Salt in our diet

Salt in our diet

 

Last few decades there has been an undue noise about eating less salt. There is no study which has proved that consumption of more salt leads to cardiovascular damage and heart attacks or heart failure. The obsession was followed pretty blindly. You can read the whole text book by James Discolantonio "The Salt Fix" and many more such books.

Salt is a basic ion of sodium- potassium -ATPase pump for creating the initial action potential of any cell before the cell sets into its specified function. Normal daily intake of salt should be at least 5 to 6 grams per day.

Lately it has been found that hyponatremia is a very common diagnosis in our emergency wards and also a common cause of death, specialy with the rampant use of diuretics and other drugs.

This is definitely attributed to the overenthusiastic sodium control in our diet. Today we are very clear that we need sufficient salt in our diet which is basically autocontrolled.

 

Adding sufficient salt to diet has been found to reduced sugar craving, reduce hyper activation of brain cells.

Many people suffer from dizziness and weakness due to reduce blood volume. This can be corrected by simply giving salt to the patients. Salt will improve blood volume and reduce a number of complaints like dizziness, giddiness, weakness, exercise intolerance or even erectile dysfunction.

Salt mostly goes as chloride helping the HCL secretion in the stomach required for proper digestion. Salt is shown to improve immune function.

 

Lack of salt leads to extracting sodium from the bone and also causes low magnesium. Low salt increases insulin resistance leading to higher chances of diabetes. We have heard about Korean paradox.... Korean people have low prevalence rate of hypertension and death rate from cardiovascular disease despite of the high sodium intake.

Hyponatremia clinically is as bad as hypoglycemia. Low sodium will lead to low blood volume leading to persistent tachycardia, mental fogging.  

Sodium helps in the digestion of vitamin C. Lack of salt results into low blood circulation to the brain.

The new fashion of ketogenic diet leads to high proteins and low salt. Nonveg food contains much high salt than vegetarian food. Our foods and beverages like tea, coffee, juices, alcohol, and many others may not contain sufficient salt,while in temperate climate we sweat so much losing significant salt from the sweat.

Salt is a good carrier of iodine, which we are also lacking today. A number of studies have shown, if your kidneys are normally functioning exccess amount of salt will not cause any harm to your body.

 At this stage please monitor your salt level as you monitor your sugar level regularly.