Salt and sodium?? How can you no if your water intake is doing more damage than good ❤️

[Sam72-]

So I want to cut not only my sugar out but salt as we all no how both can contribute to AF and high blood pressure. I am so confused because I see that sodium is a name for salt and there is a lot in water 😮 recommend for adults is 6g a day but I am shocked how much is in water and soda water, sparkling water!! I drink a lot of water and am wondering am I doing my self more damage? This is so bazaar and very confusing to me any help with this would be great 👍🏼

[Sam72-]

I am checking everything with foods and drinks and now I no why diet and low fat foods , processed foods should be avoided big time !! They are all full of salt and sugar!! Unbelievable.

[seasider18 in reply to Sam72-]

I cut out salt and sugar in 1983 as they were getting such a bad press. At that time my blood glucose and BP were normal. In 2000 I was diagnosed with hypertension and in 2004 as T2. A lot of good that did me !

[doodle68]

Hi Sam we need a certain amount of salt for our bodies to function and it occurs naturally in many foods. The problem is added salt.

I try to avoid processed food when possible, it is full of salt and sugar used as a preservative to give a long shelf life and to add flavour to food which may not be of the best.

I find really fresh steamed organic vegetables don't need any salt, they have flavour already and I also use fresh herbs and spices to add flavour instead of salt. The thing I miss most is bacon.

I make most things myself including wholemeal bread with only a small amount of salt.

I think in time your palate adjusts and you get used to not having a lot of salt .

[CDreamer]

The most recent research is now suggesting that salt is actually not the problem at all. Everything in moderation. I have recently drastically increased my salt intake and am much better for it.

Avoid added Sugar and ALL processed foods - which includes all sodas by the way - AND anything labeled ‘low fat’ for sure - but don’t worry too much about salt in your diet, unless you add a teaspoon full to your plate after adding to cooking water as my grandma did every day of her 98 years of life!

[wilsond in reply to CDreamer]

Can you give any pointers for the research CDreamer?would be interested in that.

[Polski]

Sodium, potassium, magnesium are all electrolytes - essential to make our hearts work properly - but so is 'chloride'! Yet little is heard of it. Salt is actually 'sodium chloride' so would seem to be very important - both the sodium bit and the chloride bit - but I have been able to find out very little about the 'chloride'. I just assume that it mostly comes from salt. Does anyone have any more insights into it? Our diets tend to contain a lot of salt, for the reasons you have been discovering, so we do need to cut down on processed food etc, but we do still need some salt!

[CDreamer in reply to Polski]

webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/wha...

[wilsond in reply to CDreamer]

Ah!got it after scrolling down a bit more!

[jeanjeannie50]

Morning Sam, the way of thinking re salt is changing and they are turning towards saying it is actually good for us. I use sea salt for cooking and Himalayan pink salt to sprinkle on food when eating something like an egg, both have no nasty additives like the general salts do. I remember watching a Sanjay Gupta recording he made and even he said salt is fine.

Jean

[CDreamer in reply to jeanjeannie50]

I do exactly the same Jean - but I avoid ‘table salt’ which is sodium chloride.

Both sea salt and any rock Salts such as Himalayan rock salt are natural forms of salt which contain natural minerals other than just sodium.

[MarkS]

Hi Sam,

If you have high blood pressure then it's sensible to reduce salt intake. 6g p.d. is ideal and I think you can get close to that by not adding salt to anything. There is enough naturally in food. I would also only drink tap water, tea or coffee (plus beer or wine!), though I wouldn't drink too much water. I think some suggestions of 8 glasses p.d. are too much and the electrolytes become too diluted.

If you have high BP then the key is exercise, which will also help with AF and a host of other conditions.

Mark

[wilsond in reply to MarkS]

I'm finding that exercise is really helping me ,although I was very afraid to be honest of setting AF off!I was able to complete the Suffragette Memorial March in London on Saturday,slowly but with no after effects! I also have taken on an allotment to grow my own,and have gradually increased activity and time there.

The only day so far I had a little AF was yesterday,my fault as I ran out of water,knew I was getting thirsty but wanted to get the chillies set out!

I was told to cut out as much salt as possible...interesting that the thinking might be changing slightly.I do have high BP,medicated for it.

[Sam72- in reply to MarkS]

Hi mark my blood pressure is fine 👍🏼 I just want to try and be as healthy as possible for my heart 💓

[mavisrich]

no salt in tap water!!

[BobD Volunteer]

Don't over think this Sam. You need some salt (Sodium chloride) which occurs naturally in lots of things for propper function of nerves and muscles etc. . It is adding salt which is the problem. My northener Mother used to put a huge fist full of salt in any water for boiling vegetables but when I met my wife she never added salt in cooking. I lost many millions of house points by question this but now 39 years later I am glad. OK still get high blood pressure so maybe we are all wrong. Who knows. Live for today!

[Ianc2]

The only thing that seems to reduce blood pressure Is to lose weight. For every 10 llbs you lose your blood pressure should come down by 10%. The hard part is losing the weight.

[doodle68 in reply to Ianc2]

Ian I can concur with that it has been interesting to note since I resolved to lose weight and it dropped slowly and steadily my BP has done so too.

At first I attributed this to taking beta blockers but the drop has continued along with my weight

[Sam72- in reply to Ianc2]

My blood pressure is fine at the moment 👍🏼it’s more for a healthy lifestyle for me and my heart , but I agree with you but also know a few people who are thin and have high blood pressure , one is very young , I also no a man in the army that was fit as a you could be young healthy and had high blood pressure so I think it can happen to anyone at any age .

[doodle68 in reply to Sam72-]

Hi Sam that is a bit like the people who get lung cancer but have never smoked.

I think for many conditions a number of factors come into play to determine who will or will not get a particular condition. If you are unlucky enough to have certain factors adding others will tip the balance.

[Sam72- in reply to doodle68]

Definitely agree with you 👍🏼 my mum is over wight has 2 enlarged atriums , has runs of ectopic heart beats and dose not feel any thing lol 😂 were I feel every bump , she also has low blood pressure 🤷🏼‍♀️it’s crazy .

[Zozzy]

I think the messages about nutrition get confused either by sensational reporting in the media (businesses that make money by getting you to read what they write), incomplete or inaccurate "clinical studies" (often sponsored by interested parties) or by the inevitable weaknesses in our own memories which mix it all up and misremember it.

As I understand it, these things are conceptually simple. The human body needs various chemicals (minerals, molecules, compounds, vitamins - call them what you will) to function well. The hard part is the quantity. There's a fatal dose of every chemical for every organism - an amount which if exceeded is fatal. Even water. Feed more than that to any organism and you can publish a "clinical trial" that evidences that "too much X causes death".

However below that fatal dose is a toxic dose that won't kill, but will cause illness. And the dose varies by organism (different for humans than other animals) and even between them (some humans can tolerate more than others).

Below that toxic dose is a range within which an organism can cope, by excreting excess and withholding shortages.

And below that is an insufficiency which causes illness or worse.

If you're a special interest group, feed too much of X to a rat and publish a story (X causes cancer in rats). Of course it does. Everything if fed in excess to an organism will harm it. That's not news, it's a self evident fact. What's material is the dose and the organism (more than Qty of X causes cancer in rats) . Its our job to take care what we infer from that about ourselves - we are a different size and have a different physiology than rats. And we probably had no intention of consuming anything like a toxic dose of X.

That something has a toxic does not mean it's bad for you. Since everything has a toxic dose, all it tells you is how much would be too much. It doesn't tell you how much is sufficient.

Most drugs (arsenic, opium, cannabis, paracetamol, asprin, bisoprolol etc.) - have been demonstrated to do good to most humans in very small doses but are toxic to them at higher (still relatively small) doses.

So the challenge is to find and stay in YOUR range (which is likely but not guaranteed to be the same as that for other humans) for each chemical. And to find a diet (collective source of all those chemicals) that keeps you within the ranges for all of them.

Fortunately the human body can tolerate a reasonable range of most of what it needs, so with a reasonable diet (quantity and variety) there's no need to obsess. But some people have exceptional levels of (in)tolerance - and these need to take more care about the chemicals to which they are less tolerant.

So it's all about knowing what is a reasonable variety and quantity of foods that will keep you in your safe range, knowing and managing your (relative) intolerances more carefully, and avoiding biased sources of information that interfere with that.

For most of us, the hardest part of all that is knowing what's in what we eat. Our evolution has not kept pace with the dietary offerings available to us. Therefore we must either monitor what we consume more carefully (a lot of effort), or minimise processed foods so that we don't have to (takes discipline and practice). If we do neither then we rely on our bodies' ability to cope with excesses and shortfalls and cross our fingers.

Steve

[wilsond in reply to Zozzy]

Very informative and interesting reply,makes a lot of sense