Here's What You Should (And Shouldn't) Drink After Eating A Salty Meal

Some of the most delicious meals and snack items are high in sodium. Pizza, ramen, chips, and Chinese takeout with extra soy are a few options that come to mind. It sucks that managing your sodium intake is a thing, because some of the tastiest foods are salty. But eating a salty meal can throw your body out of balance, making you feel sluggish or dehydrated pretty quickly. Even though it obviously makes sense to reach for something to drink to remedy the dehydration, it does matter what you choose to sip, as some beverages will do more harm than good. 

A lot of people make the mistake of chasing a salty dish with a sweet drink like soda (guilty as charged), sweet tea, lemonade (even more guilty!), or even sports drinks. It might seem like the right move because those drinks feel refreshing, but the extra sugar just makes things worse. Your body is already working hard to rebalance itself after all that salt, and adding sugar into the mix can amplify bloating, thirst, and lethargy. What your body really wants and needs is water, plain and simple, because it corrects your fluid levels, rids your body of all the extra salt, and helps with bloating and dehydration symptoms.

After eating a meal that contains a lot of sodium, your body works to regulate your sodium levels. One way it does this is by pulling water from your cells into your bloodstream to help dilute the excess sodium. This switch can cause your body to retain more water than usual, which often leads to bloating or swelling. At the same time, your body triggers thirst as a signal that it needs more fluids to help flush out the extra salt. Try not to substitute with flavored water, electrolyte powders, or 100% fruit juice either; they won't work like water does.

Drinking enough water helps your kidneys process all that excess sodium and flush it out through your urine. And despite what some trendy hydration hacks suggest, you don't need to add lemon, cucumber, or chia seeds to your water to make it work. Good old-fashioned tap water gets the job done. If you want to double down on feeling better fast, go for potassium-rich foods like bananas, spinach, or sweet potatoes with your water, as they also help counterbalance sodium and its effect on your blood pressure.

When your mouth feels dry, a soda or sweet tea sounds like the perfect fix. But sugary drinks are actually one of the worst things you can have after eating too much sodium. They can make dehydration worse because sugar pulls more water into your gut to help with digestion, leaving less available to flush out sodium from your system.

On top of that, sweet drinks can mess with your blood sugar levels, especially if your salty meal was also high in carbs or fat. That combo of salt and sugar makes you feel sluggish and bloated, and it keeps your body in recovery mode longer than necessary. Even so-called healthy drinks like flavored waters and electrolyte beverages can sneak in sugar and artificial sweeteners that don't help the situation.

If you really need something more exciting than plain water, try sparkling water with no added sugar or caffeine. But skip the soda, juice, and all that; the goal is balance, not overload, and water is the only thing that actually brings your system back to baseline.