If you wanted a clear example of how desperately some scientists (and I’m using the term loosely) will cling to a beloved theory, you couldn’t do much better this:
A recent meta-analysis of salt-restriction studies that was published in both The Cochrane Review and the American Journal of Hypertension found that cutting back on salt is pretty much worthless. So naturally, the anti-salt hysterics had to jump in and torture the data to find some meaningless associations and try to save their reputations and careers.
You can read an abstract of the meta-analysis here, but for a plain-English version, I’d suggest reading an article published in the online version of Scientific American titled It’s Time to End the War on Salt. Here are some quotes:
This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.
I’d say labeling the evidence linking salt to heart disease as tenuous is being generous. Non-existent would be the more accurate term, unless you engage in some major cherry-picking. In real science, no consistency means no validity, and the associations between salt and heart disease or mortality aren’t even close to being consistent. If anything, the associations are all over the place.
So what ignited the fear of salt in the first place?
Worries escalated in the 1970s when Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Lewis Dahl claimed that he had “unequivocal” evidence that salt causes hypertension: he induced high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. (Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day.)
Let’s see … some goofy scientist feeds rats the equivalent of 147 times as much salt as the average human consumes in a day, and the rats developed high blood pressure. Well, my goodness, let’s toss those salt shakers right now!
Last time I checked, most health authorities were still recommending we consume eight glasses of water per day. I wonder if it ever occurred to Dr. Dahl to force-feed rats the equivalent of 1,176 glasses of water per day and see how that affected their health. If he ran that experiment, I’m pretty sure he’d end up declaring water a health hazard. What kind of hopeless idiots could possibly be swayed by such a nonsense study?
In 1977 the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl’s work.
Ah yes, those idiots. The same idiots who helped kick off the anti-fat hysteria by seeking “consensus” instead of truth. George McGovern strikes again.
Scientific tools have become much more precise since then, but the correlation between salt intake and poor health has remained tenuous. Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day.
Well, that’s just an observational study, so perhaps we’re not accounting for some confounding variables. Surely if we restricted salt in a controlled clinical setting, we’d see some real health benefits, eh?
In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79.
You may recall that some troll who claimed to hold a PhD in science once insisted in several comments that salt is indeed bad for us, and to prove his point he sent me a link to a clinical study in which researchers produced a “significant” reduction blood pressure by drastically restricting salt. As I explained in my Science For Smart People speech, “significant” simply means that statistically, the results weren’t likely to due to chance. The “significant” reduction in blood pressure reported in the study that the troll sent me amounted to around three points. In other words, meaningless … all the salt-restricted dieters got out of the deal was some really bland food.
Studies that have explored the direct relationship between salt and heart disease have not fared much better. Among them, a 2006 American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. It found that the more sodium people ate, the less likely they were to die from heart disease.
And yet various government agencies around the world are telling people to restrict salt … to prevent heart disease, of course.
For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not.
Bingo. No consistency, no scientific validity. Given an honest analysis of the science, we’d have to conclude that restricting salt is pointless from a public-health standpoint, except as advice given to the few people who are hyper-sensitive to salt.
Now … let’s suppose you’re the chairman of Consensus Action on Salt and Health – kind of a British version of CSPI, only focused specifically on attacking salt in the food supply. Now let’s further suppose stamping out salt in Britain isn’t a mission quite large enough for your ego, so you’re also the chairman of World Action on Salt and Health. (In my opinion, if you belong to more than one organization with Action on in its name, you’re probably a menace.) Finally, let’s suppose both of the organizations you chair depend on donations from people you’ve managed to scare witless about the terrors of salt.
Are you going let a pesky little thing like scientific evidence change your mind? Of course not. You’re going to get ahold of that data and (as Dr. Mike Eades would say) torture it until it says what you want to hear. Which is exactly what Dr. Graham McGregor (who I like to refer to as Action-Action Jackson since he’s the chair of two Action organizations) did after the Cochrane Collaboration issued its report.
In a response published in the Lancet, Dr. MacGregor and Dr. Feng He revealed how they concocted a brilliant method of getting around inconvenient facts like these:
As previously reported by heartwire, Taylor et al’s meta-analysis included seven randomized controlled trials of dietary salt reduction in normotensives (three studies), hypertensives (two studies), a mixed population (one study), and one trial of patients with heart failure.
At follow-up, relative risks for all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality for both normotensives and hypertensives were only mildly to moderately reduced, and not to a statistically significant degree. In congestive heart failure patients, salt restriction actually significantly increased all-cause death.
Those are the inconvenient facts. Now here’s how MacGregor and Feng He tried to fung foo all over them:
He and MacGregor, in their Comment, reanalyze the same data but combined the normotensives and hypertensives. They also omitted the heart-failure trial—a group of “very ill” patients taking large doses of diuretics in whom salt restrictions would seldom be recommended, MacGregor observed. In the combined patient analysis, they find a now statistically significant 20% reduction in cardiovascular events and a nonsignificant reduction in all-cause mortality.
Lovely. If clinical trials don’t tell you what you want to hear, mix and match the data, toss out some data if need be, and presto! – you’ve got yourself a “significant” result … well, if you’re talking about cardiovascular events, that is. If you’re talking about actual deaths, the results aren’t “significant.”
In layman’s terms, that means “the results are utterly @#$%ing worthless.” But not to Action-Action Jackson MacGregor:
“We’ve done this reanalysis, and we’ve got the evidence. In fact, all the evidence about salt is overwhelming. . . . It all shows that salt is a major factor bringing up our blood pressure.”
All the evidence, really? Like the clinical trials in which salt restriction changed blood pressure by a point or two at most? Like the big, expensive clinical study the anti-salt troll insisted I read, in which adopting a diet with almost no salt at all caused blood pressure to drop by a whopping three points? (And that trial was conducted by researchers who wanted salt restriction to work. They even tried to talk their way around the results in their conclusions.)
The only overwhelming evidence I see here is that some scientists are freakin’ liars.
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I eat a lot of salt – maybe not a 1,000 times as much as the average consumer, but a lot. After repeated failures to maintain a low carb diet, I have noticed one thing ( I am on 80mg micardis): 2 or 3 days into low carbing and my BP sits at around 115/75 (with meds); another 2 or 3 days of eating the SAD diet and my numbers are up to 145/95. Salt intake, exercise and everything else remain the same. All I know is that my repeated failures have not been entirely in vain. They have proven to my satisfaction that it is the carbs that are contributing to my high BP, not the salt. Now, if I could just stick with what is obviously good for me:-)
I’ve always put a lot of salt on my food, and I’ve always been on the low side for blood pressure. Restricting salt for me would probably do more harm than good, despite what Mayor Bloomberg and the other goofs think.
A little while ago, I mentioned my grandpa had had a heart attack and really needed this advice. Well, the other day my dad was having chest pains and went to the hospital (ironically the same day I went in for blacking out and hitting my head, and the day before my little sister went in to get stitches for a bad cut. I think the fates may have a grudge against us). Anyways, he was fine and left the next day but again the lady was telling him to cut saturated fat and salt. Fortunately, unlike his dad, he had watched my mom lose more than 20 pounds on low carb, and decided he would do the same. He watched Fathead that night and loved it. Maybe after my grandpa watches my mom and dad both become healthier and slimmer, he’ll finally come to his senses.
Let’s hope.
Oh, and I may note that my blood pressure and blood sugar were both perfect when they tested it after I blacked out, despite my love of salt and chocolate buttercreams (my own recipe. It’s just butter whipped with cocoa powder and Splenda)
I absolutely agree and have experienced my bp falling 20 points or more due to low carb. I usually run in the normal range of 120/70, but on low carb, I get funny, almost concerned looks from the doctor when it now routinely reads 96/65. And for some reason, I just don’t think they’d believe me if I told them I eat an entire pack of bacon every week, if not more, and fry everything in bacon grease and salted butter. The horror! LOL.
If most doctors knew how we achieve high HDL and low blood pressure, they’d be horrified.
Here’s how I think this came to be: some hypertensives have primary aldosteronism (I do) which causes SECONDARY hypertension. For us, sodium consumption increases aldosterone, decreases potassium, and raises our blood pressure. So, one tactic to gain control is sodium restriction.
That being said – in med school, future doctors are taught that PA only occurs in a tiny fraction of hypertensives, and are led to believe that it’s very rare. So, people don’t get screened for it – it’s a simple blood test (aldosterone-renin ratio) and not very expensive, but since it’s a “rare” disease it’s overlooked. My diagnosis, for example, took 6 doctors and 10 years.
What I can’t understand, though, is why the restrict-salt dogma has been beaten into us for so many years, but the one real reason to do so – a medical condition that actually responds positively to salt restriction – is rarely addressed.
I’m still wondering myself why some public-health officials are such anti-salt fanatics. I’m wondering what, if anything, they get out of it.
I agree with Tom. We might never see a collapse, or it will take a really long time. We can continue to chip away at it. The best we can do is do the research, learn all we can, and apply that to our diet and lifestyle choices. This means, in many instances, leaving our doctors behind in the dust, but life is too short to wait for them. It is a sad state of affairs when we have to protect ourselves from those who are supposed to be “helping” us. I often wonder how many people, if any, in centuries past, were able to use their thinking brains and resist the dogma of the day (bloodletting, mercury, removal of ribs, etc..) Also, will future generations look back and be horrified by our current modern practices?
I believe someday all this anti-fat, anti-salt nonsense will be laughed at by people who will wonder how we could’ve all been so ignorant.
Glad to see you wrote about this. Dr. Eades last two blog posts talked about starting [or restarting] a low carb diet. He advocated INCREASING your salt intake, especially if you are a low carb’r, for a variety of logical physiological reasons.
I usually read your blog while I eat lunch. I almost spit my carrots out with laughter when I read ‘Action-Action Jackson’….
Keep it up…and congrats on the land purchase [very jealous]
Thank you. I’m looking forward to becoming a small farmer.
Hmm.. I have low blood pressure and upped my salt intake so it would raise it and it had no effect. The only thing that went up was my water intake.. I was really thirsty!
Salt intake just doesn’t affect blood pressure very much for most of us.
Lowering salt never did make sense to me. Salt has been a preservative for hundreds (thousands?) of years, and I’m pretty sure Hypertension was not a problem for people consuming salt preserved meats. Good thing, too, I love salt!! Thanks for posting this!!
On another note, ever since I saw Fat Head (on Netflix), something has been bothering me. It’s the part about adding up the calories that Spurlock ate on Super Size Me. And yesterday, it hit me (I’m sure you already thought of this, but I gotta get it out of my system, sorry), a reasonable explanation may have been what he was drinking, not necessarily what he was eating: All he had to do was refill his large coke (310 cal, 86 g carbs per refill) at lunch and dinner (easy to do when you eating salty food) and drink a large (32 oz) milkshake (1160 cal, 203 g carbs!!!!!) and voila! you have guaranteed super weight gain – an EXTRA 1780 calories and 375 g carbs per day, on top of everything else he ate and drank, and super easy calories to add, too, I must say. This is how you rig an “experiment”, no super sizing necessary! No wonder the guy felt like he was dying, he was probably consuming 700-900 g carbs per day. He wasn’t “addicted” to the food, he was creating huge spikes and drops in his blood sugar and whacking out his hormones and metabolism. I wish he’d give up the darn food logs already.
Other people have made that suggestion as well … some of them in a weak attempt to defend Spurlock by explaining that he still only ate three meals per day but drank a lot of sugar. In that case, all he did is prove that slugging down sodas and milkshakes is a bad idea. I think most of us already knew that.
I wonder how he got the rat to eat that much salt in the first place.
A human body restricts it’s own salt intake, as I assume all animals do as well.
When you taste something and go “ewwww, it’s too salty”, that is your body telling you that you do not need any more salt. And vice versa, when salt tastes absolutely delicious, your body can obviously take on some more salt.
(assuming your body isn’t fooled by all the excessive carb and processed food intake)
Cows have salt blocks, they lick it for awhile and then that’s enough. They don’t just stand around licking the block until it’s completely gone.
The same is true of water and food(except sugars, and even then it’s your body trying to store up for winter). When it tastes good, you need it. When it starts to taste gross, that’s enough. I tried the 8 glasses a day about 6 years ago, and just could not do it. After about 4 glasses, the water tasted absolutely awful. I was literally forcing myself to drink the water and wanted to vomit. But, it’s good for me, the government says so.
Then, and sorry I can’t remember where I found it, I read up on how the water myth came to be. They recommend 1ml per calorie. Average caloric intake is 2000 per day, so 2000 ml of water should be consumed, or 8 cups. However, they forgot about moisture being consumed within your food, didn’t account for physical activity or anything else. And I wonder about the validity of that study anyways.
So, in summary, your body tells you what you need.
Mother Nature isn’t stupid.
Sodium is crucially important for heart health. Ed & Patricia Kane PhD. on their Bodybio website explain that sodium is an essential mineral to ensure strong & powerful heart muscle contractions, & that NFL teams that use acetic acid pickle juice to drive sodium out of the blood to prevent cramping actually weakens the athlete’s muscle contractions, absolutely the wrong strategy to use when trying to achieve optimum physical performance, and especially for heart muscle performance.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell: “Pickle juice is basically acetic acid (vinegar) and water with a bit of salt (sodium chloride) to give it some flavor. All muscle cells, like the heart, use sodium (Na) to close or contract the cell, and potassium (K) to relax the cell. Calcium (Ca) starts the closing process with Na doing the actual closing; magnesium (Mg) starts the reverse side of the pump—relaxing. Potassium (K) is the key element responsible for managing the relaxing process within the cell. In order for the human body to function properly under physical stress, all 4 of the mineral electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) are absolutely required. If they are not replaced, you wind up with a cramp, or arrhythmia. Both are alleviated with K and Mg if you can catch it in time. Prolonged effects of improper replenishment can result in serious injury or death. If a cramp hits your heart, you’re history, but in a different muscle you’ll hurt, but recover. If you’re swimming in a race half way home, it could be a disaster. Whenever it happens, it’s the guys in charge of the relaxing half of the cycle, Mg and K, that are missing.” http://goo.gl/wiXx0
It’s well known that most people are deficient in magnesium, which is the signaling molecule for potassium to enter the cell which releases the muscle contraction, so muscle cramps are a sign of magnesium & potassium deficiency & an overall electrolyte imbalance which can be restored with proper nutrition and/or supplementation.
Tom, oh yes, I know! His blood glucose has gone down wonderfully. I’m thrilled 🙂 I just wish that his blood pressure would follow. He’s on two meds for blood pressure and it would sure be nice to get him off at least one of them. But even if he never does, getting his blood sugar down is a really good reason for keeping on eating this way. Well, that, plus the year before this we ate low fat, high carb, almost vegan and it was not only boring and drove both of us nuts, but his blood glucose was high and his blood pressure was a few points higher than it is now. Funny how that works.
So happy to not be eating brown rice cooked without fat anymore 😛
I haven’t seen any research on this subject, but I wonder if elevated blood pressure in the absence of other poor markers, such as elevated glucose, is even a problem.
Tom, you’re wondering what the anti-salt fanatics “get out of it.” My theory is that they get to be holier than thou prigs who demonstrate their moral superiority by denying themselves the pleasures of life, such as salting their food. Of course, they’ve probably got naughty magazines stashed under their mattresses, but as long as they’ve done their part to keep the hedonistic masses from indulging their baser natures, they’ve earned a little R&R. But maybe I’m just being cynical. I tend to do that. Must be all that salted bacon I eat.
Could just be that once they’ve built careers on a particular theory, they can’t let it go. Or it’s magazines under the bed.
Another interesting point in salt reduction is the inadvertent reduction in iodine. Various articles and research that I’ve read (none to quote specifically, but Google or http://www.lmgtfy.com usually works) along with bio 101, says that we need iodine because it is an important nutrient for hormone function, specifically the thyroids (if I’m not mistaken). Regular table salt is iodized for this reason, although I’m not sure how available iodine is naturally in meat and vegetables…. Anyways, I have also read articles concerning people that have reduced their salt intake so low that it actually causes them problems for this reason… Just food for thought, literally… (bad pun I know :P)
And there’s no reason to cut back on salt for most of us anyway.
“If most doctors knew how we achieve high HDL and low blood pressure, they’d be horrified.”
Maybe we should start telling them. If they hear it from enough of their patients, maybe some of them will start to question the conventional wisdom.
As long as we keep it to ourselves because it’s just not worth having the argument one more time, nothing will change.
I think that’s why some doctors are coming around.
“Chareva is going to kill a few chickens eventually, but based on her experience gutting a fish, I hope she does it when I’ve got a camera running.”
An informative how-to:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:iMDmtwzvRFwJ:www.backyardpoultry.com/articles/chicken_for_food.pdf+best+way+to+kill+a+chicken&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiTRP2wqau0YEoIL-jpqOifYB8ASnN4nWm5nq-gVQ_wIo4NT1gI9Ov3VLWGzXoKEPo1ABNDqDACIWt4qJswSI7bU6lZk5VGzQjEpuu7pCnOyF66f64-q3D-fiZsD5DIJqnOzKSw&sig=AHIEtbQhkEMV62-W3rHkB76dRMO24Uzpjg
The link doesn’t seem to work for me.
Chareva is going to kill a few chickens eventually, but based on her experience gutting a fish, I hope she does it when I’ve got a camera running.
Wow, so you’re going to tape your wife attempting to butcher animals? What a lovely, healthy relationship you have! Why don’t then put the video on DVD and show it to the kids! The lack of grains is starting to get to your sick, twisted head.
How’d your butt smell today, all backed up from all that meat and cheese? Protein farts are the worst.
I fully expect my kids to watch so they know where food comes from. If you ever have kids, I’d suggest you do the same. Take them down to some river poisoned by fertilizer runoff from the farms in the area, point to the dead fish, then say, “See kids? This is what’s required for Daddy to eat veggie-burgers and feel self-righteous about not doing the killing himself.”
I’m also beginning to wonder if it’s the standard, de-mineralized salt that causes problems for some people. Sodium is essential for our bodies, after all. Dr. Eades mentioned Celtic and Himalayan salts in his article on starting a low carb diet, and this blog post from the Real Salt company brings up the point that standard salt may cause a mineral imbalance in some people-
http://blog.realsalt.com/2010/08/is-salt-really-bad-for-me
Obviously, they have a bias (and pretty much admit it in the introduction), but I think their point fits the science and a Paleo/Primal attitude toward diet.
We switched to sea salt, and I found I prefer the taste anyway.
I’m basically in agreement with you on this one, but I have a hard time figuring out where the industrial money trail is for the promotion of salt restriction. (The academic money trail is clear enough.) Seems like a hassle for the food industry, rather than a profit opportunity. Sometimes people just lock on to a plausible bad idea and then it acquires a momentum of its own. Perhaps that is a tougher situation to rectify than one that is self-serving for the people and institutions involved.
That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I want to follow the money, but I don’t see the trail.
Your analysis is better than this one, sadly on a site that claims to be “science based”: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/salt-more-confirmation-bias-for-your-preferred-narrative/ and I told them so. It really is time to end the war on salt, they just don’t give up.
That site looks like yet another drug-company front, although I can’t find out who they are with a quick search.
Some relevant links. The second one is actually referenced in the first.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/
“Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality; if you are equally good at explaining any outcome you have zero knowledge. The strength of a model is not what it can explain, but what it can’t, for only prohibitions constrain anticipation. If you don’t notice when your model makes the evidence unlikely, you might as well have no model, and also you might as well have no evidence; no brain and no eyes.”
http://lesswrong.com/lw/i4/belief_in_belief/
“If someone believes in their belief in the dragon, and also believes in the dragon, the problem is much less severe. They will be willing to stick their neck out on experimental predictions, and perhaps even agree to give up the belief if the experimental prediction is wrong – although belief in belief can still interfere with this, if the belief itself is not absolutely confident. When someone makes up excuses in advance, it would seem to require that belief, and belief in belief, have become unsynchronized.”
Good quotes.
A little while ago, I mentioned my grandpa had had a heart attack and really needed this advice. Well, the other day my dad was having chest pains and went to the hospital (ironically the same day I went in for blacking out and hitting my head, and the day before my little sister went in to get stitches for a bad cut. I think the fates may have a grudge against us). Anyways, he was fine and left the next day but again the lady was telling him to cut saturated fat and salt. Fortunately, unlike his dad, he had watched my mom lose more than 20 pounds on low carb, and decided he would do the same. He watched Fathead that night and loved it. Maybe after my grandpa watches my mom and dad both become healthier and slimmer, he’ll finally come to his senses.
Let’s hope.
Oh, and I may note that my blood pressure and blood sugar were both perfect when they tested it after I blacked out, despite my love of salt and chocolate buttercreams (my own recipe. It’s just butter whipped with cocoa powder and Splenda)
I am a nurse and can tell you low salt diets can be VERY dangerous. I have worked with more than one doctor that wanted to prescribe salt pills to patients but were informed they are no longer made. Many people restrict their sodium then exercise (like society tells them to) and end up hospitalized. When sodium levels drop below a certain point patients experience dizzy spells and muscle cramps if itdrops lower they can experience hallucinations and brain swelling and becomes a medical emergency. I am very happy someone is finally pointing out the obvious! I think many people would also be surprised to know doctors give patients the advice they are TOLD to give. Between government regulations and lawyers, doctors are not allowed to tell you what they REALLY think!
Glad I didn’t become a doctor. I’d probably lose my medical license.
Hmm.. I have low blood pressure and upped my salt intake so it would raise it and it had no effect. The only thing that went up was my water intake.. I was really thirsty!
Salt intake just doesn’t affect blood pressure very much for most of us.
Sodium is crucially important for heart health. Ed & Patricia Kane PhD. on their Bodybio website explain that sodium is an essential mineral to ensure strong & powerful heart muscle contractions, & that NFL teams that use acetic acid pickle juice to drive sodium out of the blood to prevent cramping actually weakens the athlete’s muscle contractions, absolutely the wrong strategy to use when trying to achieve optimum physical performance, and especially for heart muscle performance.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell: “Pickle juice is basically acetic acid (vinegar) and water with a bit of salt (sodium chloride) to give it some flavor. All muscle cells, like the heart, use sodium (Na) to close or contract the cell, and potassium (K) to relax the cell. Calcium (Ca) starts the closing process with Na doing the actual closing; magnesium (Mg) starts the reverse side of the pump—relaxing. Potassium (K) is the key element responsible for managing the relaxing process within the cell. In order for the human body to function properly under physical stress, all 4 of the mineral electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) are absolutely required. If they are not replaced, you wind up with a cramp, or arrhythmia. Both are alleviated with K and Mg if you can catch it in time. Prolonged effects of improper replenishment can result in serious injury or death. If a cramp hits your heart, you’re history, but in a different muscle you’ll hurt, but recover. If you’re swimming in a race half way home, it could be a disaster. Whenever it happens, it’s the guys in charge of the relaxing half of the cycle, Mg and K, that are missing.” http://goo.gl/wiXx0
It’s well known that most people are deficient in magnesium, which is the signaling molecule for potassium to enter the cell which releases the muscle contraction, so muscle cramps are a sign of magnesium & potassium deficiency & an overall electrolyte imbalance which can be restored with proper nutrition and/or supplementation.
Another interesting point in salt reduction is the inadvertent reduction in iodine. Various articles and research that I’ve read (none to quote specifically, but Google or http://www.lmgtfy.com usually works) along with bio 101, says that we need iodine because it is an important nutrient for hormone function, specifically the thyroids (if I’m not mistaken). Regular table salt is iodized for this reason, although I’m not sure how available iodine is naturally in meat and vegetables…. Anyways, I have also read articles concerning people that have reduced their salt intake so low that it actually causes them problems for this reason… Just food for thought, literally… (bad pun I know :P)
And there’s no reason to cut back on salt for most of us anyway.
Chareva is going to kill a few chickens eventually, but based on her experience gutting a fish, I hope she does it when I’ve got a camera running.
Wow, so you’re going to tape your wife attempting to butcher animals? What a lovely, healthy relationship you have! Why don’t then put the video on DVD and show it to the kids! The lack of grains is starting to get to your sick, twisted head.
How’d your butt smell today, all backed up from all that meat and cheese? Protein farts are the worst.
I fully expect my kids to watch so they know where food comes from. If you ever have kids, I’d suggest you do the same. Take them down to some river poisoned by fertilizer runoff from the farms in the area, point to the dead fish, then say, “See kids? This is what’s required for Daddy to eat veggie-burgers and feel self-righteous about not doing the killing himself.”
I’m also beginning to wonder if it’s the standard, de-mineralized salt that causes problems for some people. Sodium is essential for our bodies, after all. Dr. Eades mentioned Celtic and Himalayan salts in his article on starting a low carb diet, and this blog post from the Real Salt company brings up the point that standard salt may cause a mineral imbalance in some people-
http://blog.realsalt.com/2010/08/is-salt-really-bad-for-me
Obviously, they have a bias (and pretty much admit it in the introduction), but I think their point fits the science and a Paleo/Primal attitude toward diet.
We switched to sea salt, and I found I prefer the taste anyway.
Alternative hypothesis to follow the money on salt:
Once Ancel Key’s a low fat diet is a heart healthy diet became dogma, the only bad thing you could safely say about carbs (if you didn’t want your career ruined) is that they caused cavities. That’s what got the salt and fiber research going. Admitting that carbs have much more of an impact on hypertension than salt is the loss of a brick in the wall of conventional wisdom as is admitting that fiber does nothing for any of the diseases of civilization.
I think there may not be any direct money at stake here, just a portion of a world view being protected to protect the whole.
Good a theory as any.
I am a nurse and can tell you low salt diets can be VERY dangerous. I have worked with more than one doctor that wanted to prescribe salt pills to patients but were informed they are no longer made. Many people restrict their sodium then exercise (like society tells them to) and end up hospitalized. When sodium levels drop below a certain point patients experience dizzy spells and muscle cramps if itdrops lower they can experience hallucinations and brain swelling and becomes a medical emergency. I am very happy someone is finally pointing out the obvious! I think many people would also be surprised to know doctors give patients the advice they are TOLD to give. Between government regulations and lawyers, doctors are not allowed to tell you what they REALLY think!
Glad I didn’t become a doctor. I’d probably lose my medical license.
Not entirely relevant to the salt discussion at hand here, but this is the latest update from one of my favorite webcomics. And yes, I did take the opportunity to try to pimp out your movie on Hulu. (Unless they think I’m a spambot and didn’t let me through moderation…..)
http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/eating-your-way-to-100/comment-page-1/#comment-20398
I appreciate the pimping. I don’t even feel slutty.
Alternative hypothesis to follow the money on salt:
Once Ancel Key’s a low fat diet is a heart healthy diet became dogma, the only bad thing you could safely say about carbs (if you didn’t want your career ruined) is that they caused cavities. That’s what got the salt and fiber research going. Admitting that carbs have much more of an impact on hypertension than salt is the loss of a brick in the wall of conventional wisdom as is admitting that fiber does nothing for any of the diseases of civilization.
I think there may not be any direct money at stake here, just a portion of a world view being protected to protect the whole.
Good a theory as any.
Not entirely relevant to the salt discussion at hand here, but this is the latest update from one of my favorite webcomics. And yes, I did take the opportunity to try to pimp out your movie on Hulu. (Unless they think I’m a spambot and didn’t let me through moderation…..)
http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/eating-your-way-to-100/comment-page-1/#comment-20398
I appreciate the pimping. I don’t even feel slutty.
A good friend of mine is sodium-sensitive, and he actually gets headaches if he consumes more than small amounts at a given time (and after dealing with this problem for over 10 years, he has it pegged to the sodium). He is definitely the exception, however, because I’ve never personally met anyone else that reacts to salt the way he does.
Name any food, and someone somewhere has bad reactions to it.
Regarding following the salt trail:
If a low-fat diet leads to a higher consumption of carbs, would a low-salt diet lead to a higher consumption of some other flavor enhancer, such as sugar?
From the CASH website: “There is also increasing evidence of a link between our current high salt intake and stomach cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, kidney stones and kidney disease.”
Wait, what? How does a high intake of salt lead to obesity? Oh, wait there’s more on their site: “Most of the salt children and adults eat is hidden in processed and convenience foods” AND “The latest results show that bread is the largest individual contributor of salt diet at 18%.” So it must be the salt in the foods rather than the sugar in processed foods causing obesity (kind of like the notoriously high fat foods: donuts, cake, milkshakes, etc.)
(from http://www.diet.com/g/lowsodium-diet) “According to a study done by the Mayo Clinic, the average American gets only 6% of their total salt intake from salt that is added at the table. Only 5% comes from salt that is added during cooking, and natural sources in food makeup only another 11 percent. The remaining 77% comes from processed or prepared foods.”
hmm… Who’d have thought that cooking non-processed foods at home would lead to a lower consumption of salt?
What about eating reduced sodium foods? A quick check of regular vs. reduced sodium versions of chicken soup, peanut butter, and teriyaki sauce reveals that the reduced sodium version has more carbs from sugars. It doesn’t seem to be a large amount though, 1g vs. 2g for chicken soup, 1.4g vs. 2.3g for teriyaki sauce. Total carbs for peanut butter almost double (although carbs from sugar remains nearly constant 1.41g vs. 1.48g).
So, they’ve replaced .2g of salt with 1g of sugar in teriyaki sauce, .2g of salt with 1g of sugar in chicken soup, and .04g of salt with 3g of total carbs in peanut butter. I’m not sure if these increased are significant (in a monetary way), but there seems to be an increase in sugar in reduced sodium foods.
Excellent points.
I now eat only whole foods and the problem I experience is getting enough sodium. As a rule-of-thumb, the ratio of potassium to sodium in most plant foods is about 100:1. For fresh meat it’s 5:1. By not eating processed foods, sodium consumption has to decrease.
I starting thinking about this years ago when I was on a low-sodium, low-fat kick. I would occasionally eat a bag of pretzels, and presto, the next morning I would wake up in pain from a leg cramp. I finally discovered that the body, on a low-fat, high-carb diet retains sodium preferentially over potassium, and if sodium intake suddenly increases over baseline, the body quickly dumps potassium which led to my leg cramps. However, the reverse is not true. The variable is time. The body is quick to regulate sodium and it takes its time to regulate potassium. From an evolutionary point-of-view, it makes sense. Man evolved in a high-potassium, low-sodium environment, and the body always had access to plenty of potassium. A quick mechanism to regulate potassium was never needed like it was for sodium. Nowadays, with processed food, sodium and carbs are plentiful and potassium is lacking which leads to hypertension.
I’ve also experienced the dangers of inadequate sodium intake. Three summers ago, I walked 20 to 25 miles a week and I was restricting my sodium and fat. I also weighed myself every day, and at one point I started to gain 1 lb per day. My blood pressure also soared and I felt like crap. I went to my copy of Goodman and Gillman’s Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics and read up on the anti-diuretic hormone and realized that I had lost so much sodium, my body was attempting to conserve what little it had left. It did so by stopping sodium excretion in the kidneys which resulted in retained water. After gaining 5 lbs in 5 days, I reluctantly added the deadly salt back into my diet, and presto, I lost 5 lbs in 5 days.
Lastly, like many others, when I transitioned to low carb, my blood pressure plummeted.
I’ve recently been diagnosed with PCOS and hypothyroidism. My doctor says, along with taking my medication, I should stick to the South Beach diet..How do you feel about this diet?
Doctors recommend South Beach because they share the creator’s fear of saturated fat. You don’t need to avoid the saturated fats, and you don’t need the whole grains the South Beach diet recommends.
I have a relative on a doctor prescribed low-salt/fat diet for his heart.
This relative posted to a “you’re only as old as you feel” facebook status with “in that case, I’m 178 years old”.
I would too, if I were slowly being reverse-poisoned by my doctor’s advice while eating unsalted baked potato chips in between meals consisting of salads dressed with fat free ranch and boneless/skinless chicken breasts.
I felt older on that type of diet 20 years ago than I do now.
“Why don’t then put the video on DVD and show it to the kids!”
Ummm, yeah! Gordon Ramsey had a number of shows where he raised pigs, lambs, and turkeys, I think, and had his children involved in the process, including the eating. Death is part of life, Kenny M.! All animals are dinner at some point in the cycle. Why do we need to anthropomorphize animals, especially for children’s entertainment? This nonsense is partially responsible for teenage girls to go vegetarian.
Kids used to see animals killed for food all the time. My mom remembers her grandmother going out to the yard, grabbing a chicken, and turning it into dinner. As far as I know, my mom wasn’t traumatized.
Tom, re: the link on killing chickens, try searching for
HOW TO KILL A CHICKEN FOR FOOD
By Jennie (Chooken)
It’s in PDF format.
Maybe this’ll work…
http://www.backyardpoultry.com/index.php?page=artic.html
Making sure the wife takes notes …
A good friend of mine is sodium-sensitive, and he actually gets headaches if he consumes more than small amounts at a given time (and after dealing with this problem for over 10 years, he has it pegged to the sodium). He is definitely the exception, however, because I’ve never personally met anyone else that reacts to salt the way he does.
Name any food, and someone somewhere has bad reactions to it.
Regarding following the salt trail:
If a low-fat diet leads to a higher consumption of carbs, would a low-salt diet lead to a higher consumption of some other flavor enhancer, such as sugar?
From the CASH website: “There is also increasing evidence of a link between our current high salt intake and stomach cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, kidney stones and kidney disease.”
Wait, what? How does a high intake of salt lead to obesity? Oh, wait there’s more on their site: “Most of the salt children and adults eat is hidden in processed and convenience foods” AND “The latest results show that bread is the largest individual contributor of salt diet at 18%.” So it must be the salt in the foods rather than the sugar in processed foods causing obesity (kind of like the notoriously high fat foods: donuts, cake, milkshakes, etc.)
(from http://www.diet.com/g/lowsodium-diet) “According to a study done by the Mayo Clinic, the average American gets only 6% of their total salt intake from salt that is added at the table. Only 5% comes from salt that is added during cooking, and natural sources in food makeup only another 11 percent. The remaining 77% comes from processed or prepared foods.”
hmm… Who’d have thought that cooking non-processed foods at home would lead to a lower consumption of salt?
What about eating reduced sodium foods? A quick check of regular vs. reduced sodium versions of chicken soup, peanut butter, and teriyaki sauce reveals that the reduced sodium version has more carbs from sugars. It doesn’t seem to be a large amount though, 1g vs. 2g for chicken soup, 1.4g vs. 2.3g for teriyaki sauce. Total carbs for peanut butter almost double (although carbs from sugar remains nearly constant 1.41g vs. 1.48g).
So, they’ve replaced .2g of salt with 1g of sugar in teriyaki sauce, .2g of salt with 1g of sugar in chicken soup, and .04g of salt with 3g of total carbs in peanut butter. I’m not sure if these increased are significant (in a monetary way), but there seems to be an increase in sugar in reduced sodium foods.
Excellent points.
I would not be opposed to killing my own food if I lived on a farm, but I would absolutely want to do it efficiently and humanely. If I were needing to learn the skill today I would probably find someone with skill & experience and have them mentor me through the process for awhile before I went solo.
Of course. My mom remembers her grandma grabbing a chicken and snapping its neck in one twist. This not only killed the chicken humanely, it convinced the kids not to mess with grandma.
I can’t lay my hands on the studies now because I’m at work but there seems to be strong evidence out there (for those compelled to actually pay attention) that it’s not a sodium excess that causes hypertension, it’s a potassium insufficiency. Increasing one’s potassium intake, without changing sodium levels at all, frequently results in dramatic reductions in hypertension.
Of course, some people hear this and start gobbling bananas, which drives their glucose levels up and brings a host of other problems…
Dr. Richard Johnson has presented some compelling evidence that hypertension is largely a function of excess fructose consumption.
I now eat only whole foods and the problem I experience is getting enough sodium. As a rule-of-thumb, the ratio of potassium to sodium in most plant foods is about 100:1. For fresh meat it’s 5:1. By not eating processed foods, sodium consumption has to decrease.
I starting thinking about this years ago when I was on a low-sodium, low-fat kick. I would occasionally eat a bag of pretzels, and presto, the next morning I would wake up in pain from a leg cramp. I finally discovered that the body, on a low-fat, high-carb diet retains sodium preferentially over potassium, and if sodium intake suddenly increases over baseline, the body quickly dumps potassium which led to my leg cramps. However, the reverse is not true. The variable is time. The body is quick to regulate sodium and it takes its time to regulate potassium. From an evolutionary point-of-view, it makes sense. Man evolved in a high-potassium, low-sodium environment, and the body always had access to plenty of potassium. A quick mechanism to regulate potassium was never needed like it was for sodium. Nowadays, with processed food, sodium and carbs are plentiful and potassium is lacking which leads to hypertension.
I’ve also experienced the dangers of inadequate sodium intake. Three summers ago, I walked 20 to 25 miles a week and I was restricting my sodium and fat. I also weighed myself every day, and at one point I started to gain 1 lb per day. My blood pressure also soared and I felt like crap. I went to my copy of Goodman and Gillman’s Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics and read up on the anti-diuretic hormone and realized that I had lost so much sodium, my body was attempting to conserve what little it had left. It did so by stopping sodium excretion in the kidneys which resulted in retained water. After gaining 5 lbs in 5 days, I reluctantly added the deadly salt back into my diet, and presto, I lost 5 lbs in 5 days.
Lastly, like many others, when I transitioned to low carb, my blood pressure plummeted.
Well there’s too much and there’s waaay too much…back in the day, I knew guys who always salted their food heavily, before they even tasted it. They tended to die young, BUT they also smoked and drank hard liquor almost every night. Their taste buds were shot. So did anyone control for these factors in any tests?
It’s not likely they controlled for those factors in observational studies. And the clinical studies showed restricting salt doesn’t do much.
I eat less salt now that I lowcarb than when I was eating highcarb. You eat low carb and you are not eating as much processed foods. Think about how much salt is added to bread, pasta, sweets, soups, etc. 90% of my diet is unprocessed whole food. I have to add salt just to make sure I don’t have an electrolyte imbalance. LOL
I’ve recently been diagnosed with PCOS and hypothyroidism. My doctor says, along with taking my medication, I should stick to the South Beach diet..How do you feel about this diet?
Doctors recommend South Beach because they share the creator’s fear of saturated fat. You don’t need to avoid the saturated fats, and you don’t need the whole grains the South Beach diet recommends.