HOMEMADE "PEDIALYTE®"

Contributed by Lynne Snyder; From Web MD

If you had a family member who had serious diarrhea, or was dehydrated for some other reason,
would you know how to replace the fluids and electrolytes in their body?

• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 1/2 teaspoon potassium chloride (lite salt)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 tablespoons sugar

Dissolve in 1 liter (a little over a quart) of water.

The above is the recipe for homemade Pedialyte®, taken from Web M.D. We use to print that out, and hand it out to mothers, who could not afford to buy the expensive Pedialyte, especially if they had several children ill.

Unsweetened (NO SUGAR!!) Kool-Aid can also be added to this, to making it a tad more palatable to children. Do NOT add sweetened Kool-Aid, this adds too much sugar, and makes the very exact balance of salts and sugar off.

This recipe is a really good thing to have on hand. You can measure all the dry ingredients and store them all in a one liter bottle (dry). Then if you need it, in an emergency, just add clean water, shake the bottle well, and use. Great thing for 72 hour kits. You can also mix up several batches of it, put in zip lock baggies, and store in a one liter bottle (dry). That way, it's all ready for emergency use.

This recipe works to rehydrate animals as well...just don't add Kool-Aid to theirs.

NOTE: Skeptic that I am, I ran this past Dr. Garth Fisher, our ward's resident exercise physiologist. He said that it's ingredients were closer to Gatorade® than to Pedialyte®.