The Salt Poll

[u&iraok]

I was actually salt averse when my adrenals were really bad and my sodium was really low. My doctor said that sometimes happens--when you most need it you are averse to it.

I like salt and need it but I could go days without eating any, forgetting to take it. I don't eat processed foods so I don't get any that way. I have to drink salted water to make sure I get enough.

 

[rydra_wong]

I can't take this poll -- there is no option I can click. I periodically get adrenal exhaustion (during 2 months of every year for sure due to severe allergies) and sometimes due to chemical exposure. During that time I have to eat salt or pass out (seriously). At one time coworkers used to tease me about getting me a salt lick and I got the idea to actually keep one at work (I used a rock from a tour of a salt mine). The rest of the time I have to rabidly avoid salt (can't even tolerate 1500mg/day) or stroke out as I have extremely high blood pressure. SO, it is not at all an either-or!

I never knew what caused the suddn need for salt and assumed it was just PMS. Since my doctor suspected adrenal problems I have identified the problem as for sure occurring during hayfever seasons. However I no longer go through cycles so I cant verify the PMS thing. HOWEVER, it was not unusual in my ofice for the women to crave salt during PMS. So I do think some hormone or another helps against this.

 

[mellster]

Have always been craving salt - yummy!

 

[alex3619]

Hi, I voted as only like salt, as I only sometimes have cravings - they come and go. Although I have OI I also have high blood pressure, but against this I am iodine deficient and I use iodized salt as one aid to treat the deficiency. Having said that in the past I have craved salt so much I have made food almost inedible due to excess salt. Bye, Alex

 

[*GG*]

I can't take this poll -- there is no option I can click. I periodically get adrenal exhaustion (during 2 months of every year for sure due to severe allergies) and sometimes due to chemical exposure. During that time I have to eat salt or pass out (seriously). At one time coworkers used to tease me about getting me a salt lick and I got the idea to actually keep one at work (I used a rock from a tour of a salt mine). The rest of the time I have to rabidly avoid salt (can't even tolerate 1500mg/day) or stroke out as I have extremely high blood pressure. SO, it is not at all an either-or!
QUOTE]

I would figure you cannot take the poll because you already have? At least that is my situation.

GG

 

[Whit]

Increasing salt intake is one of the supposed treatments for low blood volume which is interesting. I'm starting to think low blood volume is a big part of the symptoms of CFS.

I don't really crave salt, but maybe I'll try eating more and see what happens.

 

[SickOfSickness]

I didn't vote because my answer doesn't fit.

I crave it sometimes. I'm not sure if my cravings coincide with not having it recently, but that seems likely. I use it selectively and eat less than average usually.

 

[svetoslav80]

After I put too much salt in my meal and my ulcer inflamed and I was writhing with pain (that was 2 weeks ago), I put no salt at all since then, and discovered that I can live perfectly happy even without it.

Edit: Btw about the electrolyte thing, those who choose to live without salt at all like me, do not need to be worried about salt insufficiency as there's enough salt in the products we usually consume like bread, cheese and so on.

 

[_June]

I cook with plenty of salt, but use real salt.
I have high-blood pressure and fast heart rate, but I already had that long before I started using salt. My blood pressure and heart rate are a lot better now, for what it's worth (though I don't attribute it to salt)

I cook with plenty of salt because I believe it's good for you (if you use good quality salt). I don't eat processed foods.
My diet is just meat, fish and seafood, eggs, plenty of organ meats (mostly heart and liver), bone marrow, bone stock and animal fats for cooking, then vegetables and fruits. So I do need to make sure I get lots of salt, which other people would get from their processed food.

I get plenty of potassium in my diet, my potassium to sodium ratio is generally 5 to 1 which is excellent.

I'd say when I'm cooking meat and vegetables, I toss in about one or two teaspoons of salt, and this is shared by two of us + leftovers for him the next day at work.

If I stop using so much salt, both my husband and I get tired and apathetic.

 

[Shoesies]

I do not use salt in my daily food. I take lasix for edema and need to avoid it. I cook my food separate from everyone else's..and I use celtic sea salt or grey salt in their foods. On holidays I cheat and eat the food I prepare for the family...and must take extra lasix. Often cook for large groups of people. The largest ever was 450 plus. I do not think people would enjoy my food overly much if I did not season well, including salt!

 

[MeSci]

I have craved salt since childhood. A grandmother used to say that I would "dry my blood up"! However, since suffering two episodes of severe hyponatraemia (down to 115 mmol/litre, which is near life-threatening) I have abandoned any attempt to reduce my salt intake and instead make sure to have plenty. Increasing salt intake has not increased my blood pressure at all. (I was diagnosed hypertensive several years ago, cause unknown, and it is quite well-controlled with an ACE inhibitor.)

When I was in hospital with severe hyponatraemia my urine sodium was not tested ONCE. Convinced that I was losing the sodium in urine, contrary to the ridiculous diagnoses the doctors insisted on, I eventually got my GP to test my urine sodium and my blood sodium. Blood sodium was below normal, but there was quite a lot in my urine.

What the docs should really do is calculate the Fractional Excretion of Sodium (FENa), but of course they didn't, and they didn't test the other parameters needed to do this, so I couldn't do it myself either.

I would recommend anyone concerned about their salt intake to have their serum sodium checked, and ideally also the other tests referred to here:

http://www-users.med.cornell.edu/~spon/picu/calc/fenacalc.htm

If docs don't know how to interpret the results, get the figures yourself, do the sums and find out what your result means. Doctors (at least in the UK) don't seem to have a clue.

Research on links between salt intake and various chronic conditions has had conflicting findings, and until I see some that measures serum sodium instead of just urine sodium I can't attribute any relevance to it. Using just urine sodium to estimate sodium intake is bizarre, as some of the subjects may well actually be hyponatraemic, precisely because they are losing so much in urine, rater than consuming too much salt.

There has been some recent research that found links between sodium intake and autoimmunity, but it was just in vitro and in mice, so may not apply to humans. The abstract is here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11868.html

 

[Calathea]

It's never a good idea to live without salt entirely. My friend's ex-partner, J, had severe ME and was bedbound. He was thin, I'm told, and had always been told that he shouldn't eat salt, so he wasn't adding any to his diet. He'd not managed to eat much for a couple of days, and thought that he should at least try to get his fluids up. I don't know how much water he drank, but it doesn't sound like it was a massive quantity. He was dead two days later. If you don't have enough salt in your body and then you get above a certain amount of water, you can develop water poisoning, which can be fatal. This happened in December 2012.

 

[MeSci]

It's never a good idea to live without salt entirely. My friend's ex-partner, J, had severe ME and was bedbound. He was thin, I'm told, and had always been told that he shouldn't eat salt, so he wasn't adding any to his diet. He'd not managed to eat much for a couple of days, and thought that he should at least try to get his fluids up. I don't know how much water he drank, but it doesn't sound like it was a massive quantity. He was dead two days later. If you don't have enough salt in your body and then you get above a certain amount of water, you can develop water poisoning, which can be fatal. This happened in December 2012.

That is terrible, Calathea - I am so sorry. I don't suppose you know whether his blood sodium was ever tested? What was the official cause of death?

 

[Calathea]

Why would his blood sodium have been tested? He wasn't getting any medical treatment, he just had a very loving partner who was his full-time carer. The official cause of death was water poisoning. No one seems to have discussed why someone would randomly get water poisoning in that way. I think ME is at the stage AIDS was in the eighties, where the deaths are hidden by calling them something else, because in the case of both conditions, they tend to make you so ill that something else finishes you off (e.g pneumonia for AIDS). This sounds like an ME death to me - healthy people do not end up in that situation just because they drank some water one day. My friend's been too distressed to discuss this side of things.

 

[MeSci]

I completely understand why your friend would find it too hard to talk about this. But if the official cause of death was overhydration it would be logical to test blood sodium, as low blood sodium is one way in which overhydration can kill. My own hospital consultant, and subsequent GPs, persisted with a diagnosis that claimed that I was overhydrated due to drinking too much water and/or using too much of the antidiuretic desmopressin, despite my telling them repeatedly that I did neither, and despite an absence of evidence for the doctors' diagnosis. The previous consultant had correctly observed that I was in fact dehydrated, but was overruled.

If I had died, it may well be that my official cause of death would have been overhydration, and it would have been wrong.

My subsequent, lengthy reading of the science around ME, lactate and sodium has left me with a strong impression that people may have died due to low blood sodium (hyponatraemia) due to high blood lactate (hyperlactaemia) arising from ME. Excess lactate is often excreted as sodium lactate. So such deaths will not have been recorded as ME deaths, but should have been.

It is a tragedy, and it will keep happening until the science of ME filters through to health professionals.

 

[Calathea]

Yes, I think that's what happened. As I understand it, "water poisoning" means that the ratio of salt to water is too low. Which could, of course, mean not enough salt just as easily as too much water, or some combination of the two. I doubt J sat down and drank 5l of water at once, somehow. I've not heard of the high blood lactate thing before.

 

[MeSci]

These two papers refer to lactic acid (the reduced form of lactate) being excreted as sodium (Na+) or potassium (K+) salts, and the first one connects hyperlactaemia to ME. The second one refers to 'organic acids' of which lactic acid is a major one. Lactic acid/lactate is elevated by over-exertion and stress and also by abnormal carbohydrate metabolism, hence the fact that many of us have benefited from low-carb diets.

http://www.cfids-cab.org/rc/Sheedy.pdf

http://maartens.home.xs4all.nl/me/RESOURCES/NEW/D-lacticAcidosis.pdf

There have been threads here relating specifically to d-lactic acidosis.

 

[Little Bluestem]

I had a retired aunt whose health took a sudden decline and she was hospitalized. They could not determine what her problem was and were concerned for her life. Someone found out that she had cut salt entirely out of her diet. That turned out to be the cause of her problems.

 

[BadBadBear]

Well, bleepity bleep. I just read this thread and saw the info that stevia lowers BP? And I've been putting stevia in my drinks with salt to RAISE my BP.

Zorg!!!!

 

[Misfit Toy]

I like salt, but I am not dying for it. Sometimes I really want it. I mostly want sugar. I hate that. I want to want salt more. My BP is usually 90/54...so salt would be the way to go. I tried drinking salt the other day and it makes me feel like I want to vomit. It's too hard. I think salt is good for me, just like a steak. Steak, a good steak perks me right up.