Here's a site dedicated to salt (more than you'd ever want to know about
salt) . Salt, as purchased in supermarkets today, have a number of
additives, has been highly processed, thus causing a disturbance in the
delicate balance of salt. As others have stated, Celtic sea salt is a
reliable option.
Siobhan
http://salt.org.il/frame_prod.html
Physiology
Ancient Man, the 'hunter-gatherer' had to take in salt daily to stay alive,
and in order to balance his water intake. He found it in the blood of his
prey. Agricultural man, consumed up to 150 grams a day, including
additional uses of salt for many other urgent new necessities like tanning
of leather, glass, and not least, 'sacrificial' ritual and meat
preservation.... Today the USA consumption per capita, is well over 500
grams per day including all industrial uses. Modern man might be said to be
'drugged' on salt .
However, with the invention of refrigeration, salting meat in particular has
greatly been reduced and modern man has been oblivious of a general
reduction of salt intake This has exposed the body to the marginal dangers
of a minimal salt diet. The dangers of increases in blood pressure, may now
be blamed on this minimal diet, making any sudden additional hidden salt
intake, cause loss of control of the delicate balance of a low salt diet.
There is now a case, for advocating an "excessive" salt intake which will
protect the body from the salt level fluctuations of low salt diet and
hypertension, and daily modern cultural shock, and which constantly pound
our secretion systems . In the last fifty years refrigeration of meat
products in particular may have reduced the salt content to these dangerous
levels.
Since our 'grey cell' activity also relies on cerebral electrical and
chemical stimulation, a consistant sodium level above a marginal level, may
not be a bad thing. Jewish populations in pre-war 'shtetles' in eastern
Europe, in spite of desperate conditions always had their 'kosher' salted
meat diet, and always seemed to produce a genius or two.
Water/NaCl ratio - Depravation - Dehydration - Bromide / Chloride ratio -
Craving - The solution to BSE
__________________________________________________
PHYSIOLOGICAL NEED FOR 5/10 GRAMS A DAY
It is common knowledge that the blood of animals is saline, that is it
contains sodium chloride in solution, and in addition contains smaller
quantities of ions of other elements. Of the non-electrolytes most are
manufactured by the body and some can be stored, for example, fats.
But electrolytes like sodium chloride cannot be stored nor can they be
manufactured in the body. They must be taken in with food. Some of them are
needed in such small quantities that they are obtainable from almost any
diet; sodium and potassium salts, however, are needed in greater quantity.
Plants have much more potassium than sodium, so that potassium hunger is
unknown except in extreme starvation. There remains the need for sodium , as
sodium chloride, or "common salt". A complex hormone mechanism ensures that
the proportion and concentration of salts in the blood remain constant. If a
man eats too much salt he excretes what is not needed. If he takes in too
little the mechanism makes the body excrete more water in order to keep the
salinity constant. If this is taken to extremes the body is desiccated and
death results. The same control mechanism operates when a man takes in tool
little water, for he excretes more salt and less water. Death from
salt-starvation and from thirst are both aspects of the same vital need for
a stable saline environment inside the body. , , .
Many experiments have been carried out to establish the minimum salt
requirements for men and animals. The results of these suggest that the
minimum amount of urinary sodium lost in twenty-four hours corresponds to
between 4 and 6 grams of sodium chloride, - this must be replaced.
A man therefore needs about 5-10 grams of salt per day or 2-3 kg per year
for mere survival. A community of 500 would need about 1 ton per year.
Clearly, anyone who can control the salt supply of community has powers of
life and death. The control of water, being more ubiquitous than salt, is
not simple to put into effect. 2000 Neolithic man was a carnivore and not,
as American scientists have claimed, a vegan, according to a new study led
by a British researcher.
In regions of the world where the population lives mainly on meat or fish,
there is no difficulty in satisfying this physiological need as animal food
provides enough salt. Salt-deprivation does however, become a hazard in vast
areas where meat is scarce and many depend primarily on a vegetable diet.
Normal water losses in grams per day per person:
g/day losses in:- Urine Sweat Excrements Skin Lung
Common salt 2.08 0.1-0.3 . 0.1-0.3 - -
Water 700-1500 - 150 500 400
We spend much of our physiological "effort" keeping the precise composition
of this salt water constant ( "Homeostasis" )
The important discovery of pickling was made at the end of the last Ice Age.
It coincided with the steep eustatic ocean rise that flooded the continental
shelf, which was up to then a rich hunting and fishing ground for Neolithic
man. This sudden sea level rise left very few flat areas where salt crusts
could form naturally or even within artificial low lying dykes. In order to
survive , Shelf man had to migrate inland and he succeeded in developing
agriculture and animal herding. Previously, hunting and fishing societies
had found salt in the tissues of their prey but under these new conditions,
with and increased vegetable diet, more mineral salt was needed to supply
what was missing from their diet. In addition, pickling to avoid the
seasonal shortage demanded even more salt than the basic 5 g per day. An
average of some 25 g were needed , calculated on a per capita basis , and
this meant that survival and growth of civilizations were often limited by
the availability of salt. Efficient and extended salt production became
necessary.
The increased consumption of salt to ca. 29 grams,.. over and above the
minimum physiological requirement, had a striking result which might be of
some importance. This additional salt intake changed the bromine ratio in
the diet because crystallized salt used for food preservation has a
chlorine-to-bromine ration of over 2000:1, that is, it contains almost no
bromine. As bromine has a sedative effect on the human nervous system one
might speculate whether the new circumstances of bromine reduction
stimulated greater activity and advance.
" It was not until mid-1988 that medical journals began to publish the
results of this massive effort, the Intersalt Study. These findings showed a
scant relationship between sodium and blood pressure. "Salt has little
importance in hypertension" headlined the accompanying editorial in the
prestigious British Medical Journal. The Intersalt researchers measured
urinary electrolytes and blood pressures in 10,079 individuals in 52 centers
in 32 countries using standard methods and analyzing the samples in a single
laboratory. The head of the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee
and member of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee summarized:
"We're trying to back away from our salt recommendation without looking like
fools."
Quote from......... Low urinary salt levels linked with higher risk in men
with HBP June 7, 1995 NR
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
THE SALT ARCHIVE SUGGESTS THE REAL FACTS: are
BROMIDE / CHLORIDE ION RATIO
The results of an [MRBLOCH SALT Archive] investigation into the correlation
of the Cl-/Br- ion ratio in the body shows the regulating mechanism in the
kidney, counterbalancing the changes of salt diet, that retain bromides in
preference to chlorides.
Conclusions:
Plants have a high Bromide content in their halogenides.
Any salt free diet has a relatively high bromide content
Salt (NaCl) used as a condiment has little bromine
The bromide content of urine halogenides is always lower than that of
bloodserum [twice as low]
The kidney reabsorbs bromide in preference to chlorides
Sweat and saliva, have a higher bromide content, than blood and urine.
Sweating causes more bromide losses than chlorides, counteracting the
reverse effect of the kidneys.
[from Bulletin of the Research council of Israel 1959 vol 8A no 4] Bloch ,
Kaplan, Schnerb 1959
Comment:
It would seem that people who sweat profusely [as in hypertension] lose more
bromides [perhaps we should forget about sodium squabbles for a moment],
causing salt [chloride ions] to increase in influence. The delicate balance
of Chloride ions to Bromide ions is regulated in the kidneys and compensates
the losses in sweat and urine.
Conclusion - eat salt - but together with plenty of bromide containing
foods.. Better still, eat Bromine rich Dead Sea salt.
NEWS "FLASH"- .....
Hyponatremia means a low concentration of sodium in the blood.
MARATHON RUNNERS MUST MAINTAIN SALT-WATER BALANCE
Drinking too much water while running a marathon can result in death,
according to a new study conducted by UCSF researchers.
The scientists found that consuming excess amounts of water can cause the
brain to swell or can cause fluid to leak into the lungs, both of which can
be fatal.
But in their study, the researchers also offer a cure: administrating salt
water intravenously.
Although marathon runners need to keep hydrated, researchers have found that
only drinking water can cause a condition known as hyponatermia.
In the past decade, scientists have observed that runners who died during a
marathon had lost the delicate balance of water and salt normally maintained
in the body.
Even though the runners had plenty of water, they were extremely deficient
in salt.
The results were published in the May 2 edition of the Archives of Internal
Medicine.
quote... University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter July 1995 The
many reasons to cut back on salt
QUOTE: "The salt wars continue." The anti-salt forces say everybody should
go easy on salt. The anti-anti salt contingent claims that sodium
restriction as a preventive measure is "unnecessary and undesirable," and
terms the salt-restriction policies of the American Heart Association and
other groups "misguided"--a nuisance imposed on the American public by
zealots and bureaucrats who don't really know what they're talking about.
The anti-salt forces strongly disagree and point to new evidence that excess
salt consumption is linked not only to hypertension but possibly to other
conditions as well--including osteoporosis and some cancers. .
......"unquote
95-4286-(Hypert/Alderman)**
DALLAS, June 8 -- An unexpectedly high incidence of heart attacks was found
in hypertensive men with low amounts of salt in their urine, New York
researchers reported today. The study is the first to link different levels
of sodium intake/excretion with different levels of heart attack risk, its
authors say. The findings raise important questions about the low-salt diet
that's widely recommended for hypertensive patients, says Michael H.
Alderman, M.D., senior author of the study and chairman of epidemiology at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y. No particular
recommendation regarding salt intake is justified on the basis of this
single study, however, Alderman says. "Further research is needed to support
any new national dietary recommendations," he adds. Alderman and his
colleagues at Albert Einstein and at Cornell University Medical College in
New York City studied a group of 1,900 hypertensive men for an average of
almost four years. More than four times as many heart attacks occurred in
men with the lowest amounts of sodium in their urine, compared to men with
the highest levels of urinary sodium, the scientists report in the June
issue of Hypertension, an American Heart Association scientific journal. The
AHA defines hypertension as a chronic elevation in blood pressure to a
reading of 140 over 90 millimeters of mercury or higher...........
National Center of Heart... For more information, Email [log in to unmask]
http://www.amhrt.org/news/4286.htm
Salt is also known to be a great Aphrodisiac !
Pathophysiology SEE latest RESEARCH :Salt (sodium, chloride) sensitivity
http://www.medtext.com/hhesal.htm
|
