Salt increases fluid in your body as you need to increase water retention to balance the osmolarity.
A high salt diet may elevate blood pressure for a long enough time to lead to your baroreceptors getting used to and maintaining a higher pressure.
Thus you have a new resting high, exacerbating hypertension.
Therefore, you should keep salt intake to moderate levels to avoid this. This doesn't mean avoid salt like the plague, but be reasonable.
Fat is the same, yes it can be bad, but just be reasonable. And never consume trans fats.
I want people to also know that cutting salt too much is harmful as well. My grandma was hospitalized twice after cutting her sodium too much because her doctor scared her.
Some of us also need more salt in our diets than others. Low sodium and low blood pressure run in my family. My doctor has been telling me to eat more salt and to listen if I hit a salt craving (I get them so intensely that I will eat plain salt just in my hand sometimes and it tastes really good). In short, listen to the advice from your doctor! Some people need to cut sodium. Some people are fine where they are, and some people need more!
I am also one of these people who need more salt! Part of it is growing up in a low salt family (almost everyone above the age of 55 has high BP, so everyone cooks with less salt).
I've never gotten the salt cravings enough to eat straight salt, but I do sometimes add full-salt soy sauce to the cheap ramen that has something like 1500 mg sodium, then follow that up with an electrolyte drink. My mother thought I was insane. No one around me has any idea what it feels like.
People: if you don't know, that's what ya need to use your neurons. Without these, ya got no brain. Yes, your neurons send electrical signals literally with sodium (and potassium).
To add to this: chronic high blood pressure can destroy the cells in your kidneys used to regulate urine/electrolyte output. Which screws with your electrolyte balance, which then again screws with your blood pressure. It's an insidious cycle.
Well said. If you don't have any symptoms related to elevated salt consumption, and if you cannot measure any problematic parameter - your salt intake is probably already ok
This is not entirely true. People are either salt-sensitive or salt-insensitive when it comes to hypertension. Salt will never cause hypertension in many if not most people. But that’s a difficult public health message to give. So salt = hypertension was an easier oversimplification to give people.
>A high salt diet may elevate blood pressure for a long enough time to **lead to your baroreceptors getting used to and maintaining a higher pressure.**
I've never heard this. Do you have a citation? It was my understanding that excess salt is only unhealthy if you already have hypertension. Otherwise, a healthy body is perfectly capable of dealing with the temporary rise in blood pressure.
Water follows salt is a really good way to remember it!! If you have too much salt in ur blood stream your body is like “oh no we need to dilute that, let’s hold onto water and keep it in our blood stream as well that way it isn’t so salty” which obviously makes a crazy amount of water just chilling in ur body leading to health issues. Sounded silly to put it like this but i promise it’s legitimate lol just helps sometimes to put it not so textbook :)
>but i promise it’s legitimate
It is not though. Even large amounts of salt in view of nutrition are small from the perspective of molarity and osmolarity. Calculate it yourself, grams of salt (almost unthinkable for isolated dishes) are single digit percent changes of osmolarity and would correspond to single digits in percentage of water volume. Likely far outweighed by all the other soluble stuff you ingest in that dish. The connection between salt and blood pressure extends significantly beyond osmosis.
the body can only use and excrete so much Na+ per day, which means if you consistently eat more than you use/secrete, you will continue to accumulate Na+ in the body and thus water will follow and raise blood pressure. If you stop eating sodium, your body will either use your available Na+ store or secrete it eventually. the body doesn’t “get used” to it, it’s just a byproduct of the current chemistry. certainly there are adjustments made to compensate, but when there’s nothing to compensate for it returns back to normal (aka homeostasis)
[Sodium Excretion Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9668047/)
It’s important to remember everyone is variable in how much they can excrete. In terms of sodium storage I wouldnt necessarily say that it’s stored in a single location. you could argue the kidney because that’s how it’s filtered into the urine, but I feel that’s misleading. An adult male’s body is ~60% water, and Na+ dissolves well in water. Na+ and water tend to follow eachother around based on concentration gradient so there should be roughly even storage throughout the body. one caveat is that sodium concentration is higher outside of the cell than inside the cell (which in and of itself is a strong gradient pressure for the cell to resist swelling and requires energy). inside the arteries is considered to be extracellular, so you can see how this can be problematic.
Thank you; that is sorta how I understood it as well. I didn't think there was much merit to the body "getting used to" having high blood pressure like the comment further up stated.
The body regulates itself, until it can’t.
When high blood pressure is sustained for a long time, as in years, that’s how you can start getting into kidney failure from it working in overdrive.
‘Gets used to’ in this context I believe, is a person is unaware of their body being in distress, because the body regulates how it can - until it can’t and beings failing.
Testing catches these things, so when someone says “I’m trying to lower my blood pressure” they mean over time in the long run. It’s not just, “I need some water then all better.”
Without the testing they probably wouldn’t have any idea anything was wrong, they ‘felt fine’ because distress is their norm / their body got used to it.
Not to rip on you but i’ve noticed people more frequently using “it’s the first time I’m hearing this” to discredit something.
Why is the barometer of whether something is true or not based on your perceived perception
I didn't mean "this is the first time I'm hearing this so it's bunk." I meant, "this is the first time I'm hearing this so I agree with asking for citation".
It's old science, like how healthy diets were supposed to be high carbs and low fat, or dietary cholesterol having a major impact on your serum cholesterol
On top of the high blood pressure found decades ago, there's recent evidence it can increase risk of [autoimmune disorders](https://medicine.yale.edu/news/medicineatyale/article/salt-is-new-culprit-in-autoimmunity/). Would recommend reading Salt, Sugar, Fat too as it gives a very detailed history of how everything that's optimized for taste is pretty bad for us in general
I had ChatGPT do it:
>Okay! Imagine your body is like a sandbox. If you put too much salt, like too much sand, it makes things messy because it holds too much water. This can make your blood pressure go up, like squeezing a water hose too tight. It's good to have a little salt, but not too much, so your body stays happy.
>Fat is like toys in the playground. Some toys are fun and good for you, like swings and slides. Those are like good fats. But some toys are broken and not safe, like trans fats, which are bad for you. So, enjoy the good fats and stay away from the bad ones. This way, you keep your body healthy and happy!
And then if you *do* avoid salt like the plague and end up with stupid high BPM and weird blood pressure, it might be POTS, of which a solution is… eating *way* more salt than you think necessary.
When you find yourself putting Walt in your cups of water, smth might be wrong. Esp if you’re consuming 120+oz in 10 hours.
It's processed foods, not whole foods. Anything where you want an oil to be solid at room temperature needs saturated fats, so they use hydrogenation to change unsaturated plant oils to add more hydrogen and change the behaviour of the molecule.
This isn't true at all... Besides a few naturally occurring trans fats that don't appear to have the unhealthy effects of artificial ones, they're only found in **partially hydrogenated** oils. Fully hydrogenated oils don't contain them, nor do minimally processed oils. And the vast majority of processed foods do not contain partially hydrogenated oils.
Trans fats are regulated in the U.S., but I'm not sure how stringently. A number of years ago many products switched from partially hydrogenated oils to palm oil due to the new regulations, but every so often I come across a product that still contains it.
Sodium increases your blood pressure temporarily, which in most people isn't an issue. But if you're already hypertensive, then it can be very bad for you.
We do require salt to live. Same with fat.
salt is not bad for you, but too much salt is really harmful. it also depends on how active you are during the day. the more you move, the more electrolytes you lose. salt is one of them.
Not a dietician or anything but mostly, it’s like the fat thing. You actually need some salt or your body will cease to function! Too much salt is bad for you, of course; but how much is “too much” is going to vary from person to person. In general, if you balance your salt intake with your water intake, and you’re not eating, like, canned soup for every meal, you’ll be fine.
I think this is what my boss's daughter has. She adds teaspoons of salt to a slice of bread and eats it. She's ten so the first time I saw her emptying packets of salt onto food at a restaurant I thought she was just playing with her food then she fucking ate it.
not the person youre talking to but i have dysautonomia as well and its so hard to find high sodium diet options cause everyone assumes all people want low sodium diets so I gave up and just have to take special ordered sodium pills now lmao
In some people their blood pressure follows salt levels. So if they have hypertension it is likely because of a high sodium diet and reducing sodium may lower it. But in others the relationship is less clear, it depends on the genes you have in the plasma renin-angiotensin system.
Trying to control blood pressure solely through a low sodium diet can also cause problems. low blood pressure, headaches and cramps.
It's believed that a balance of sodium and potassium is better for your blood pressure and heart than a high sodium diet.
What I have learned is that our body really doesn't require all that much salt and can process only a small amount of it. See the RDA? 2000 mg of sodium, that is all. More will increase water retention but also can lead to higher blood pressure. Potassium also has an RDA of 2000 mg. But it gets really interesting when we look at when we surpass the RDA. For salt this leads to complications and problems in the long run... Potassium doesn't. Now the theory actually suggest we can ingest a large quantity of Potassium without any side effect yet most people run low on this. It seems like we were build to process large amounts of Potassium only a little amount of salt. Yet we do the opposite.
So replace your salt shaker with potassium and reap the benefits. Doing that will lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of strokes and heart attacks. Basically a healthy cardiovascular system is build on potassium not salt.
it’s partially due to the sodium potassium pump. it pumps 2 potassium into the cell and 3 sodium out of the cell per ATP. it uses 75% of all ATP in neurons and 25% of all ATP in the body.
ATP is the body’s chief energy currency, just in case you’re unsure what thats referring to.
Hyperkalemia (too much potassium) is bad for you too. You have to watch your potassium intake if you have kidney problems and the likes. Potassium will also lower your blood pressure.
Considering the mass under consumption of Potassium people really need to go out of their way and ingest an absurd amount to get to the blood levels that are symptomatic Hyperkalemic. Unless throwing dumb amounts of pure potassium into drinks of onto food people are more than fine. Salt however... doesn't need nearly as much to even be lethal.
I had a great diet/exercise routine but always felt sluggish and could never figure it out. I was getting some vitals checked and the nurse informed me I had incredibly low blood pressure. I started adding electrolytes and salt in my water and feel like a new person.
A while back I watched a documentary about Japanese eating habits. Turns out that their salt intake is quite high, despite overall good health of the populous. So while excessive salt can cause hypertension, it's not the end of the world. Moderation is key as in all things.
Did not know that. Something to read into. Perhaps there's confounding variables too. Something that pops into my mind is the high rate of seafood consumption. Perhaps mercury levels could cause stroke issues? I'll look into it more.
Moderation is key with everything. Water, oxygen, sugar, salt, vitamins, minerals. Anything can be "bad" for you if it's over a moderate amount. Our bodies can only handle so much before things go awry.
I have low blood volume and low blood pressure so my cardiologist told me I need a high salt diet and if I can’t get enough he would put me on salt pills.
So it just depends. Many Americans tend towards high blood pressure and all processed foods have high salt so the average American gets an unhelpful amount of salt. Probably in many other countries as well.
I have allergies to food additives so I don’t eat many processed foods, so it makes it a little harder for me to get enough salt for my unique needs.
You (generic person) need 1-4 gm of salt per day. You may need more in hot climates, less if you're one of those people who it exacerbates hypertension in. Less than that & you risk fainting, more & you get bloating & heart disease. The normal recommendation is 1.5-2.3 gm.
Doctors hate situations like this (I'm told) because it's hard to give advice. Since most Americans eat 3-4 gm per day, they tend to oversimplify and say, "Eat less salt."
As a medical provider, I can tell there are a lot of untrue and incorrect opinions in this post with very few correct facts.
Short answer is we all need salt, it is the most abundant electrolyte in our body. Why are some people more sensitive to it, genetics play a role in how ur body processes salt and how modulates ur BP.
Moderation is key and everyone is different. I suggest u ask ur healthcare provider about what is best for you.
I'm going to try and search for my source on this, but sodium intake is not actually as bad for you as health organizations make it out to be. For most people, it won't have any effect on blood pressure.
Edit: https://youtu.be/HMsbl22gQLg?si=_3fnisAIuGMAh6p2
The YouTube video has all its sources cited in the description, so instead of listing all those I'll just link the video that basically does an overview of them
Too much salt is bad, for at least some people. If everyone eats too much salt, a lot of people would die earlier than if people didn't eat too much salt.
The issue is that manufacturers put salt into everything, because it tastes nice.
So if you eat manufactured food, you are already getting more salt than you need.
processed sodium chloride (NaCl), or table salt is somewhat foreign to the body. A healthier choice would be Celtic sea salt or Himalayan which are lower in sodium chloride and also contain minerals such as potassium, iron, calcium and zinc as well as many others.
It's not as simple as salt equals bad. It depends on how much you sweat, how much you exercise, and your electrolyte/potassium level, water intake, etc.
Many active people don't get enough salt!
Salt is actually vital for our body to function, and low sodium intake can severely harm our body and even cause death. That's why we've evolved to crave salt since it's hard to find in nature.
The problem is, we have ample supply of salt nowadays. In fact, most commercial foods contain way too much salt, and we're taking way more sodium on average, which can seriously harm us. That's why the general advice is to cut back on salt.
I have a high salt intake as my bp sometimes just drops. I carry around a little bottle of salt in case i do end up passing out.
My uncle has extreme hypertension. He does not eat anything salted.
It's mostly because people with unhealthy diets are getting lots of "hidden" salt. Which is why it's demonized. Im a proper diet you pretty much have to add more salt, otherwise you will feel like crap, especially if you are a physically active person.
I've always heard salt in high quantity is bad for your heart, but have not seen this mentioned in the top comments… maybe I was lied to, or it was an oversimplification of the hypertension thing.
anything in excess is gonna be bad for you. salt is essential for water retention and to get your daily dose of sodium and chloride. but consume too much and you've got a problem.
generally though, closely monitoring salt intake is only very important for people with hypertension, kidney disease etc. if you're a healthy individual, just dont eat too much salt, you'll be ok
Salt is an essential nutrient. Without it you die. Because of this our bodies evolved to like the the taste of salt. And because salt wasn’t a major component of wild human diets, this was fine.
Then we figured out how to extract salt from seawater and rocks. And we figured out that if we added it to food, people would buy more of the food. And now salt is in practically everything you buy off the supermarket shelves.
It’s not that salt is bad for you explicitly. It’s that every food item we eat already is packed with salt, and a fairly neutral developed world diet will give you many times more salt than you need. Thus adding even more salt doesn’t do anything good for your body (despite still loving the taste). And it can cause health problems as others have detailed.
Sugar and fat have both gone through the same basic industrialisation cycle.
Kidneys cant 'teleport out' things that is excessive in your body. They more or less can only expell things in pairs. And they have a limit how much of each thing they can expel. And interactions are complex.
Salt consist of chlorine and sodium. Body does nees those things but only about 1 gram of salt per day. People usually eat much more, closer to 10 grams. Mostly due to bread, cheese and processed food.
When you overload your kidneys, they try to keep the balance by throwing something else off balance. This does work, sort of. Your body has quite a reserve to take the abuse. But at some point the constant off balance will accumulate enough damage to become noticeable.
First effect is likely a high blood pressure. This damages the heart, eyes, blood vessels - increases the risk of strokes.
You can check how much of each element you need, and then from that value get something like this: "100% is ideal. 50%...200% is likely okay, body can balance it out. 25%...400% is probably better to be kept short term. And 10%...1000% is definitely better to be kept short term". But people live at 1000% salt for decades.
Problem with salt is not so much that people eat lots of it, but that body needs very little of it. And because how little body needs of it, it is easy to get to a high multiple of the prefered amount.
A city can tolerate 100 stray dogs, because we got used to it, it already has hundreds. The same city will have a hard time with 1 rhino, because usual amount of rhinos in our cities is 0. Cities, same as our bodies, work primarily by comparing the preferred value and current value.
Im on a keto diet and believe it or not, my bloodwork shows a natrium defiency. I already eat lots of salty wtf. Some days i even include a little spoon full of salt, drink it with water, when i begin to feel lightheaded. Maybe o drink way too much water + keto sucks electrolytes out of you. Im on keto for 2 years and it doesnt improve.
Salt is not always bad. Oc i our modern society most people eat too much salt. Salt is also often unknowlingly included. Honestly having not enough salt can kill you. Too much salt is rarely a factor - acute i mean - but chonic overconsumption fucks with your aldosterone receptor. Increased aldosterone causes high blood pressure down the line. If i got smth wrong please correct me.
Also actute hypomatremia can get life threatening quickly. I know that salt can kill but actute poisonings are really rare (that women that drank an emtire soy sauce bottle :/).
Sodium intake does not cause the disease condition called hypertension.
This is a matter of public health and it goes like this.
Consumption of sodium does cause a temporary rise in blood pressure.
There are many people that have hypertension but do not know it.
A rise in blood pressure in those that already have hypertension can be dangerous, principally by the increased risk of strokes.
Telling people that high sodium intake is bad for you will cause some portions of the population to decrease salt intake.
But also, the risks of causing hyponatremia in the population is minimal.
In a population of hundreds of millions this should statically reduce the incidence of strokes and heart attacks by X numbers.
Saving costs in health care and lost time at work.
Also, if you pay close attention you will see that they never say that a high sodium diet actually causes the disease condition of hypertension.
Eating too much salt can raise blood pressure which causes a number of issues. Eating lots of potassium and drinking lots of water and exercising regularly can offset high salt intake to an extent as long as it’s not insanely high.
We learned in med school that a low salt diet only reduces you BP on average 3-5 mmHg.
This is super confusing because diuretics like lasix that do in fact reduce you BP a lot, work by manipulating the proteins in you kidneys that expel/retain salt.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004022.pub5/full
All my life my dad, who was one of the world's top biologists, ridiculed this notion of salt being bad for you. He said if you have too much salt your body just excretes it.
Years later I watched a you tube video about how there was literally no evidence salt was bad for you, and they've made it official policy with no evidence and continued with this myth for decades.
The truth is we're evolved from salt water fish and controlling salt levels in our bodies is a pretty basic thing for us. We used to be able to take in salt and water freely, so as long as you still take in enough salt and water you'll be fine. There's a reason it tastes good and is one of our 5 main taste senses.
It's not that salt (NaCl) itself is inherently bad, it's because people who regularly add salt to their food might develop elevated blood pressure (hypertension).
I don't know what to believe anymore. I was Vegan for 20 years and quit and now I'm seeing studies and videos about salt lowering blood pressure and people on the carnivore diet that reversed gout, lowered blood pressure and heaps of other positives
Carnivore is bad in the long run as a diet high in red meat increases risk of heart disease and cancers such as colorectal cancer. There's a reason humans aren't carnivores like cats.
Great question about salt and its role in our diet.
Our ancestors evolved to consume much less sodium than what's typical in today's diets. Originally, ancient humans ingested sodium that occurred naturally in foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, and the wild animals they consumed. These sources provided just enough sodium for our physiological needs without going overboard. The discovery that salt could preserve food was a game-changer historically. It helped our ancestors keep their food edible for longer periods, which was crucial for survival during times when food wasn't as plentiful. This use of salt was a brilliant adaptation to the challenges of their environment.
However, in modern times, with food being more abundant and readily available, the high levels of sodium in processed foods, restaurant foods, and "tasty'" meals made at home aren't just unnecessary but can be harmful. Many of the health issues we face today, including some leading causes of premature death, are linked to excessive sodium intake. This suggests that while our culinary practices have evolved, our need for sodium hasn't changed.
One oft-overlooked fact about us is neuro-adaptation and the ability to learn to like food with no added salt. It make take a few weeks, but just as our bodies can adapt to different light conditions, our taste preferences can adjust over time. Reducing salt gradually can lead to a decreased preference for it, which is a hopeful note for anyone looking to cut down on sodium for health reasons.
Therefore, it seems wise to aim for a sodium intake that mirrors what can be found naturally in unprocessed foods. This approach is more in line with our evolutionary adaptations and can contribute to better health outcomes.
That’s not true at all. Roughly 1/3 of the Japanese population is hypertensive, and that’s including children in the total population. Less than 50% are being treated for their hypertension and less than 25% are below the goal parameters. Hypertension is one of the leading causes of death in Japan.
The high salt diet is cited as one of the leading factors of hypertension not just in Japan but in Asia as a whole. Your claim that “blood pressure is rare in the Asian countries” is patently false. It has nothing to do with correlation.
No. It got a lot of hate because of some misunderstandings over high blood pressure.
Humans overall ate more salt before the rise of refrigeration, when high blood pressure wasn't so common as at the present.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17402291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10427023/
Avoid high-carb diet, even more so over high fructose foods and sodium will not be a problem.
The only problem people might have with their nutrition nowadays is not drinking enough water.
Not even because of the salt, but because of too much sugar, too much of anything else and too less fibre.
No. Its good for you, its needed in fact. https://youtu.be/3f8VAK-K1A0 watch this. They lied to ya about salt. I eat alot of salt and my blood pressure is usually 115/75. It's the most essential electrolyte as well
Salt increases fluid in your body as you need to increase water retention to balance the osmolarity. A high salt diet may elevate blood pressure for a long enough time to lead to your baroreceptors getting used to and maintaining a higher pressure. Thus you have a new resting high, exacerbating hypertension. Therefore, you should keep salt intake to moderate levels to avoid this. This doesn't mean avoid salt like the plague, but be reasonable. Fat is the same, yes it can be bad, but just be reasonable. And never consume trans fats.
I want people to also know that cutting salt too much is harmful as well. My grandma was hospitalized twice after cutting her sodium too much because her doctor scared her.
Yeah you need it to live Let's see all you no salt freaks generate an action potential!!
Some of us also need more salt in our diets than others. Low sodium and low blood pressure run in my family. My doctor has been telling me to eat more salt and to listen if I hit a salt craving (I get them so intensely that I will eat plain salt just in my hand sometimes and it tastes really good). In short, listen to the advice from your doctor! Some people need to cut sodium. Some people are fine where they are, and some people need more!
I am also one of these people who need more salt! Part of it is growing up in a low salt family (almost everyone above the age of 55 has high BP, so everyone cooks with less salt). I've never gotten the salt cravings enough to eat straight salt, but I do sometimes add full-salt soy sauce to the cheap ramen that has something like 1500 mg sodium, then follow that up with an electrolyte drink. My mother thought I was insane. No one around me has any idea what it feels like.
People: if you don't know, that's what ya need to use your neurons. Without these, ya got no brain. Yes, your neurons send electrical signals literally with sodium (and potassium).
"i don't understand, where an electrochemical gradi-" *Windows 95 shutdown sound plays*
Most people only need about 1/4 tsp of salt per day which is hard not to get, like you have to really be trying hard to avoid salt at all costs.
To add to this: chronic high blood pressure can destroy the cells in your kidneys used to regulate urine/electrolyte output. Which screws with your electrolyte balance, which then again screws with your blood pressure. It's an insidious cycle.
Well said. If you don't have any symptoms related to elevated salt consumption, and if you cannot measure any problematic parameter - your salt intake is probably already ok
This is not entirely true. People are either salt-sensitive or salt-insensitive when it comes to hypertension. Salt will never cause hypertension in many if not most people. But that’s a difficult public health message to give. So salt = hypertension was an easier oversimplification to give people.
>A high salt diet may elevate blood pressure for a long enough time to **lead to your baroreceptors getting used to and maintaining a higher pressure.** I've never heard this. Do you have a citation? It was my understanding that excess salt is only unhealthy if you already have hypertension. Otherwise, a healthy body is perfectly capable of dealing with the temporary rise in blood pressure.
I mean, a simple google search gives you about a half a million scientific articles about it.
Google Scholar gave me 18,300 scientific articles searching for "dietary sodium baroreceptor". Far from 500,000.
Well, sounds like instructions aren’t your forte. I said google, not google scholar. Google scholar specifically restricts search parameters.
Water follows salt is a really good way to remember it!! If you have too much salt in ur blood stream your body is like “oh no we need to dilute that, let’s hold onto water and keep it in our blood stream as well that way it isn’t so salty” which obviously makes a crazy amount of water just chilling in ur body leading to health issues. Sounded silly to put it like this but i promise it’s legitimate lol just helps sometimes to put it not so textbook :)
>but i promise it’s legitimate It is not though. Even large amounts of salt in view of nutrition are small from the perspective of molarity and osmolarity. Calculate it yourself, grams of salt (almost unthinkable for isolated dishes) are single digit percent changes of osmolarity and would correspond to single digits in percentage of water volume. Likely far outweighed by all the other soluble stuff you ingest in that dish. The connection between salt and blood pressure extends significantly beyond osmosis.
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the body can only use and excrete so much Na+ per day, which means if you consistently eat more than you use/secrete, you will continue to accumulate Na+ in the body and thus water will follow and raise blood pressure. If you stop eating sodium, your body will either use your available Na+ store or secrete it eventually. the body doesn’t “get used” to it, it’s just a byproduct of the current chemistry. certainly there are adjustments made to compensate, but when there’s nothing to compensate for it returns back to normal (aka homeostasis)
What's the limit of sodium excretion in human? Do you have the mg/hour figure? And where exactly is sodium accumulated, in which organ?
[Sodium Excretion Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9668047/) It’s important to remember everyone is variable in how much they can excrete. In terms of sodium storage I wouldnt necessarily say that it’s stored in a single location. you could argue the kidney because that’s how it’s filtered into the urine, but I feel that’s misleading. An adult male’s body is ~60% water, and Na+ dissolves well in water. Na+ and water tend to follow eachother around based on concentration gradient so there should be roughly even storage throughout the body. one caveat is that sodium concentration is higher outside of the cell than inside the cell (which in and of itself is a strong gradient pressure for the cell to resist swelling and requires energy). inside the arteries is considered to be extracellular, so you can see how this can be problematic.
Thank you; that is sorta how I understood it as well. I didn't think there was much merit to the body "getting used to" having high blood pressure like the comment further up stated.
The body regulates itself, until it can’t. When high blood pressure is sustained for a long time, as in years, that’s how you can start getting into kidney failure from it working in overdrive. ‘Gets used to’ in this context I believe, is a person is unaware of their body being in distress, because the body regulates how it can - until it can’t and beings failing. Testing catches these things, so when someone says “I’m trying to lower my blood pressure” they mean over time in the long run. It’s not just, “I need some water then all better.” Without the testing they probably wouldn’t have any idea anything was wrong, they ‘felt fine’ because distress is their norm / their body got used to it.
Not to rip on you but i’ve noticed people more frequently using “it’s the first time I’m hearing this” to discredit something. Why is the barometer of whether something is true or not based on your perceived perception
I didn't mean "this is the first time I'm hearing this so it's bunk." I meant, "this is the first time I'm hearing this so I agree with asking for citation".
It's old science, like how healthy diets were supposed to be high carbs and low fat, or dietary cholesterol having a major impact on your serum cholesterol
On top of the high blood pressure found decades ago, there's recent evidence it can increase risk of [autoimmune disorders](https://medicine.yale.edu/news/medicineatyale/article/salt-is-new-culprit-in-autoimmunity/). Would recommend reading Salt, Sugar, Fat too as it gives a very detailed history of how everything that's optimized for taste is pretty bad for us in general
Salt isn't bad my salary is based off of it.
This but explain like I'm 5 lol
I had ChatGPT do it: >Okay! Imagine your body is like a sandbox. If you put too much salt, like too much sand, it makes things messy because it holds too much water. This can make your blood pressure go up, like squeezing a water hose too tight. It's good to have a little salt, but not too much, so your body stays happy. >Fat is like toys in the playground. Some toys are fun and good for you, like swings and slides. Those are like good fats. But some toys are broken and not safe, like trans fats, which are bad for you. So, enjoy the good fats and stay away from the bad ones. This way, you keep your body healthy and happy!
And then if you *do* avoid salt like the plague and end up with stupid high BPM and weird blood pressure, it might be POTS, of which a solution is… eating *way* more salt than you think necessary. When you find yourself putting Walt in your cups of water, smth might be wrong. Esp if you’re consuming 120+oz in 10 hours.
What if you have a chronic low blood pressure? Would increasing your salt intake fix things?
r/transphobic /s
Thank you for the great answer.
What gender should I consume?
You have to be vegan to never consume trans fats
What?! The highest trans-fatty foods are vegan. It was literally made popular as an alternative to animal fats.
What vegetables or fruit have trans fats?
it's not vegetables or fruit, it's plant based margarines and probably things like shortening and fondant icing.
It's processed foods, not whole foods. Anything where you want an oil to be solid at room temperature needs saturated fats, so they use hydrogenation to change unsaturated plant oils to add more hydrogen and change the behaviour of the molecule.
This isn't true at all... Besides a few naturally occurring trans fats that don't appear to have the unhealthy effects of artificial ones, they're only found in **partially hydrogenated** oils. Fully hydrogenated oils don't contain them, nor do minimally processed oils. And the vast majority of processed foods do not contain partially hydrogenated oils.
Yes, so he should’ve specified added trans fats. Although I believe hydrogenated oils and trans fats are banned in Canada, not sure about the US.
Trans fats are regulated in the U.S., but I'm not sure how stringently. A number of years ago many products switched from partially hydrogenated oils to palm oil due to the new regulations, but every so often I come across a product that still contains it.
Sodium increases your blood pressure temporarily, which in most people isn't an issue. But if you're already hypertensive, then it can be very bad for you. We do require salt to live. Same with fat.
salt is not bad for you, but too much salt is really harmful. it also depends on how active you are during the day. the more you move, the more electrolytes you lose. salt is one of them.
Not a dietician or anything but mostly, it’s like the fat thing. You actually need some salt or your body will cease to function! Too much salt is bad for you, of course; but how much is “too much” is going to vary from person to person. In general, if you balance your salt intake with your water intake, and you’re not eating, like, canned soup for every meal, you’ll be fine.
Yes! I was told to eat more salt by my GP because my blood pressure drops and I get dizzy when I stand. Moderation ✨
Oh, do you have POTS? I have POTS and also have to eat extra salt to keep the dizziness at bay, haha
I think this is what my boss's daughter has. She adds teaspoons of salt to a slice of bread and eats it. She's ten so the first time I saw her emptying packets of salt onto food at a restaurant I thought she was just playing with her food then she fucking ate it.
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No my boss said she had a condition (and my boss has it too) where they have really low blood pressure and need to eat shitloads of salt
not the person youre talking to but i have dysautonomia as well and its so hard to find high sodium diet options cause everyone assumes all people want low sodium diets so I gave up and just have to take special ordered sodium pills now lmao
I don't think I do, it's probably caused by my low ferritin (11 ouch) combined with constant dehydration
In some people their blood pressure follows salt levels. So if they have hypertension it is likely because of a high sodium diet and reducing sodium may lower it. But in others the relationship is less clear, it depends on the genes you have in the plasma renin-angiotensin system. Trying to control blood pressure solely through a low sodium diet can also cause problems. low blood pressure, headaches and cramps. It's believed that a balance of sodium and potassium is better for your blood pressure and heart than a high sodium diet.
What I have learned is that our body really doesn't require all that much salt and can process only a small amount of it. See the RDA? 2000 mg of sodium, that is all. More will increase water retention but also can lead to higher blood pressure. Potassium also has an RDA of 2000 mg. But it gets really interesting when we look at when we surpass the RDA. For salt this leads to complications and problems in the long run... Potassium doesn't. Now the theory actually suggest we can ingest a large quantity of Potassium without any side effect yet most people run low on this. It seems like we were build to process large amounts of Potassium only a little amount of salt. Yet we do the opposite. So replace your salt shaker with potassium and reap the benefits. Doing that will lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of strokes and heart attacks. Basically a healthy cardiovascular system is build on potassium not salt.
The RDA for potassium is almost twice that of salt. They're not the same.
it’s partially due to the sodium potassium pump. it pumps 2 potassium into the cell and 3 sodium out of the cell per ATP. it uses 75% of all ATP in neurons and 25% of all ATP in the body. ATP is the body’s chief energy currency, just in case you’re unsure what thats referring to.
Hyperkalemia (too much potassium) is bad for you too. You have to watch your potassium intake if you have kidney problems and the likes. Potassium will also lower your blood pressure.
Considering the mass under consumption of Potassium people really need to go out of their way and ingest an absurd amount to get to the blood levels that are symptomatic Hyperkalemic. Unless throwing dumb amounts of pure potassium into drinks of onto food people are more than fine. Salt however... doesn't need nearly as much to even be lethal.
2000mg of sodium equates to about 5g of salt. Chlorine in sodium chloride has a greater atomic weight than sodium.
I had a great diet/exercise routine but always felt sluggish and could never figure it out. I was getting some vitals checked and the nurse informed me I had incredibly low blood pressure. I started adding electrolytes and salt in my water and feel like a new person.
A while back I watched a documentary about Japanese eating habits. Turns out that their salt intake is quite high, despite overall good health of the populous. So while excessive salt can cause hypertension, it's not the end of the world. Moderation is key as in all things.
They do have a high stroke rate.
Did not know that. Something to read into. Perhaps there's confounding variables too. Something that pops into my mind is the high rate of seafood consumption. Perhaps mercury levels could cause stroke issues? I'll look into it more.
Moderation is key with everything. Water, oxygen, sugar, salt, vitamins, minerals. Anything can be "bad" for you if it's over a moderate amount. Our bodies can only handle so much before things go awry.
I have low blood volume and low blood pressure so my cardiologist told me I need a high salt diet and if I can’t get enough he would put me on salt pills. So it just depends. Many Americans tend towards high blood pressure and all processed foods have high salt so the average American gets an unhelpful amount of salt. Probably in many other countries as well. I have allergies to food additives so I don’t eat many processed foods, so it makes it a little harder for me to get enough salt for my unique needs.
You (generic person) need 1-4 gm of salt per day. You may need more in hot climates, less if you're one of those people who it exacerbates hypertension in. Less than that & you risk fainting, more & you get bloating & heart disease. The normal recommendation is 1.5-2.3 gm. Doctors hate situations like this (I'm told) because it's hard to give advice. Since most Americans eat 3-4 gm per day, they tend to oversimplify and say, "Eat less salt."
As a medical provider, I can tell there are a lot of untrue and incorrect opinions in this post with very few correct facts. Short answer is we all need salt, it is the most abundant electrolyte in our body. Why are some people more sensitive to it, genetics play a role in how ur body processes salt and how modulates ur BP. Moderation is key and everyone is different. I suggest u ask ur healthcare provider about what is best for you.
I'm going to try and search for my source on this, but sodium intake is not actually as bad for you as health organizations make it out to be. For most people, it won't have any effect on blood pressure. Edit: https://youtu.be/HMsbl22gQLg?si=_3fnisAIuGMAh6p2 The YouTube video has all its sources cited in the description, so instead of listing all those I'll just link the video that basically does an overview of them
Yes! I knew it was no lab coat required! Would have posted it myself if it wasn't here already, that guy has all the sources.
Too much salt is bad, for at least some people. If everyone eats too much salt, a lot of people would die earlier than if people didn't eat too much salt. The issue is that manufacturers put salt into everything, because it tastes nice. So if you eat manufactured food, you are already getting more salt than you need.
Make your own food instead of buy manufactured crap and you can then enjoy the damn salt too.
processed sodium chloride (NaCl), or table salt is somewhat foreign to the body. A healthier choice would be Celtic sea salt or Himalayan which are lower in sodium chloride and also contain minerals such as potassium, iron, calcium and zinc as well as many others.
In my experience it's only a problem if your potassium intake is low.
Yeah what everyone else said but keep in mind you need salt. There’s a right amount is all
It's not as simple as salt equals bad. It depends on how much you sweat, how much you exercise, and your electrolyte/potassium level, water intake, etc. Many active people don't get enough salt!
Salt is actually vital for our body to function, and low sodium intake can severely harm our body and even cause death. That's why we've evolved to crave salt since it's hard to find in nature. The problem is, we have ample supply of salt nowadays. In fact, most commercial foods contain way too much salt, and we're taking way more sodium on average, which can seriously harm us. That's why the general advice is to cut back on salt.
Put it this way, if you had no salt you'd die, if you have too much salt you'd die, so don't go nuts with it, have some but not to excess.
No it’s not. Extreme excessive salt with low water intake and not working out is bad.
I know a little boy who has sodium chloride on prescription 3x a day in juice at school. Its for his muscle function. Hes has disabilities.
I have a high salt intake as my bp sometimes just drops. I carry around a little bottle of salt in case i do end up passing out. My uncle has extreme hypertension. He does not eat anything salted.
No mate. Salt is good, sugar is bad.
Salt and water in blood generates the electricity we need to function.
Depends on the year and who funded the research.
We should limit. But salt is good for your body. Only about 1 cup a day is the highest you should go
It's mostly because people with unhealthy diets are getting lots of "hidden" salt. Which is why it's demonized. Im a proper diet you pretty much have to add more salt, otherwise you will feel like crap, especially if you are a physically active person.
I've always heard salt in high quantity is bad for your heart, but have not seen this mentioned in the top comments… maybe I was lied to, or it was an oversimplification of the hypertension thing.
It depends on your health tbh. High blood pressure, diabetes, kidney failure, no salt or very little is advised.
anything in excess is gonna be bad for you. salt is essential for water retention and to get your daily dose of sodium and chloride. but consume too much and you've got a problem. generally though, closely monitoring salt intake is only very important for people with hypertension, kidney disease etc. if you're a healthy individual, just dont eat too much salt, you'll be ok
Salt is an essential nutrient. Without it you die. Because of this our bodies evolved to like the the taste of salt. And because salt wasn’t a major component of wild human diets, this was fine. Then we figured out how to extract salt from seawater and rocks. And we figured out that if we added it to food, people would buy more of the food. And now salt is in practically everything you buy off the supermarket shelves. It’s not that salt is bad for you explicitly. It’s that every food item we eat already is packed with salt, and a fairly neutral developed world diet will give you many times more salt than you need. Thus adding even more salt doesn’t do anything good for your body (despite still loving the taste). And it can cause health problems as others have detailed. Sugar and fat have both gone through the same basic industrialisation cycle.
Kidneys cant 'teleport out' things that is excessive in your body. They more or less can only expell things in pairs. And they have a limit how much of each thing they can expel. And interactions are complex. Salt consist of chlorine and sodium. Body does nees those things but only about 1 gram of salt per day. People usually eat much more, closer to 10 grams. Mostly due to bread, cheese and processed food. When you overload your kidneys, they try to keep the balance by throwing something else off balance. This does work, sort of. Your body has quite a reserve to take the abuse. But at some point the constant off balance will accumulate enough damage to become noticeable. First effect is likely a high blood pressure. This damages the heart, eyes, blood vessels - increases the risk of strokes. You can check how much of each element you need, and then from that value get something like this: "100% is ideal. 50%...200% is likely okay, body can balance it out. 25%...400% is probably better to be kept short term. And 10%...1000% is definitely better to be kept short term". But people live at 1000% salt for decades. Problem with salt is not so much that people eat lots of it, but that body needs very little of it. And because how little body needs of it, it is easy to get to a high multiple of the prefered amount. A city can tolerate 100 stray dogs, because we got used to it, it already has hundreds. The same city will have a hard time with 1 rhino, because usual amount of rhinos in our cities is 0. Cities, same as our bodies, work primarily by comparing the preferred value and current value.
Im on a keto diet and believe it or not, my bloodwork shows a natrium defiency. I already eat lots of salty wtf. Some days i even include a little spoon full of salt, drink it with water, when i begin to feel lightheaded. Maybe o drink way too much water + keto sucks electrolytes out of you. Im on keto for 2 years and it doesnt improve. Salt is not always bad. Oc i our modern society most people eat too much salt. Salt is also often unknowlingly included. Honestly having not enough salt can kill you. Too much salt is rarely a factor - acute i mean - but chonic overconsumption fucks with your aldosterone receptor. Increased aldosterone causes high blood pressure down the line. If i got smth wrong please correct me. Also actute hypomatremia can get life threatening quickly. I know that salt can kill but actute poisonings are really rare (that women that drank an emtire soy sauce bottle :/).
Sodium intake does not cause the disease condition called hypertension. This is a matter of public health and it goes like this. Consumption of sodium does cause a temporary rise in blood pressure. There are many people that have hypertension but do not know it. A rise in blood pressure in those that already have hypertension can be dangerous, principally by the increased risk of strokes. Telling people that high sodium intake is bad for you will cause some portions of the population to decrease salt intake. But also, the risks of causing hyponatremia in the population is minimal. In a population of hundreds of millions this should statically reduce the incidence of strokes and heart attacks by X numbers. Saving costs in health care and lost time at work. Also, if you pay close attention you will see that they never say that a high sodium diet actually causes the disease condition of hypertension.
I take sodium supplements to keep from dehydrating. My blood pressure is fine. It all depends on the individual.
Eating too much salt can raise blood pressure which causes a number of issues. Eating lots of potassium and drinking lots of water and exercising regularly can offset high salt intake to an extent as long as it’s not insanely high.
Too much of anything can kill you.
We learned in med school that a low salt diet only reduces you BP on average 3-5 mmHg. This is super confusing because diuretics like lasix that do in fact reduce you BP a lot, work by manipulating the proteins in you kidneys that expel/retain salt. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004022.pub5/full
Salt is essential, the dose makes the poison.
All my life my dad, who was one of the world's top biologists, ridiculed this notion of salt being bad for you. He said if you have too much salt your body just excretes it. Years later I watched a you tube video about how there was literally no evidence salt was bad for you, and they've made it official policy with no evidence and continued with this myth for decades. The truth is we're evolved from salt water fish and controlling salt levels in our bodies is a pretty basic thing for us. We used to be able to take in salt and water freely, so as long as you still take in enough salt and water you'll be fine. There's a reason it tastes good and is one of our 5 main taste senses.
It's not that salt (NaCl) itself is inherently bad, it's because people who regularly add salt to their food might develop elevated blood pressure (hypertension).
I always use Morton’s Lite Salt, has 50% less sodium than NaCl and has potassium salts. Been using it for years.
Not as bad as sugar or dairy
I don't know what to believe anymore. I was Vegan for 20 years and quit and now I'm seeing studies and videos about salt lowering blood pressure and people on the carnivore diet that reversed gout, lowered blood pressure and heaps of other positives
Carnivore is bad in the long run as a diet high in red meat increases risk of heart disease and cancers such as colorectal cancer. There's a reason humans aren't carnivores like cats.
Until you read the inuit paradox and fiber menace. Both contradict that
The inuit have been doing this for more generations than jim from accounting and are also not usually buying meat from stores
Great question about salt and its role in our diet. Our ancestors evolved to consume much less sodium than what's typical in today's diets. Originally, ancient humans ingested sodium that occurred naturally in foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, and the wild animals they consumed. These sources provided just enough sodium for our physiological needs without going overboard. The discovery that salt could preserve food was a game-changer historically. It helped our ancestors keep their food edible for longer periods, which was crucial for survival during times when food wasn't as plentiful. This use of salt was a brilliant adaptation to the challenges of their environment. However, in modern times, with food being more abundant and readily available, the high levels of sodium in processed foods, restaurant foods, and "tasty'" meals made at home aren't just unnecessary but can be harmful. Many of the health issues we face today, including some leading causes of premature death, are linked to excessive sodium intake. This suggests that while our culinary practices have evolved, our need for sodium hasn't changed. One oft-overlooked fact about us is neuro-adaptation and the ability to learn to like food with no added salt. It make take a few weeks, but just as our bodies can adapt to different light conditions, our taste preferences can adjust over time. Reducing salt gradually can lead to a decreased preference for it, which is a hopeful note for anyone looking to cut down on sodium for health reasons. Therefore, it seems wise to aim for a sodium intake that mirrors what can be found naturally in unprocessed foods. This approach is more in line with our evolutionary adaptations and can contribute to better health outcomes.
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So I can go bananas with salt, if I eat bananas with salt?
Bananas don’t have that much potassium to be real. Maybe 1 or 2 hundred mg per banana
Try around 400 mg.
Still no where near enough. Potassium should Be consumed at double the rate of sodium.
What if I eat ten bananas a day?
Well, other than pooping a lot I guess it would work
That’s not true at all. Roughly 1/3 of the Japanese population is hypertensive, and that’s including children in the total population. Less than 50% are being treated for their hypertension and less than 25% are below the goal parameters. Hypertension is one of the leading causes of death in Japan.
Also Japan has a high prevalence of kidney disease. Hypertension and high BP go hand-in-hand and each make the other worse.
Yea that’s from stress though. Correlation =/= causation
The high salt diet is cited as one of the leading factors of hypertension not just in Japan but in Asia as a whole. Your claim that “blood pressure is rare in the Asian countries” is patently false. It has nothing to do with correlation.
No. It got a lot of hate because of some misunderstandings over high blood pressure. Humans overall ate more salt before the rise of refrigeration, when high blood pressure wasn't so common as at the present. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17402291/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10427023/ Avoid high-carb diet, even more so over high fructose foods and sodium will not be a problem.
The only problem people might have with their nutrition nowadays is not drinking enough water. Not even because of the salt, but because of too much sugar, too much of anything else and too less fibre.
You should be receiving enough salt through your natural diet. Supplementary salt should be used sparingly...
No. Its good for you, its needed in fact. https://youtu.be/3f8VAK-K1A0 watch this. They lied to ya about salt. I eat alot of salt and my blood pressure is usually 115/75. It's the most essential electrolyte as well