Salt
Normal table salt contains 97.5-99% sodium chloride (common salt) and 2.5% anti-caking agents such as sodium aluminosilicate, sodium ferrocyanide and potassium ferrocyanide. Natural anticaking agents used in more expensive table salt include calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate. Himalayan rock salt has a wonderful pink colour. It contains about 60+ trace minerals including calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper and iron.
Everyone says salt (sodium) is bad for you??
The Japanese have an average salt intake of 10g per day, yet they have the worlds number one slot for longevity. Also the Japanese levels of heart disease is incredibly low. Why can this so? For decades now, the medical and food establishment has pushed the lie that salt raises blood pressure and causes heart attacks. They pushed low salt foods whilst at the same time adding cheap table salt and MSG to a myriad of processed food. Before the advent of refrigerators, salt was used to preserve a wide range of foods and average salt intake was huge - heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure was relatively unheard of.
- If you live in a hot country and sweat a lot, you will be losing salt.
- If you exercise a lot you will be losing salt (up to a teaspoon of salt per hour).
- The negative aspects of having low salt levels far outweigh the alleged negatives of having high levels of salt. If your body has excess salt it will either sweat it out or "pee" it out. Your body is perfectly designed to get rid of excess salt, but it's not designed to function on very low levels.
- Studies have clearly shown that having the correct balance of potassium to sodium is far more important than lowering salt alone. EAT PLENTY OF POTASSIUM!
- When lowering salt in processed foods, many manufacturers added monosodium glutamate (MSG).
- The hormone aldosterone is is essential for sodium conservation in the kidney, salivary glands, sweat glands and colon, if you don't get enough salt your body will produce way more aldosterone which has several bad effects such as a clear increase in blood pressure and increased water retention. Aldesterone will cause more potassium to leave the cells via urine (as it tries to increase sodium released into the blood to compensate for a lower salt intake). Increased levels of aldosterone have been clearly linked to a rise in the bodies insulin levels.
- Plenty of salt = no problems. 11g of salt a day seems to be the optimal amount (if you exercise lots of have low insulin due to a low carb diet, you will need more).
- Salt has a negative feedback system (the desire for salt decreases as you salt levels rise).
- Low salt is very bad for fetuses and babies. Pregnant women have natural salt cravings.
- Low salt increases insulin resistance. When your body is low on salt, LDL cholesterol, insulin and uric acid levels rise sharply.
You are very salty!
Your body is an electro-chemical system. The human body contains many salts. Sodium chloride (common table salt) is the major one, making up around 0.4 per cent of the body's weight at a concentration pretty well equivalent to that in seawater. So a 75kg person would contain around 300g of sodium chloride in the blood plasma - around 60 teaspoons! In fact injecting water it your veins can cause localised thrombosis and even death; that's why doctors and nurses use a saline drip (containing 9g of salt per litre).
Thanks to the demonisation of salt, most people are not getting enough. Especially people who do lots of exercise. Electrolytes are vital.
Low salt levels cause more problems (<3g/day)
- Heart rate will rise if you have low salt. This is a pretty key issue with having low salt. a 4 beat/minute rise has been observed in people who are low in salt.
- Coffee drinker should use more salt. Caffeine increases urinary sodium excretion. 4 cups of coffee are thought to excrete a teaspoon of salt (which is more than the silly recommended daily salt intake level).
- Fatigue will rise if you have low salt.
- Low salt levels can cause dizziness.
- Low salt levels will increase stress levels and cortisol.
- Low salt causes insulin resistance.
- Heart rate variability increase rise if you have low salt.
- Adrenal fatigue becomes an issue if you have low salt.
- Blood volume lowers if you have low salt. Hypovolemia is a state of decreased blood volume; more specifically, decrease in volume of blood plasma.
- Uric acid levels go up with low salt (very bad if you suffer from gout).
- Cholesterol LDL goes up and HDL goes down.
- Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a condition in which a change from lying to standing causes an abnormally large increase in heart rate. Low salt can cause this.
- Elevated BUN (Blood - Urea - Nitrogen) on a blood test is indicative of a salt deficiency.
- Low salt levels can reduce stomach acid production.
- Low salt levels screw up magnesium levels (ATP, adenosine triphosphate, the main source of energy in cells, must be bound to a magnesium ion in order to be biologically active).
- Sodium is a key pathway to add vitamin C into the brain and bone structure.
World Health Organisation maximum recommended salt intake is 5 grams, which is totally inadequate.
Source: Dr. James Dinicolantonio (Author of the salt fix), mercola.com, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
