Well, the advice has always sounded reasonable. It has what nutritionists like to call “biological plausibility.” Eat more salt and your body retains water to maintain a stable concentration of sodium in your blood. This is why eating salty food tends to make us thirsty: we drink more; we retain water. The result can be a temporary increase in blood pressure, which will persist until our kidneys eliminate both salt and water.
The scientific question is whether this temporary phenomenon translates to chronic problems....
June 3, 2012
"WHY have we been told that salt is so deadly? "
Asks Gary Taubes.
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29 comments:
In the end, we're still left to figure it out for ourselves.
Write when you've got a firm answer, guys.
It's sort of like asking "how does the Dragon capsule get to the ISS?" The Falcon rocket ignites and lifts off. This carries the capsule to space. There's a certain engineering plausibility to it. From this we can make all sorts of simplistic predictions, such as "it is a good thing for the Dragon capsule to be moving at a high velocity." This would only be true when certain other conditions are specified.
People far too often make simple assumptions about very complex systems. Some of these assumptions are valid and some aren't; though all may sound plausible.
If only the Times would take this same approach with AGW.
Most government health programs aren't about health, but power and control. They like telling people what to do and there are sufficient numbers of people who like being told what to do that it's difficult to put the brakes on the bureaucrats and politicians.
Salt is a basic building block of all life.
Except for a few traces minerals and a small dose of calcium, the human body is made out of a waxey alcohol and salt water.... both of which are convenient boogy men for drug companies and medical Doctors.
They are chloresterol (cell walls) and salty water (blood).
Blood is the organ that gives life to flesh. Flesh death can be defined as the stopping of blood.
We used tokeep our swimming pool by using salt instead of chlorine.
The Dead Sea waters are the cleanest place on earth. Nothing decays in it. Its contents could be said to be eternal.
One of the first things that will happen when you cut sugar and starches out of your diet is water loss. So much so in fact that some people need to supplement with potassium. After a couple of weeks the water loss slows down. After a few months some are able to reduce or eliminate hypertension drugs.
If you've been eating low carb for a while, in my case for over a year, the first thing that happens when you overindulge in carbs is water retention, rings tight and pounds up on the scale. The water is gone by the next day if you go back to limiting carbs again that day.
Gary Taubes books are an excellent way to understand nutritional science, morseo the second book, Why We Get Fat and What We Can Do About It.
I've been able to eliminate one of my BP pills, and reduce the dosage on the other.
Late last year, the kind Red Cross folks wouldn't let me give blood. Hypertension. It runs in the family but the last time I tested actually problematically high was about 10 years ago.
It's both genetic and related to stress. Back then it was finishing grad school, no job, debt, running out of money to pay rent and not at all, then, liking the career my professional training was in.
Last year, it was a noisy apartment complex, a baby on its way, comprehensive exams to study for, and assorted other issues.
Exercise totally helps me get it back under control, but so did cutting out all salty snacks and any additional salt. I started using a salt substitute. Blood pressure is now back down to the higher end of normal.
So, it worked for me. Probably means the best route is to avoid absolutes from any direction, and when there's a particular problem to address it more forceful in particular ways to regulate it, then going back to moderation.
Now a story to support salt: About ten years ago my mom was having immense amount of trouble eating and swallowing (post-polio syndrome). She had a very limited diet and drank sodium free water. On really hot day, she was also coughing a lot and drank a whole lot of water to both cool down and to soothe her throat. Starting getting hallucinations and a really bad case of the shakes, said she felt like she was dying (and she is the least dramatic person you'll meet when it comes to health care).
911 was called. They took her in. She stayed in the hospital for a week on a very water restricted diet. Turns out she had a very serious case of hyponatremia. She was indeed very close to dying.
Because it tastes good, and you can't just have people enjoying themselves and their food all willy-nilly. I'm half-convinced that the people who now set up dietary guidelines and tell everyone else how to eat are reincarnations of Puritan busybodies who sniffed around their neighborhoods for dancing and adultery ~400 years ago.
The world is full of causes for you to believe in. Just pick one or two.
PaddyO, be aware that if you are on a BP med that is potassium sparing, such as Lisinopril and others, using a salt substitute may not be a good idea. Hyperkalemia ( too much potassium) has been known to occur with potassium based salt substitutes.
Salt is bad if you're Eurydice.
People should eat as they see fit, but if disease processes happen due to diet, then they may need to rethink what they've been eating.
Metabolic Syndrome is no joke, what happens as a result of Metabolic Syndrome will FORCE you to see things more clearly.
When it comes to the use of salt, the world's foremost authority is Professor Toru Tanaka.
Is that Mayor Bloomberg who blocks him from using the salt?
Don't worry about salt or fat. Just eliminate added sugar, refined carbohydrates and starches from your diet. Eat less. Walk around a little. Eat some herrings or sardines and avocados frequently. "Cheat" once a week with something good, like pizza or pasta or cassoulet or a pastry. Enjoy your life.
My "cheating" is often a half a baguette with French butter, or a burrito from Chipotle, or I make a bistro meal with my "famous" fries.
The most important thing is not to ever think of yourself as "watching your diet".
Meanwhile the feds are stealthily ordering food companies to eliminate salt.
It's for our own good!
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/mar12/sodium0312.htm
Processed, prepared food is often loaded with salt because salt makes dreadful, shitty food taste better.
If you prepare your own food, you can salt it to your heart's dismay.
Growing up we NEVER had a salt shaker on the table. It's the Italian influence. No butter either..olive oil. My old man would season as he cooked. Always fresh ingredients. And no dessert. Of course Italian restaurants have dessert on the menu. But eating in the home, desserts are not routine. The vast majority of folks would be much better off if that ate like Italians. Greeks also.
Allie, thanks for the good tip.
I'm not on any meds, yet (my brother just started taking some--so it may be in my future). So far diet and exercise are working well for me. If (when?) I do start I'll definitely remember your advice.
Greece, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a cuisine.
Salt is not a villain. People in congestive heart failure should avoid salt, but salt does not cause heart or kidney failure. It doesn't cause high blood pressure except in susceptible populations, chiefly African Americans.
Then why did the boys in wrestling eat salt pills when they needed to drop a pound or two before weigh-in?
Meanwhile the feds are stealthily ordering food companies to eliminate salt.
I have a salt shaker and 5 pounds of Kosher salt in my pantry.
In reality, taking salt out of our food will make it taste worse and people will eat other things in excess to compensate.
Salt is essential to life. Frankly if some few people over salt, over sugar, over carb themselves to death...I don't care. Attrition
Leave the rest of us alone.
Well, the advice has always sounded reasonable.
Which is the basis for accepting all quackery. I just got a check-up and the doc said I'm great, though I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my time thinking about it or working at it - beyond doing good physical work, which I enjoy.
My dinner plate ain't no fucking medicine cabinet. Talk to "eliminate added sugar, refined carbohydrates and starches from your diet" is just received "wisdom" - and for the birds. Vary what you eat. Beyond that, fuck it:
You're going to die, no matter what, so enjoy your freaking food,...
Palladian,
Processed, prepared food is often loaded with salt because salt makes dreadful, shitty food taste better.
I betcha, in the long run, such food snobbery will kill you faster than what you disdain. That "dreadful, shitty food" is all my foster mother ate, and enjoyed, for her 98 years. Taco Bell and KFC were her favorites, and I'd never show up without both to eat with her. Good times.
Considering you "believe" the malarky you do, I don't know how to convincingly say your NewAge attitudes about food are what make the world a less enjoyable place to live - you're inventing/accepting a "problem" to be upset about, while sneering at and avoiding real ones, like people putting nonsense in your head - but that's fine:
I've outlived many a health nut and that, alone, makes ME feel better,...
A much better article in Scientific American from July of last year: Link
Taubes is the man. I must eat a little more salt on the diet I am on, again based on Taubes' research. The diet, a low carbohydrate approach, is the only one that has ever worked for me and it is working amazingly well. So listen to Taubes, he sticks with real science rather than the folklore and dangerous claims of the government and diet industry at large.
Trey
I've heard all this before (was it in GCBC?). I also heard that Bloomberg is one of those people who shovels salt onto stuff, like my parents who salt the chips. I think I am salt sensitive (taste wise, not health wise) because I can't eat stuff that has too much salt. But too each his own. Maybe other people eat it because they need it!
Diet advice from the 'experts' has been so consistently wrong over the years and they still keep pushing it. It's a wonder anyone listens to a word they say.
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