event, there are still alot of variables that would make it hard to say "you need to e'lyte precisely this much salt". I think you need to look at blood panels and see if your own horse's el'ytes levels are staying well within acceptable parameters. And I know this is just being rhetorically picky, but I think the gold standard shouldn't be just "capable of going on"---I think we need to find out what amount of e'lytes allows the horse to skip his way down the trail without a smidgen of renal or muscular damage. I know that's what you really had in mind, Lif, just wanted to stress that point. :-) Or, perhaps I should just be asking how much could a > horse lose without breakdown? I'm just asking because it seems to me that > whatever amount that is, at least we'd know not to give *more* than that > amount to our endurance horses - what I've been reading here makes me think > that maybe people are going overboard with electrolytes sometimes. IMO, I think it all depends on what counts as "going overboard". Yes, you can certainly have a horse already be dehydrated and depleted and then in some instances, get into more trouble by overdoing a single large dose of salts. But, if the doses start early, are not in excessively high concentration in the stomach at one time, and continue consistently, then the body will handle excess just fine, with alot less trouble than a it can handle a critical deficiency of e'lytes during exercise. I'll repeat what I've said before in posts, that horses during Tevis that were syringed consistently and often throughout the ride had metabolically better chem panels than did horses that were syringed only a few times, in larger amounts, or were only provided free choice salts. Susan G > > Lif Strand > Quemado NM USA > ______________________________________________________ > STRAND ENTERPRISES http://www.fasterhorses.com > HERITAGE ENDURANCE RIDE June 8, 2002 > * Distance Riding group/individual mentoring programs > * Web Page Design * Computer Graphics * Internet Research * Fine Art > * Blue-Green Algae & other complementary health options > > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. > Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
