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  #1   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 06:32
s93uv3h's Avatar
s93uv3h s93uv3h is offline
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Plan: Atkins & IF / TRE
Stats: 000/000/000 Male 5' 10"
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Default Salt Scare

from Dr. Jason Fung's IDM blog

Salt Scare 9-25-2018 Dr. Jason Fung's IDM blog

The evidence from the United States was not encouraging either. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) are large scale surveys of American dietary habits carried out periodically. The first survey found that those eating the least salt died at a rate 18% higher than those eating the most salt. This was a highly significant, and disturbing result.

The second NHANES survey confirmed that a low salt diet was associated with a staggering 15.4% increased risk of death. Other trials found an increased risk of heart attacks of eating a low salt diet in treated hypertensive patients. Those were precisely the patients doctors had been recommending a low salt diet!

In 2003, worried, the Center for Disease Control, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to take a fresh look at the available evidence focusing not on blood pressure, but mortality and heart disease.

After an exhaustive search of the medical literature, the IOM made several major conclusions. Although low salt diets could lower blood pressure, “Existing evidence, however, does not support either a positive or negative effect of lowering sodium intake to <2300 mg/d in terms of cardiovascular risk or mortality in the general population.”. That is, lowering the salt intake did not reduce risk of heart attack or death.


However, in heart failure, “The committee concluded that there is sufficient evidence to suggest a negative effect of low sodium intakes”. Oh my. The very patients we were most strenuously recommending to reduce their salt would be harmed the most.

But dogma is hard to change. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines continues to recommend reducing sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg of sodium (about one teaspoon of salt) per day with a recommendation of no more than 1,500 mg of sodium (about two-thirds of a teaspoon of salt) per day in hypertensives, blacks, and middle-aged and older adults.
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  #2   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 07:48
teaser's Avatar
teaser teaser is offline
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Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
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Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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Quote:
The Japanese diet is notoriously high in sodium with copious use of soy sauce, miso and pickled vegetables. The Japanese themselves seem to suffer no ill effect as they have the world’s longest life expectancy at 83.7 years. Singapore is third in life expectancy at 83.1 years. If eating salt was really so bad for health, how could the world’s longest lived people also eat one of the world’s saltiest diets?


https://foodandhealth.com/failure-t...ife-expectancy/

Quote:
One possible explanation for the relative poor performance of the US compared to the other dozens countries in the Health Affairs report might be related to America’s failure to reduce salt intake. A prospective study in Finland showed that for each 2400 mg increase in 24-hour urinary sodium, cardiovascular disease mortality increased by 36% and total mortality increased by 22%.1 Worldwide hypertension is the #1 risk factor for earlier mortality in middle-aged and older adults. Data from the NHANES surveys suggests the sodium intake of Americans has been increasing since the 1980s.


I'm in Canada... but the salt shaker has all but disappeared from the table here. Its absence was all but unthinkable when I was a kid, now you very often have to ask for it. What happens when people stop salting their food?

Infographic might help....



What happens when home cooked meals are unsalted--but restaurant meals and processed foods are heavily salted? People prefer those salty processed foods. Within a population people eating the most salt might do worse--but it's probably not the people overdoing the pickles and sauerkraut, or soy sauce and miso, that are getting in trouble. Making low-nutrient value food hyper-palatable gets brought up a lot. How about not making highly nutritious food hypo-palatable?
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  #3   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 08:48
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
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Location: Herndon, VA
Default

Quote:
However, in heart failure, “The committee concluded that there is sufficient evidence to suggest a negative effect of low sodium intakes”. Oh my. The very patients we were most strenuously recommending to reduce their salt would be harmed the most.

I experienced this issue in a personal way when my mother was in her 80s and early 90s, she experienced a few fainting episodes with the conclusion that she was dehydrated. The solution from the doctor was to drink more water to hydrate; however, the water without electrolytes would pass right through, which is why she didn't want to hydrate frequently. In her late 80s, she went to live in an Independent Living facility, and their meals were right out of the American Heart/Diabetes Associations playbook with very little to no salt added. When we got her to take her own salt shaker to the dining room, things improved. She was a survivor of a stroke and heart attack before she went to Independent Living. She continued to attend her twice weekly bridge tournaments and other outside social activities with salt shaker in pocketbook and no further episodes. I can attest to the need to revisit the low salt recommendations, as salt is an important component of a healthy diet and makes food taste better.

James DiNicolantonio's The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong--and How Eating More Might Save Your Life is an excellent summary of the salt hysteria where that misguided advice is now thought of as another bulleted item on the list of terrible dietary health guidance the population has received over the past 40 years.
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  #4   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 10:32
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
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Default

My encounters with this recommendation has not via a personal physician but thru "friends " who due to their health risks have been told to cut back. WHat is never mentioned is a RANGE of recommended amount. IMO this has been interpreted as salt is bad, eliminate salt. One woman never adds salt to her foods. ANother is strict about keeping under the 2300 but at 400 pounds has not been counselled effectively to drop his weight; and another shakes on the salt and shakes and shakes without testing the food first. Seems we have a warped view of salt in our diet.

My horses can lick a salt block at will. As they want it. No limit. They have not been told to stop eating salt.

I love this forum, which has told me to eat my salt, lol , and yes I have fewer leg cramps because I eat my salts, and take a Mg as 90 % of the world humans are deficient of this vital brain functioning element, as well as the interaction with balancing salts.

the body is a marvelous biochemical being that it can regulate itself given enough of everything, including water, to help itself. Defining too much, too little is a moving target. Influenced by other factors,too.

One of the best suggestions I ever heard, IMO , was to add 1/4 tsp salt to the water bottle. I wish I could remember the size of the bottle ..... but you get my point.

I have embraced salt in the kitchen. Picked up many flavored salts in addition to the iodized salts, the pink salts and no-salt or lo-salt.... and have grey salt on my grocery wish list.

When balancing our intake of salt ( NaCl) please remember that others are important too: Magnesium, potassium, etc. And our foods are not a reliable source any more as our food production soils have been stripped.

When I eat low carb, I must up my salts; when I eat high carb, I bloat, without having added more salts. lol

Salt remains the target, and not the crappy foods I see distributed at food banks, what I view as a base criteria of government food supply/quality.
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  #5   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 11:23
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deirdra deirdra is offline
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Plan: vLC/GF,CF,SF
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Default

When my parents were in Independent Living eating ADA-approved foods, my mother was fainting too (as were many little old ladies there) and when my father was in the hospital to have a benign brain tumor removed, they diagnosed him with hyponatremia (too low salt in blood) and fed him 4 GRAMS per day in pills to get his level up to normal.
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  #6   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 12:59
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
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Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ms Arielle
My encounters with this recommendation has not via a personal physician but thru "friends " who due to their health risks have been told to cut back. WHat is never mentioned is a RANGE of recommended amount. IMO this has been interpreted as salt is bad, eliminate salt. One woman never adds salt to her foods. ANother is strict about keeping under the 2300 but at 400 pounds has not been counselled effectively to drop his weight; and another shakes on the salt and shakes and shakes without testing the food first. Seems we have a warped view of salt in our diet.

Yeah, that's the logic of a maximum. If less-than-X is good, this means X or more-than-X is bad. And, if less-than-X is good, then none is best. As-little-as-possible is the only way to make sure we eat less-than-X, cuz we just have no idea how much salt we actually eat whether we measure or not.

Since salt is essential, developing a deficiency is a very real danger, unlike the presumed risk of hypertension from eating more-than-X or too much salt.

Also, since salt is essential, and since we just have no idea how much salt we actually eat whether we measure or not, the only way to make sure we don't develop a deficiency is to eat more-than-X.

The risk of hypertension is not actually demonstrated in humans.

Reading wiki on hyponatremia (low sodium level in the blood), the causes section says that low sodium intake is very rarely the cause. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that few people actually take this seriously enough to eat as little salt as possible, let alone none. But due to First Law, where we can't create salt from nothing, it's entirely possible that low- or zero-dietary intake causes hyponatremia.

We can't deal with deficiency, can't make up the missing difference. But we can deal with excess, we just excrete it.
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  #7   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 14:47
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
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Default

If you dive into where Na++ lives and works in the body, it is a very busy boy. The blood levels are kept in stasis as much as possible, and when it is so low in the blood to be measured as low, it is also being stolen from elsewhere as well. THe whole body is low, not just the blood levels.

RE hypertension. When my BP started to creep up, 115/80 range, I took that as a sign that I was not following LC. Jumping back on LC would drop my pb down asap, to 110/70 range. Having said that, this I now undderstand is only the first step in preventing hpertension. There is the thickening of the arteries and the calcification. While I still dont fully understand the mechanism, I put my trust in the detail support that Dr Atkins provided that said I could prevent such an end to good health if I stayed true to LC. However, I have more understanding after reading Dr Lin's book The Dental Diet. WOW. VItamin K2 is not recognized by our governmental powers that be, but Im convinced that given the changes in our diet from 100-150 years ago, from an agricultural community to city dwellers, that we are missing many important layers of nutritional input that would prevent hypertension. ( and exercise, mild, moderate and all day) We can fix this IF we know how to . I am trying to layer in Vitamin K2, and more fermented products and quality fiber to feed the microbes...... get Ca to go where it is supposed to , not the arteries and heart, and decrease inflammation thru the body, and support the gut microbes.

Deficiency can only be prevented by consuming enough, and you are right , the body deals with excess effectively.
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  #8   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 15:00
Zei Zei is offline
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Plan: Carb reduction in general
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Default

I used to have somewhat elevated blood pressure. Now that they've lowered the guidelines I suppose it would be considered high. I tried out a really low salt diet to see if it would have any effect. None. My BP numbers eventually resolved without salt restriction. Nowadays I make sure to put plenty of salt on my food to taste. I suspect people whose blood pressure drops with the absence of salt are relatively less common than those of us who aren't affected that way by dietary sodium content. And I agree that when eating the SAD, (yes, very sad) diet, high sodium intake is a likely proxy or marker for consumption of highly processed unhealthy foods. Thus those foods themselves may be the cause of the health problems rather than their salt content.
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  #9   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 15:09
mike_d's Avatar
mike_d mike_d is offline
Grease is the word!
Posts: 8,475
 
Plan: PSMF/IF
Stats: 236/181/180 Male 72 inches
BF:disappearing!
Progress: 98%
Location: Alamo city, Texas
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1/4 tsp of "Lite Salt" and 1/4 tsp of Epsom salt in a Liter of water. A pinch of baking soda can also be added to buffer pH
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  #10   ^
Old Thu, Sep-27-18, 15:52
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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Posts: 19,176
 
Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
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Progress: -30%
Location: Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike_d
1/4 tsp of "Lite Salt" and 1/4 tsp of Epsom salt in a Liter of water. A pinch of baking soda can also be added to buffer pH

Thanks Mike.
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