I don’t eat many chocolate bars but the Snickers is king!I go share size Snickers. One for the left hand and one for the right.
We've had more than a few discussions here about salt and my position hasn't changed much - most of us (Americans) probably get more than enough in our crappy diets for the limited exercise and physical activity we do. Obviously, that can vary from person to person and from day to day.Direct link to my comment on the article:
Salt Is Hiding Everywhere. Can You Spot It?
Sodium lurks in surprising places. See if you can identify the biggest offenders with this quiz.www.nytimes.com
When I think about how crappy my diet was in college, man, it's no wonder I bit it as an athlete...My lunch for 4 months of college was a Twix bar from the vending machine.
When I saw a doctor once for stomach issues when I was in college, he just looked at me and said, "You need your mother to cook for you." He was right.When I think about how crappy my diet was in college, man, it's no wonder I bit it as an athlete...
The point I tried to make in my comment is that blood pressure, what the article demonized salt for, isn't the main issue at all but rather it's being overweight, and eating too much prepared food, and not getting enough exercise. Prepared food has to have a lot of salt in it if anyone's going to find it tasty enough to buy more than once.We've had more than a few discussions here about salt and my position hasn't changed much - most of us (Americans) probably get more than enough in our crappy diets for the limited exercise and physical activity we do. Obviously, that can vary from person to person and from day to day.
I feel like the salt discussion is kinda like the ice or heat debate, or the stretching is bad BS arguments - why the heck can't people grasp that there is nuance and demonizing (or blindly idolizing) a training supplement (and I'm using 'supplement' loosely here to talk about diet, accessory work, vitamins, etc) is freaking dumb...
Yeah, I agree(d) w. your comments on the article and didn't mean that YOU didn't understand nuance - I was just speaking generally to the click-baity nature of such articles.The point I tried to make in my comment is that blood pressure, what the article demonized salt for, isn't the main issue at all but rather it's being overweight, and eating too much prepared food, and not getting enough exercise. Prepared food has to have a lot of salt in it if anyone's going to find it tasty enough to buy more than once.
-S-
On a positive note, you could say he isn't a fence sitter. The guy picks a direction and gets after it.I work with someone who dips each bite of KFC into salt. Every. Bite. I often imagine his insides are prosciutto. Got to his 50’s before the heart attack. Still going strong somehow.
You'll meet people like that who seem to do everything 'wrong' but just somehow, keep on going sometimes deep into old age.I work with someone who dips each bite of KFC into salt. Every. Bite. I often imagine his insides are prosciutto. Got to his 50’s before the heart attack. Still going strong somehow.
There was an example I saw years ago of Japanese fisherman that eat north of 30g of salt per day and are perfectly healthy. Kidneys, barring any pathology generally(this word always implies exceptions!) can adapt to large amounts of sodium.I work with someone who dips each bite of KFC into salt. Every. Bite. I often imagine his insides are prosciutto. Got to his 50’s before the heart attack. Still going strong somehow.
I recommend 2 books by Dr. Thomas Levy: Death by Calcium and Magnesium Reversing DiseaseI get it....lots of processed food, salty high energy nutrient poor food, if hypertensive reduce your salt intake by eating low sodium processed food. Doesn't get to the root of the issue, if considering the public health problem of obesity. But what of hypertension?
My own recent personal experience....
Been fit and healthy all my life fortunately. Anytime I've had blood pressure taken it's always been 120/80 since as a kid, now 60.
I eat well, mostly home cooked. I cook a lot and add salt. Well aware that as I rarely eat processed meals I'm not concerned at all. However I do demolish packets of crisps...what in US parlance is potato chips....in a blink of an eye. Especially balsamic vinegar, nom nom. Hundreds of salty energy.
Had my blood pressure done recently to reveal high numbers, early stage hypertension. So I've quit the crisps, salt food less and bought a home use BP monitor. In 3 weeks I'm back to 178/75 on average.
As someone whose calories mostly come from good food, not overweight with regular exercise, I wrongly assumed to have a lot of wiggle room. Yet, even so, my situation was significant enough to put me at risk of hypertension.
It could be of course that I don't need that much salt, genetics and other lifestyle confounders but the overall evidence related to the general population suggests that excessive dietary salt is an issue.
A single intervention took off 25 beats from my systolic bp....as an intervention reducing salt is a simple measure. I could identify that source...too many crisps, too often...and pretty easy to forego them. For people who eat a lot of crap as their main source of food, that is an issue but even then that shouldn't diminish the risk factor of excess dietary salt.
It's difficult to parse out with any precision. Salt functions with defined parameters, dosage guidelines are just that. Normal health, some people may have lower or higher needs in a general population. The problem is that normal is skewed, the general population's salt intake is too high....obesity, hypertension to cv issues down the line. But, yeah I agree with the general eat less processed food will kill 2 birds with one stone...excess energy, excess salt...but when you dig down it is more nuanced and individualised.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Salt and the link to human health is well studied and a normal distribution indicates that the tails contain both high and low salty individuals for a given normal health population. When that distribution is skewed to the right, reducing salt would skew it back to normal, possibly, at least that's the goal.
Would that work? For all, for some or very few, if any? Public health interventions are aimed at the largest percentage of people who present with health concerns, not outliers or those that don't present with health concerns.
Most people could benefit from lower salt but not always, in other words.
The Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC) score has been used for over 30 years now to monitor the likelihood of a patient dying of coronary heart disease (myocardial infarction). A higher score indicates an increased chance of cardiac mortality. The CAC score is generated by a CT (computed tomography) scan over the heart. Greater amounts of calcium deposition in the coronary arteries consistently result in higher CAC scores. [4] Therapeutic measures that can increase or decrease this calcium accumulation correlate directly with an increased or decreased chance of cardiac mortality.
Recent research now indicates the CAC score is clearly predictive of all-cause mortality and not just death from coronary artery disease. [5] This indicates that the CAC score also serves as a reliable marker test for indicating the degree of calcium excess throughout the body and not just in the coronary arteries. Having a high amount of calcium deposition in the coronary arteries indicates calcium excess everywhere, even if it is only inside the cells and not as readily detected as calcium deposits. While some excess intracellular calcium can still be present when the CAC score is zero (normal), any positive score assures the presence of such excesses, with higher scores indicating greater excesses and greater degrees of pathology in the body.
Menopause, with its loss of estrogen production in the affected women, contributes directly to increased intracellular calcium levels.[6] Normal estrogen levels are very effective in minimizing cytoplasmic calcium levels as estrogen serves as a calcium channel blocker, limiting calcium uptake into the cells. Consistent with this, it has now been shown that menopause does promote increased CAC scores. [7] Testosterone, the male sex hormone counterpart to estrogen, also serves as a calcium channel blocker throughout the body. [8] This important relationship of increased intracellular calcium levels resulting from decreased sex hormone presence only further underscores the importance of giving some sex hormone support to all older patients, even when the hormone levels are still technically above the lowest levels in the laboratory reference range.
To be clear, the very well-defined relationship between calcium content inside the cells of the body and disease-causing increased intracellular oxidative stress really means only one thing: Never supplement calcium.
In addition to a good quality salt (The Salt Fix is a great book), potassium is often overlooked as a countervailing measure. Just as magnesium is a natural calcium channel blocker, potassium and sodium counterbalance each other.I get it....lots of processed food, salty high energy nutrient poor food, if hypertensive reduce your salt intake by eating low sodium processed food. Doesn't get to the root of the issue, if considering the public health problem of obesity. But what of hypertension?
My own recent personal experience....
Been fit and healthy all my life fortunately. Anytime I've had blood pressure taken it's always been 120/80 since as a kid, now 60.
I eat well, mostly home cooked. I cook a lot and add salt. Well aware that as I rarely eat processed meals I'm not concerned at all. However I do demolish packets of crisps...what in US parlance is potato chips....in a blink of an eye. Especially balsamic vinegar, nom nom. Hundreds of salty energy.
Had my blood pressure done recently to reveal high numbers, early stage hypertension. So I've quit the crisps, salt food less and bought a home use BP monitor. In 3 weeks I'm back to 178/75 on average.
As someone whose calories mostly come from good food, not overweight with regular exercise, I wrongly assumed to have a lot of wiggle room. Yet, even so, my situation was significant enough to put me at risk of hypertension.
It could be of course that I don't need that much salt, genetics and other lifestyle confounders but the overall evidence related to the general population suggests that excessive dietary salt is an issue.
A single intervention took off 25 beats from my systolic bp....as an intervention reducing salt is a simple measure. I could identify that source...too many crisps, too often...and pretty easy to forego them. For people who eat a lot of crap as their main source of food, that is an issue but even then that shouldn't diminish the risk factor of excess dietary salt.
It's difficult to parse out with any precision. Salt functions with defined parameters, dosage guidelines are just that. Normal health, some people may have lower or higher needs in a general population. The problem is that normal is skewed, the general population's salt intake is too high....obesity, hypertension to cv issues down the line. But, yeah I agree with the general eat less processed food will kill 2 birds with one stone...excess energy, excess salt...but when you dig down it is more nuanced and individualised.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Salt and the link to human health is well studied and a normal distribution indicates that the tails contain both high and low salty individuals for a given normal health population. When that distribution is skewed to the right, reducing salt would skew it back to normal, possibly, at least that's the goal.
Would that work? For all, for some or very few, if any? Public health interventions are aimed at the largest percentage of people who present with health concerns, not outliers or those that don't present with health concerns.
Most people could benefit from lower salt but not always, in other words.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, November 30, 2023
A-Fib, Potassium and Magnesium
A Personal Report by Dwight Kalita, PhD
OMNS (November 30, 2023) Atrial fibrillation (Afib) is a worldwide epidemic affecting 37 million people, and its rising prevalence will most certainly account for increasing public health costs. I am 76 years old and have had A-fib for almost 10 years. During that time various cardiologists gave me 2 ablations and 5 cardioversions, but the Afib always returned. I have been on numerous drugs, all of which caused serious side effects and non of which ever cured my Afib.
From 11/3/2022 to 11/10/22, my heart monitor recorded a 6% burden of A-fib episodes with a 150bpm maximum rate. These on-and-off episodes continued despite taking Dofetilide (antiarrhythmic) and Diltiazem (calcium channel blocker for blood pressure) since April 22, 2022. In April, 2023 I read a European medical article "Association of IV Potassium and Magnesium Administration with Spontaneous Conversion of A-Fib in the ER Department" in JAMA Oct. 2022. After thinking about this article, I decided to see if the combined, oral administration of magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), and Dofetilide would help prevent my chronic A-fib episodes that I have experienced for almost 10 years.
I began taking the following around April 15, 2023: electrolyte powder: one scoop per day of 1000 mgs potassium citrate, 120 mgs magnesium citrate, plus very small amounts of other mineral complexes. I have been taking 500 mgs of magnesium taurate orally for 5-6 years but continued to experience on and off Afib episodes. When I had an episode that lasted more than 20 minutes, I took 2 grams of magnesium IV and that always converted me back to sinus rhythm. Then I read the above JAMA article about IV magnesium and potassium together converting ER Afib patients in Europe so I began taking both nutrients orally. That oral combo nutrient program of magnesium and potassium is what really eliminated my Afib!
You'll meet people like that who seem to do everything 'wrong' but just somehow, keep on going sometimes deep into old age.
Your point about potassium is one I don't see often in this discussion. There are table salts available that are a mixture of Sodium Salt (NaCl) and Potassium Salt (KCl). Studies were done where the subjects simply swapped their regular table salt for these sodium/potassium combos when salting their food and had quite a remarkable improvement in blood pressures. Many people following a modern western diet (I know that's a debatable term in and of itself) are quite deficient in potassium in the first place so this can be a useful trick. Also the fact that you mentioned about potassium counteracting the sodium's effect.In addition to a good quality salt (The Salt Fix is a great book), potassium is often overlooked as a countervailing measure. Just as magnesium is a natural calcium channel blocker, potassium and sodium counterbalance each other.