Barbara wrote:

>I think the suggestion was also made previously that chlorine (chloride) is
simply a poison and does not serve any useful funtion in the body. Well,
below are some excerpts from the section headed 'Chlorine' in 'The
Natural Health Book' by Dorothy Hall:...
'... chlorine regulates most of the functions of [the system comprising the
liver, pancreas, bile duct, spleen, and bladder]. Chlorine is acid-forming
in the body, but it stimulates enzyme activity as well as gastric
secretion, and therefore the whole of the digestive tract. If you haven't
enough natural chlorine in your body tissues you may have weak
water-retention and decrease in body weight because of it.<

Hmm, if not enough chlorine can decrease body weight, is the converse also
true?

>Deficiency of
chlorine can also lead to liver problems, particularly under-activity of
the liver, and to congestive disorders of many different types, such as
swelling of feet and legs, lumps and cysts and fatty deposits, the
congestion that goes with chronic sinus or bronchial problems, and even
congestive heart disease...'<

This is all really interesting to me since I've been reading about lymph and
have had a long-standing curiosity about how a certain drug used in diabetes
and infertility actually works (people drop a lot of weight on it quite
quickly). I've seen it said that the mechanism of action is unknown for
Metformin (glucophage). But as I've probably mentioned here before, it's
actually a biguanide. The way most people use biguanides is to clean their
pools! It's an alternate pool-cleaning system to chlorine. Now, we're
talking about chlorine and how it helps with 'congestive disorders'. It all
really makes me wonder how much of this aspect of medicine could be
emulating sump pump 101. Maybe not, but maybe so. A Traditional Chinese
Medicine doc who used to be an engineer once remarked to me how
interestingly similar the human body is to a hydrological engineering
project. Pumps, gravity, tubes, all that.

>Of course, the _overconsumption_ of chloride (or sodium, or any other
substance) is likely to lead to problems - there's certainly no dispute
about that. As always, balance is the key.<

This is where I start wondering about salt as sodium chloride, with iodine
added in. I have lowish blood pressure and have tested as low sodium before
(though I don't limit my salt intake). Sodium helps raise pressure. I wonder
sometimes whether there's something about combining the sodium with the
chloride with the iodine that's unfavorable... would the body be better off
with a source of sodium from food that doesn't have the others added in? I
haven't studied this in depth, so it may be that at least two of the above
wind up a lot together in foods naturally. But it's a point of curiosity for
me these days, at least.

CB


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