About Lyte Lab

I'm an engineer based in Boulder, Colorado. I spend a lot of time outdoors — biking, running, skiing, climbing — and I've always been the kind of person who wants to understand exactly what I'm putting in my body and why.

A few years ago I went down the rabbit hole of electrolyte supplementation. Between keto communities discussing high-sodium protocols, endurance athletes debating hydration strategy, and new electrolyte brands showing up everywhere, there was clearly something real to understand. But the information was scattered across labels, forums, physiology papers, and product marketing.

What surprised me was how much of the category could be understood from the label: sodium, potassium, magnesium, serving size, and price. Branded products still include real convenience, flavor work, packaging, and quality control. But the mineral math itself should not be opaque, and many simple electrolyte formulas can be modeled from common bulk ingredients.

I started with a spreadsheet to figure out the right ratios for different use cases — keto, fasting, athletic hydration, hot-weather training. It helped, but it was hard to keep the inputs, ingredient forms, serving sizes, and cost assumptions easy to inspect.

So I built Lyte Lab. It's a free tool that lets you design your own electrolyte drinks from bulk ingredients, compare them to commercial product labels, and see the assumptions behind each calculation. You can start from a popular formula, adjust sodium, potassium, magnesium, and other minerals, choose practical ingredient forms, and get a recipe with cost estimates and safety guardrails.

Lyte Lab does not recreate flavor systems, sweeteners, acids, effervescence, convenience formats, or a brand's undisclosed salt blend. It also is not medical advice. It is a practical calculator for people who want to understand the listed electrolytes, make informed tradeoffs, and mix something appropriate for their own use case.

My hope is that the site makes electrolyte formulation less mysterious. Whether you're on keto, training in the heat, fasting, or just curious about what is in your drink mix, you should be able to see the numbers clearly and decide what matters to you.

I hope you enjoy it.