Dr. Keith Kantor
What do you think about salt?
Salt is a necessary electrolyte that we need to survive along with essential mineral content it provides. The original purpose of salt was to preserve food, modern day users, use it to enhance the flavor of food. It is produced or extracted from the sea or salt mines.
People make me feel guilty when I touch the saltshaker, but am it for my own good?
Excessive amounts of salt/sodium have no benefits to our health. If you consume a diet that is low in processed foods, instant soups, broths, soy sauce, pickled vegetables and/or cheese then you are probably not getting in above the recommended 2300-3000mg per day that health authorities have set as a limit. So a dash of high quality salt, like sea salt, Kosher salt, or Himalayan pink salt here and there is a healthy way to enhance the flavor of your food and can also provide healthy minerals to your diet.
Endurance athletes use high quality salts during long training sessions to ensure that electrolytes stay balanced while avoiding muscle cramping due to excessive sweating and loss of sodium. This is only for those who are engaging in 90 minutes or more of intense exercise such as cycling, running, etc.
Are the low salt recommendations of modern medicine as beneficial to our health as they say?
It was once believed that excess sodium increased risk for heart disease, recent research has proved different. It is true that cutting back on sodium intake can moderately reduce hypertension.
Some research as linked a low sodium diet to increased LDL (bad cholesterol) and even insulin resistance.
There are some health conditions such as congestive heart failure that require a low sodium diet and the constant care of health professionals. If you are a healthy person who does not eat a lot of foods out of a bag, can or box with a long ingredient list then cooking with high quality salt and a dash here and there is fine.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21036373
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535503
