Channel: Christopher Walker

Category: Education

Tags: salt restrictioncardiovascular diseasecalciumsodium deficiencymagnesium deficiency causessodium deficiency dr bergmagnesium deficiencysalt christopher walkerchristopher walker thermo dietmagnesium deficiency symptomsmagnesium deficiency and anxietymagnesiumhigh blood pressure dietlow salt dietsodiumsalt mythsodium bonessodium pregnancyhigh blood pressurelow salt think againsodium in watersodium deficiency symptomssodium chloride

Description: Learn more about UMZU's mission to make the world healthy again at umzu.com Misinformation has spread the lie that salt is bad for people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Salt is key to life. When most people hear the word ‘salt’ they immediately imagine table salt, or sodium chloride. Sodium is not the only salt-forming mineral, however. Electrolytes such as magnesium, potassium, and calcium also form salts. Deficiencies in the electrolytes can have devastating effects on the human body. Limiting salt in your diet increases the risk of hyponatremia, mineral deficiencies, hypertension, poor neuronal functioning, fat storage, heart attack, and poor sleep. Most of us don’t need to eat a low-salt diet; in fact, we need MORE salt in our diets to improve our health. Stop ignoring your salt cravings while you opt for “low sodium” tasteless foods and bland meals - allow your salt cravings to guide you toward a state of perfect health. Your body is speaking to you - it is time to start listening. It’s time to, Think Again. Salt restriction, however, is extremely damaging to the prenatal development of the fetus in the womb, and it became well-known by more discerning scientists and physicians that these recommendations, especially to pregnant women, would lead to widespread damage to millions of newborn children. By reducing salt intake during pregnancy, the developing fetus is not receiving adequate oxygen, due to the lowered blood volume, since sodium is essential for maintaining blood volume. The low sodium in the body also prevents enough blood from circulating through the kidneys, which causes the kidneys to release more renin, a signaling enzyme, which is a compensation mechanism the body uses to increase blood pressure in order circulate blood more quickly. This lack of oxygen to the growing fetus, and the resulting reduction in CO2 production, not surprisingly, can lead to developmental disorders in the child and postpartum hormonal imbalances in the mother, which commonly symptomize in the forms of hair loss, depression, and skin issues. The opposition to mass prescription of modern diuretics and low salt diets was mounting, however diuretic drug sales continued to prove massively profitable for the drug companies, and the low salt diet myth quickly became the conventional cliche, parroted in the popular media and throughout doctors’ offices around the country. While it’s easy to find an array of studies demonstrating small drops in blood pressure with lowered salt intake, these results do not necessarily indicate any sort of causative role of salt consumption in high blood pressure. The results seen are typically so minimal that it becomes obvious to a scrupulous eye that there is a more intricate story at play. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services funded an 11 trial salt restriction study executed by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2004, that demonstrated an average of just a 1.1 mmHg drop in systolic blood pressure and 0.6 mmHg drop in diastolic blood pressure with salt restriction in healthy humans. This is basically going from 120/80 to 118.9/79.4, results that can easily be achieved in any number of ways. However, the headlines in popular media outlets chimed out the bells that “Salt causes high blood pressure!” further perpetuating the myth in the public’s mind and within the medical community, while continuing to ignore highly contradictory results from other wide scale population studies, such as the Intersalt Study of 1988, a data-driven collection of results from 52 international research centers, that demonstrated that the highest salt-consuming individuals (up to 14g of salt per day) had lower blood pressure levels on average than people who consumed half of that amount. The results of the 2004 government-funded Cochrane study, and ensuing media attention, become even more tenuous when you understand that the Cochrane Collaboration had conducted a study just one year prior, in 2003, reviewing 57 salt restriction trials, and concluded that “there is little evidence for long-term benefit from reducing salt intake.” A large study done in 1995 on 3000 people over 4 years led by Dr. Michael Alderman, and published in the journal Hypertension, demonstrated that individuals who ate less salt indeed actually had a higher prevalence of increased mortality rates than those who ate more salt. They also found that by adding more salt to their diet, the subjects had a 36% decrease in heart-related mortality events. Three years later, in 1998, the Alderman team published another set of findings on a 22 year long study they’d been conducting with over 11,000 people that showed a clear inverse relationship between salt intake and mortality.