🔍 Key Concepts

• Heat cramps vs. heat exhaustion – both relate to heavy sweating but involve different problems • Electrolyte (salt) balance – what happens if you replace only water, only salt, or both after heavy sweating? • Relationship between dehydration (too little water) and low sodium (too little salt) in causing muscle cramps

💭 Think About

• For each choice, ask: after heavy sweating, does this action make the body’s salt–water balance better or worse? • Which situation is most likely to make muscles cramp harder: mainly water loss, mainly salt loss, or replacing one but not the other? • Think about what happens to the concentration of salt in the body if you replace only water, or only salt, after a lot of sweating.

✅ Before You Answer

• For each option, decide if water is adequately replaced or not • For each option, decide if salt is adequately replaced or not • Identify which option creates the biggest imbalance between water and salt levels in the body, since that imbalance is most associated with painful heat cramps