In the first part of my series on salt, I discussed the historical significance of salt and its role in the evolution of humanity. Salt has been a highly prized substance for thousands of years across all cultures and continents. Yet over the past few decades, excess salt and sodium intake has been blamed for a variety of serious health conditions plaguing our country, such as heart disease, hypertension, and stroke.
Much debate has centered around determining the level of dietary salt required to maintain optimal health, but over the years the suggested upper limit has continued to shrink. According to the CDC, the average intake of sodium for American adults is about 3,300 mg of sodium a day, which is well above the standard recommendations. (1) The USDA urges Americans to consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day, and the American Heart Association (AHA) has an even more strict guideline of consuming less than 1,500 mg a day for general health and disease prevention. (2, 3)
It has been theorized that dietary salt consumption was extremely low in the Paleolithic diet – approximately 768 mg of sodium daily – and that inland hunter-gatherers added little or no salt to their food on a regular basis. (4) We know these hunter-gatherer diets did not lead to the chronic, Western diseases we see today. The question is, does low salt intake by our distant ancestors mean that adding salt to our food is necessarily harmful? Should we adhere to the AHA sodium guidelines of 1,500 mg or less per day? Or is there a healthy range of salt consumption that can not only support but optimize our health?
Physiological roles of salt in the human body
The Institute of Medicine recommends that healthy adults consume 1500 mg of sodium, or 3.8 grams of salt, to replace the amount lost daily on average through sweat and urination. (5) (Ironically, this recommendation is almost double the amount theoretically consumed by Paleolithic man.) The minimum physiological requirement of sodium simply to sustain life has been estimated to be 500 mg of sodium per day. (6)
Sodium is a vital nutrient. It’s a major component of extracellular fluid, and is essential for maintaining the volume of the plasma to allow adequate tissue perfusion and normal cellular metabolism. (7) Because sodium is used as an extracellular cation, it is typically found in the blood and lymph fluid. The maintenance of extracellular fluid volume is an important physiologic function of the sodium in the body, particularly in regards to cardiovascular health.
Besides helping to maintain fluid balance and cardiovascular function, sodium and chloride ions also play an important role in the nervous system. Changes in the concentrations of these ions allow neurons to send signals to other neurons and cells, allowing for nerve transmission as well as mechanical movement. Chloride ions provided by salt are secreted in the gastric juice as hydrochloric acid (HCL). And HCL is vital to the digestion of food and the destruction of food-borne pathogens in the stomach. (8)
If a true sodium deficiency occurs, mammals experience symptoms of hyponatremia such as brain swelling, coma, congestive heart failure, cardiovascular collapse following acute blood loss, and impaired sympathetic cardiovascular adjustments to stress. (9) Animals in a truly sodium-deficient state will seek out salty food and often consume far more sodium than needed to restore homeostasis. (10) These behavioral changes in response to inadequate salt intake further demonstrate the biological importance of dietary salt.
Like what you’re reading? Get my free newsletter, recipes, eBooks, product recommendations, and more!
Regulation of plasma sodium levels by the kidney
The kidney, when healthy, regulates sodium and water excretion using hemodynamic, neural, and hormonal inputs. This allows it to respond appropriately to a wide range of dietary sodium intake. Aldosterone, a steroid hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, helps regulate the balance of water and electrolytes in the body.
An abrupt increase in dietary salt can cause a redistribution of fluid from the intra- to the extracellular space. But after a few days, the kidney is able to compensate with extra sodium excretion to match the dietary intake. Therefore, healthy people are generally able to adapt to a wide range of salt intakes without a significant change in blood pressure. (11)
If sodium intake drops too low, our metabolism shifts into a sodium-sparing mode. This stimulates the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone hormonal system, which in turn maintains osmotic balance and adequate blood pressure. (12) A significant increase in renin and aldosterone is a symptom of sodium insufficiency, and has been shown to occur as salt intake drops below 1.5 teaspoons per day. (13) Interestingly enough, the recommendation for 2,300 mg of sodium equates to approximately one teaspoon of salt. An intake this low is associated with an even more rapid rise in renin.
Another important dietary determinant of this renin-angiotensin-aldosterone hormonal system is potassium intake. Our biological machinery (which developed in the Paleolithic era) evolved in conjunction with a diet not only very low in sodium, but also very high in potassium-rich plant foods. (14) Unlike our Paleolithic ancestors, Americans are consuming very low amounts of potassium: approximately 3,200 mg per day in men and 2,400 mg per day in women. (15) The adequate intake as defined by the IOM is 4,700 mg per day, and preagricultural humans are estimated to have consumed fully 10,500 mg of potassium each day.(16)
This modern reversal of electrolyte consumption is another important consideration in determining the population-wide increase in rates of hypertension. Dietary potassium has been demonstrated to dose-dependently counter the pathophysiological effects associated with modern dietary excess of salt, including salt-sensitivity, a likely precursor of hypertension.
Evidence about human salt consumption
The human body has adapted complex physiological mechanisms in order to prevent blood pressure fluctuations in response to these variations in sodium intake. Not surprisingly, epidemiological data has revealed an average sodium intake range of 2400 mg to 5175 mg of sodium per day in developed cultures. (17) Certain isolated groups in areas such as Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and rural African communities have been found to live on sodium intakes of as little as 1150 mg per day. However, despite finding generally low blood pressure in these remote communities, the little evidence that exists on these low salt societies suggests shorter life expectancy and higher mortality rates.
An example from the Intersalt Study, which examined the impact of population-wide salt consumption on blood pressure, is the Yanomami Indians of the Brazillian rainforest, who are known for having far lower average blood pressure than that of Western populations. (18, 19) Their lifelong low blood pressure has been attributed to their extremely low consumption of salt, and this has been used as evidence to further support the effort to restrict salt from the American diet.
A major problem that arises from using the Yanomami as an example of the salt-hypertension hypothesis is the wide variety of confounding variables that may also affect their blood pressure. The Intersalt Study researchers admit that:
In addition to low Na+ intake and high K+ intake, other factors that may contribute to the absence of hypertension and lack of blood pressure increase with age among the Yanomami Indians are as follows: their low body mass index and the almost nonexistence of obesity, no alcohol ingestion, low ingestion of saturated fat, high ingestion of fibers, relatively high physical activity, and the several cultural consequences of living in an isolated community without the psychosocial stress of civilization and without a monetary system or dependence on a job. (20)
This data suggest there are many reasons the Yanomami have such low blood pressure. These include high potassium intake, high physical activity, low stress levels, and complete lack of alcohol consumption. Furthermore, although the Yanomami have low blood pressure and nearly nonexistent rates of cardiovascular disease, their overall health outcomes are less than stellar. (21) They are described in ethnographic literature as having small stature, high mortality and a low life expectancy ranging between 29 and 46 years. (22)
The results of the Intersalt Study did not indicate any clear pattern between the level of salt intake and blood pressure in those countries studied. (23) And when average life expectancy is plotted against the countries average salt intake, the trend shows that higher salt consumption is actually correlated with longer life expectancy. While this correlation does not imply causation, it is interesting to note the compatibility of a high salt diet with a long life expectancy.
As we can see, there is an enormous range in the daily dietary sodium intake of various cultures around the world, ranging from quite low (1150 mg) to fairly high (5175 mg). Additionally, we know that the healthy kidney is capable of adjusting to fluctuating levels of sodium in the diet in order to maintain fluid homeostasis. Finally, we know that hunter-gatherer and Paleolithic diets were very low in sodium, and that salt was rarely, if ever, added to food. Therefore, it would seem that limiting salt in the diet to those levels recommended by the AHA and USDA would not have any significant consequences, and would be an ideal dietary choice when mimicking the diet of our ancestors. However, evidence is mounting to the contrary: a low-salt diet may actually lead to serious health consequences and higher overall mortality, particularly in conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
In my next article in this series, I will discuss the contradictory evidence regarding the dietary guidelines for salt reduction, as well as the potential risks of consuming a diet too low in salt.
Better supplementation. Fewer supplements.
Close the nutrient gap to feel and perform your best.
A daily stack of supplements designed to meet your most critical needs.
How they ever came up with the 10g of potassium per day figure for Paleolithic people is beyond me. Do you realize how much food is required to obtain that amount? Unless they consumed a lot of fruit, leafy greens and tubers there’s absolutely no way they would have the time to forage and consume that amount of food. I get between 4000 and 5000g per day but I have to work at it. I include spinach, potatoes, bananas and low-sodium V8 juice (850g of potassium per 1 cup serving) to ensure I meet my daily target. I also drink a cup of beet root juice per day (650g per cup). Without the juices it would be very difficult to meet the 4700g/day target.
Why would you want to drink processed juice when you have access to fresh greens and fruit?
The best way to drink a juice is freshly pressed, just buy yourself a juicer. Nutritional value goes down after it is canned or bottled, unless it is preserved in some way. Whatever they put in these bottles or cans, you can do yourself, and at least be sure of the quality of your drink.
If you still need the extra potassium, just buy a supplement at a health food store, or simply try to better balance your diet.
I don’t know how it is in the USA but here where I live you can’t just simply walk into any pharmacy and buy potassium. I had to ask the pharmacist for it. He talked about the possible problems one can experience if they are not careful with it. I could try throwing some bananas into a blender with some other fruits. Btw, the beet root juice I buy is a quality organic juice.
Btw, I didn’t buy the potassium supplement.
I had mentioned in an earlier post that my caloric intake is 2400/day. Any more than that is excessive. I’m not a young pup anymore. If I had to rely on solid food alone for potassium I’d never come close to the RDA of 4700mg. That’s why I need a low calorie source that yields a high amount of potassium. V8 gives me 850mg/cup.
About 3 years ago my cardiologist told me I had an extra heart beat. He suggested that I use beta blockers. After doing a Google search I found that it can be caused by kidney problems or potassium.
So I went back to the doctor and asked why he did not test my kidneys and potassium level? I am amazed that he gets paid big $$$ and I have to do his job for him. The test indicated nothing wrong. I did not tell him that I had started using 2000 mg of potassium daily. That stopped my symptoms. I can tell when my potassium level is low. Now I take 2-3000 mg per day. Then I found a salt expert. WOW. He is using salt and restructured water and able to reduce blood sugar levels in diabetics 50-60 points in about 1 hour. This is Real Salt that has about 80 minerals in it. Anyway he uses about 1 teaspoon of Real Salt everyday. I remembered when I played high school football in 1964-1965 we were given salt tablets everyday. I have always perspired a lot my whole life. I found that if I use 1/4 teaspoon of Real Salt my perspiration virtually stops. So now I use about 1 teaspoon of Real Salt each day too. I think the salt helps to conserve the water in my body. My blood pressure is 110-130/70-80.
My wife has had back pain for about 10 years from a fall. She has had one back surgery and the doctors say she may need another one. She was in the hospital for 3 days with pain. All 3 days she was given sodium and potassium intravenously. After 3 days her back pain and swelling were completely gone. We have found that she needs more Real Salt to keep her back pain down. We have also used a magnetic device that helps too. So could it be that pain may be associated with to little salt in our diet. I am not referring to tablet salt either.
If this is true how many people could be saved from drug addiction and the damage that drugs do to us.
I have read that Roman Soldiers were paid in salt.
I am not a doctor and this is not medical advise.
If anyone would like more information please send me an e-mail [email protected]
Thank you,
Terry Riney
“restructured water”
What is this I don’t even
The woo is strong in this one.
I’m not sure what Terry’s comment means about restructured water either, but it is true that the water we drink today has added chemicals if it is from tap, and the bottled source water is not much better either, since it is bottled in plastic, and does not guarantee the mineral content which pure source water would normally have. The majority of the water sold in stores has zero mineral content.
As far as salt, using salt without the use of other minerals does not sound like a healthy choice. Unprocessed salt should contain many minerals to help us balance our diet and our health, which might be why sodium and potassium helped his friend. It’s the balance of minerals which matters. Table salt is typically processed to eliminate minerals and has added chemicals to prevent clumping. Natural salt does not look white either. Unfortunately, salt is often used to add weight to packaging. Watch out for the labels on “natural” fruit juice for example, as they contain a lot of salt, and of course added sugar, but that’s another story.
I have severe pains in my knees and hips and recently get cramps in fingers and calves, could this be a lack of salt as I sauna almost every day and lose salt from sweating. DR. no good, need some advice please. steve
Could be Steve my wife got pain relief using salt and potassium. If you would like more info send me an e-mail. [email protected]
Terry
Steve yes you need to take in more salts . I use unrefined salt . It’s called Real Redmond Salt from UT . I take about 3/4 a day and drink 70 oz of water a day and i weigh 120 pounds and 5″2 and 61 years old . And I have been taking a little more salt the last week and filling better yet . So yes you need at least 1 tea spoon a day or more . I also don’t have broken blood vessels in my hands any more . Hope this helps you .
1)The Yanomami are an uncommonly aggressive tribe. They are actually quite crazy. They are always trying to start wars with their neighboring tribe. (Not to mention their close relatives to the north west (the head shirkers) who the government is even afraid to get close too.) 2) These tribes are extremely marginalized. If they are not killing each other the government is killing them. They need to get everything they live on from their environment. 3) Who said that the Paleolithic man had a much higher life expectancy than 30 – 40 years? The Yanomami are a great example of what life was probably like.
Each other. Wish I could give you a ref. but I don’t have it off hand.
No way preagriultural humans consumed >10g potassium a day on average. That would require ungodly amounts of food, not to mention plants.
Wow wow wow now. We used to bake all our meat in or around a fire, commonly right in the ashes. The meat used to be covered in the stuff.
3-4 pounds of meat, red meat has more, will get you to about 4-6 grams of potassium. Depending on what other foods were also eaten, 10 grams is doable, but does seem a bit high.
New Guinea Highlanders still eat 3-4Kg of sweet potatoes every day. This is equivalent to 15,000-20,000mg/day of potassium.
Wild chimpanzees consume about 40,000mg of potassium/day.
I get at least 10g of potassium per day (3Kg of fruit).
Real anthropologists (as opposed to ‘paleo’ bloggers) will tell you that most ‘primitive’ societies ate plant-based diets with very little meat.
“Real anthropologists (as opposed to ‘paleo’ bloggers) will tell you that most ‘primitive’ societies ate plant-based diets with very little meat.”
This is patently false.
Can anyone tell me why I always crave salt??? so much that I add it to crisps?????
elena
elena the more salt and sugar you eat the more you crave. cut it back and that craving will dissipate.
tried cutting back salt on crisps, forget it. substituted malt vinegar and don’t miss the salt
If you are craving salt is because your body is telling you you need it . When you get to much you will fill funny and the salt wont taste so good . then back off . go with your instinct .
“If you are craving salt is because your body is telling you, you need it”
This is an appalling observation and advice for someone who is obviously already addicted to sodium chloride.
The last thing that body needs is more.
Eat or juice celery and get the proper sodium you require if you are low in sodium. Preferably organic.
The most likely scenario is that the industrial poison that you eat and so crave, is playing havoc with your natural sodium levels. Table salt and salt in packaged foods is laced with toxic pollutants.
if you need more proper SALTS eat plant based foods which are designed by nature to supply us with all the SALTS required.
Your advice to someone already addicted to a substance is ill advised.
That is simply wrong. With sugar, yes. With salt, no. If you are craving salt, I would suggest feeding that craving. Should we ignore thirst also? Most signals from the body are doing the right thing. Have a big fat juicy steak loaded with sea salt would be my recommendation (animal meat always was on the menu, whereas a bag of super starchy chips fried in some foul modern rancid oil was not).
What a ridiculous analogy to compare water, an essential for life, with sodium chloride, an non essential for life.
.
Sodium is essential to life.
Why else would it be prized so much throughout human history? Why else would it taste so good to our taste buds?
It’s a perfectly fair comparison. And if you have not read the article, which judging by your comments, might be the case, the relationship between sodium consumption and the various diseases may be weaker than you think.
Clearly you don’t understand much about what was written yourself. That is if you are able to make any sense of the comment that “should we ignore thirst” no of course not, which has no correlation at all to the cravings for compounds like sodium chloride;
Which is non essential to life.
As for saying that sodium tastes so good on our buds and
sodium was prized so much throughout history, sodium doesn’t and wasn’t. It is sodium chloride you are referring to not sodium. Shame you don’t even understand the comments you are responding to.
Non essential? i dare you to stop eating salt in any form to see what would happend.. do you know of something called HYPONATREMIA?
NaCl is antagonistic to life, it draws water out, kills vegetation and shrivels animals.
Our taste buds are sensitive to sodium, the rare nutrient fixated by vegetables; they hate pure salt like death.
My apologies from the onset but I think it is you Samantha who is ill advised. Obviously I’m talking to someone who believe green is the way of life and while I do see its health benefits, your arguments are somewhat flawed.
Firstly, ok we get it, you’re pro eating plants. However let me set you straight on a couple of things. Firstly I don’t believe plants were “designed” for human consumption. I think it’s pretty clear from an evolutionary stand point that not even primates existed before vegetation.
Secondly, if plants were “designed” to be eaten by humans, when then did humans evolve to not process/digest cellulose in all plant matter. True herbivores granted can consume it and obtain energy from it but humans on the whole cannot, hence why it is passed through the body and soon is excreted.
Thirdly, I know you seem to be a green freak, and i’m all for this “gotta save the world” concept but there is no actual scientific study which concludes that organic produce is healthier for us. It has a lot of theory and speculation but on the amounts in which we eat them there is little actual evidence to support it is beneficial.
As Evan points out, one cannot simply argue that salt fits the same with all other addictions. Sodium is an important factor for the body to exist. Too little and people will often find themselves close to passing out, fatigue and in worse cases coma and death. Once the body’s sodium is fully depleted it cannot then “turn” to another source internally. Not like sugar for example. Therefore different substances that we put in our body have different importances. When our bodie crave things, somethings should be overlooked. Others should not.
Again apologies if this seemed offensive or too personal.
“Green is the way of life” Where did you get that from? All colours from plant material are important! Obviously a green basher I take it?
Even mainstream medicine adcovates “green”
What’s this “gotta save the world” stuff?
Disingenuous inferences are pointless.
And if there is something wrong with saving our planet, move to another one.
I would argue some points with you, but I can’t be bothered with any one who actually believes that food laced with metabolic toxins grown in mineral depleted soil, is no different to food grown in mineral rich soil without the need for toxins. Corporate scientists have been fooling the world and obviously you for decades. They are paid to. You’ve bought it.
Remember this: organic food is simply what your grandparents called food. Understand now?
As for apologising for being insulting, don’t bother, it is so patronisingly creepy.
I probably meet daily requirements of sodium intake, but the same doesn’t go with potassium ( probably less then 3000 mg/day ). Could this be the reason of regular bowel dysregulations ( hard to exactly explain what is happenning to me, but I feel some kind of blockage in my bowels and I know that at that moment I can’t eat anything more, unless I want to amplify this feeling and get tired/weak )?
Anyone has any ideas maybe for some really rich potassium foods?
Dark green veggies! They are all very high in potassium (and a lot of other good things!) You can also get potassium from: bananas, various beans, mushrooms, avocados, potatoes and sweet potatoes, tomatoes… a lot of healthy fruits and vegetables!
Without my V8 juice (low sodium version) I probably wouldn’t meet the 4700mg RDA. I take in about 2400 calories per day so I could never meet the RDA target by eating solid food alone. A cup of V8 provides 850mg of potassium. I top up my cup right to the brim which probably brings the potassium total to 1000mg. Potatoes and spinach are two excellent sources but I wonder what the effect of over consuming dark leafy greens would be. That’s a lot of oxalic acid. On the other hand, I don’t hear many health professionals recommend against eating lots of leafy greens.
Not really a diet tip, but a big problem in the west is the idea that bowel movements should be a once-a-day occurrence. Most animals defecate shortly after eating since the new food intake stimulates movement throughout the system. Ignoring the urge trains the body to become constipated, which might be your problem. You could try getting into the habit of going 1/2 hour after each meal. If you sit and nothing happens, then wait until after the next meal and try again.
Also, try squatting with your feet on the toilet seat (yes, this does mean taking your pants off). This changes the angle of the final “delivery” and makes it easier and cleaner to fully empty yourself.
Sounds more like a pooping tip. ;o)
The assumption that our bodies are tuned to paleo diet seems dubious; for example lactose tolerance in cow milk drinking ethnic groups developed in the past 10,000 years.
Or perhaps in a way, lactose tolerance helps illustrate the point- that there are foods eaten in large quantities that a large number of people can not tolerate. Also, just because lactase regulation developed quickly in some populations doesn’t mean every other dietary adaptation could or did. And at the very least it represents a plausible alternate diet for someone to *try* if the mainstream recommendations don’t seem to be working.
Well said!
Hm, I think I don’t seem to get it. If I have the choice between a product with 100% salt, or one with 70% salt + 20% potassium chloride + 10% Magnesiumcitrate, what is the better choice?
Chris,
So for crossfit athletes who sweat a lot during exercise, it would probably increase the need for salt even more….is that correct?
– Brad
Yes.
OK, thanks Chris. I have actually been feeling some odd symptoms since eating strict paleo: cold hands and feet, some moodiness, etc…Made me think of a thyroid issue, but since I cut out salt, that might make sense since salt has an effect on the thyroid.
Its always a work in progress, haha. I am sure you know this first hand.
Thanks!
Brad
You might also be eating too little. When I did strict paleo I got very tired and later tracked my eating and I wasn’t even clearing 1500 calories a day! Steak and fruit simply are not very calorie dense compared to a big greasy cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake (1500 calories in one sitting). I felt better in some ways, but found myself napping a lot and was extremely cold. I have since gone Weston A Price and include lots of dairy fat in my diet.
you can eat more salt if it is included in prepared foods where it is masked with sugar, if your add salt yourself it would be harder to overconsume
Chris, what were the main causes of death in the Yanomami?
@Ed That was the first thing that popped into my head when I read that as well. Did early man seek out sources of salt like we know animals do? If for no other reason than natural salt licks are a great place to hunt? Or are scientists able to estimate sodium averages based on bone composition?
Personally, I feel terrible when I eat a low sodium but it sounds like that may have much more to do with the ratio of electrolytes (e.g. too little potassium) than the absolute amount of any individual element. Maybe I should start tracking how much potassium I am getting from diet + supplements and see how I compare… 🙂
If you go by Biblical historical data, the first humans were located near the great rivers of the Mid-East and if I’m correct many of them had high salt contents. The types of salt obtained near the pyramids are also pure salts. So salt was a large part of their lives and a way of preserving foods, as they didn’t have freezers, glass canning jars, etc. I suspect they got much more salt than we would think, and those higher in trace minerals as well. I think you also hit the nail on the head, perhaps we should be tracking our potassium instead.
Dont forget the sodium channels in the neurons allowing action potentials to take place.
Wow.. If I’m reading this correctly, you just indicated that Paleo man might have had some nutritional behavior that wasn’t optimal. Shocking! 😉 I’m very curious how Paleo man survived electrolyte balance with such a low-sodium intake however. Strenuous activity and walking seems to be in everyone’s mind when they think about Paleolithic life. Certainly sweating was a daily event. I’ve always thought sodium to be the most important electrolyte needed for replacement. Could it actually be potassium? It would make more sense since potassium was more available than sodium at the time. Haven’t researched it… The K to NA ratio was like 20:1!
If the Masai are any indicator, a lot of strenuous activity probably didn’t occur. Consider how few humans there were and how many animals existed in the past. Hundreds or even thousands for every one person probably. Gathering was a far bigger chore than hunting is my guess (depends on the area of course though…but consider that the US plains had perhaps 60 million bison whereas the natives never came anywhere remotely close to such numbers). A nice sized kill could feed an entire village and only a few men would have been on the hunt. I simply don’t envision copious amounts of sweating happening every day, and indeed, some of these populations, like the Masai, may not have survived such conditions.
“Finally, we know that hunter-gatherer and Paleolithic diets were very low in sodium, and that salt was rarely, if ever, added to food”– via time traveling ethnographers? How do we know that? I thought salt was prized and sought after….
True
As a wildlife manager I know that carnivores do not seek out sources of salt like herbivores do. They get what they need from meat. Ancestors eating a paleo diet may have gotten what they needed as well. When humans started to farm many of the grains we labored to produce may have been deficient in salt. Large numbers of people living in cites, eating grains, and laboring in hot fields to plow, plant and weed may have mined salt to replace their deficiency. Workers building the pyramids where given a daily salt ration because they couldn’t work without it.
Barb
Well said.
Can I say, what an odd and inappropriate comment to make on a posting about salt intake? Perhaps your thoughts on skin color and what “real” people look like would be better addressed in a personal email?
It is true that the Yanomami live shorter life expectancies than us, but perhaps that is bc they don’t have as much of a high/easy access to BP-lowering medication, or other overall healthcare. If we had the same healthcare as they do, perhaps our life expectancies would be lower. and maybe not healthcare maybe something else. I guess I think that there could be a lot of confounding variables, and no study can hold all of them constant. so yeah maybe a diet of high salt content may be *compatible* with a longer life, but that’s maybe because of something else that we’re doing that’s making up for it (ex- healthcare) – maybe we could have an even longer lifestyle if we lowered our salt intake more. the high salt intake could still be lowering our life expectancy.
my prof who taught hypertension said that most hypertension is not salt-sensitive; however few people are hurt by the lower salt intake, so that’s the rationale behind the diet. I guess I didn’t dig the literature, but I feel like that makes sense.
Deanna is close in pointing out the flaw in using the high mortality rate of the Yanomami. What the study needs to do is eliminate deaths due to accident/trauma, injury, infection, etc – in order to get to the “expected” mortality rate. If you get a serious infection from a cut out in the jungle, you’re toast. That has nothing to do with salt intake. However, analyzing the mortality rate of those who died “natural” deaths would be much more revealing.
Deanna, you mention that perhaps their short life expectancies, the Yanomami, is because they don’t have as much of a high/easy acces to BP lowering medication. You missed the part in the article that states they have low blood pressure. They don’t need BP lowering medication.
“You missed the part in the article that states they have low blood pressure. They don’t need BP lowering medication.”
Yes, I too was baffled by that statement. lol
Not enough salt (sodium) in diet can also cause constipation, I hear.
I think there’s a research study that solidified the notion that high salt intake is detrimental to health where rats were given massive amounts of salt compared to their body weights and had negative outcomes. That would translate to incredible amounts of salt intake in humans to the point where it might be impossible to eat that much. I’m sure Chris will address this study if I remember it correctly.
I work setting up events. Weddings, anniversarys, birthdays , ect. Not as a caterer, but delivery and set up of rented equipment. Heavey lifting, extreme sweating. I drink water , I drink Gatorade, and eat bananas all day long. I used to get bad cramping in all my body. Didn’t figure my healthy diet would need salt. I was wrong. This went on till I suspected it from a drop of sweat that landed or ran back into my mouth was extremely salty. Figured a lot of salt was leaving my body, so I dissolved some in water and drank it. Locking up of muscles and cramps went away. I still was drinking water and gatorade, with a salt shot here and there. This is probably the exception when osmosis cannot function without balance, and I ran out of on
Interesting how advertising and paid corporate chemists are still able to influence people’s ideas that they have a good diet. By default if you use such a useless substance as a sports drink to re-hydrate, you do not have a healthy diet.
What about all those important electrolytes? Yes, Gatorade does have them, but in unreliable amounts. Gatorade, which actually contains more than twice as much sodium than potassium, is an unlikely candidate for any beneficial electrolyte restoration.
If you want some proper electrolytes in your body, buy a proper juice extractor and use celery, beetroot and carrots for starters.
The reason your body might be cramping is the Gatorade itself, which until recently included the banned substance (in Europe and other countries) Brominated Vegetable Oil. This toxin would have been playing havoc with your electrolytes every day you drank fake health drinks.
Then you must have been sweating an amazing amount, because Gatorade contains 450 mg of sodium per liter, as well as five other electrolytes. Keep drinking it. If a slug of salt water picks you up, lack of Gatorade might kill you. I take it there is no coffee intake? Even a cup a day will have dehydrating effects.
Natural coconut water is on the rise as the best electrolyte drink. Draining from a coconut is the best source. The water has to be pasteurized before they can put it into a plastic bottle and sell it to you, so fresh has way more vitamins. Coconut water was also used as a blood substitute during blood transfusions. ( http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/15/139638930/saved-by-the-coconut-water-parsing-coconut-waters-medical-claims ) Hard to believe right?
Yes, very hard to believe.
Would you really want a coconut IV if you got seriously dehydrated? To get their take on whether they’d give coconut water to patients – either intravenously or by mouth, doctors were called
First, we spoke to Mark Graber, professor of clinical emergency medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Graber says that coconut water really isn’t much like blood plasma, and if a patient came into his ER dehydrated, he wouldn’t reach for it.
“It’s not an optimal IV solution for rehydration because it doesn’t have enough sodium content to stay in the bloodstream,” says Graber. “And it could cause elevated calcium and potassium, which could be dangerous.”