You can make a basic rehydration drink at home with three ingredients: water, sugar, and salt. The World Health Organization’s formula calls for 4¼ cups of water, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. It won’t taste exactly like Pedialyte, and it lacks some of the electrolytes in the commercial version, but it works well for mild to moderate dehydration when you can’t get to a store.
The Basic Recipe
This is the formula recommended by the WHO and referenced by health systems including Alberta Health Services and the University of Virginia School of Medicine:
- Water: 4¼ cups (just over 1 liter), clean or boiled and cooled
- Table salt: ½ teaspoon (about 3 grams)
- White sugar: 2 tablespoons (about 30 grams)
Stir until the salt and sugar dissolve completely. That’s it. The sugar isn’t just for taste. Your intestines absorb sodium and water much more efficiently when glucose is present, so the sugar is doing real physiological work. Removing it or swapping it for honey or a sugar substitute defeats the purpose.
Some versions of this recipe call for exactly 4 cups of water instead of 4¼. Either amount is fine for home use. What matters far more is getting the salt and sugar right.
Making It Taste Better
Plain salt-sugar water isn’t pleasant. The University of Virginia School of Medicine suggests adding a powdered drink mix like Crystal Light to improve the flavor without significantly changing the solution’s balance. A small splash of 100% orange juice or lemon juice also works and adds a bit of potassium, which the basic recipe lacks. Keep any additions small. Dumping in a full cup of juice turns it into a different drink with a sugar concentration that can actually worsen diarrhea.
Why Measurements Matter
The ratio of salt to sugar to water is the entire point of this recipe. Getting it wrong isn’t just ineffective; it can be dangerous, especially for young children. Too much salt creates a concentrated solution that pulls water out of cells instead of rehydrating them, a condition called hypernatremia. The CDC has documented cases where incorrectly mixed rehydration products caused exactly this problem, particularly when powdered formulas were mixed with too little water.
Use actual measuring spoons, not a “pinch” of salt or a rough pour of sugar. A half teaspoon of salt looks like very little, and the instinct to add more is common. Resist it. If anything, slightly under-measuring the salt is safer than over-measuring it.
For infants and very young children, commercial Pedialyte is the safer choice precisely because the electrolyte balance is tightly controlled. A homemade solution is a reasonable stopgap, but the margin for error with a small body is much thinner.
What Homemade ORS Is Missing
Pedialyte contains sodium, potassium, chloride, and zinc in specific concentrations. The homemade version gives you sodium and chloride (from the salt) and glucose (from the sugar), but essentially no potassium or zinc. For a bout of stomach flu in an otherwise healthy older child or adult, that’s usually fine. For prolonged diarrhea lasting several days, the missing potassium becomes more relevant.
A 12-ounce serving of Pedialyte Classic provides about 16% of the daily value for sodium and 6% for potassium. Gatorade, by comparison, delivers similar sodium but only about 1% of the daily value for potassium. So even commercial sports drinks fall short of what Pedialyte offers. Your homemade version lands in a similar spot: decent sodium replacement, minimal potassium.
If you want to add potassium, the simplest option is to use “lite salt” or “half salt” (sold as Morton Lite Salt and similar brands), which blends regular sodium chloride with potassium chloride. Replacing ¼ teaspoon of the regular salt with lite salt adds meaningful potassium. Or just eat a banana or drink a small amount of coconut water alongside the solution.
Storage
Make a fresh batch each day. Sugar water at room temperature is a hospitable environment for bacteria, and homemade solutions contain no preservatives. If you refrigerate it, use it within 24 hours. Discard anything left over and mix a new batch. This takes under two minutes, so there’s no real reason to store large quantities.
When Homemade ORS Isn’t Enough
Oral rehydration of any kind, homemade or commercial, works for mild to moderate dehydration. It has limits. If vomiting is so frequent that you’re losing at least a quarter of what you’re taking in each hour, or if stool losses are outpacing what you can drink, the solution can’t keep up. Signs that dehydration has moved beyond what you can manage at home include no tears when crying, no wet diapers for several hours in an infant, sunken eyes, extreme drowsiness, or confusion. Severe dehydration requires IV fluids.
For most cases of a stomach bug, food poisoning, or mild heat-related dehydration, the homemade recipe works well. Sip it slowly rather than gulping large amounts, which can trigger more vomiting. Small, frequent sips every few minutes are more effective than drinking a full glass at once.