This needs to be paired with Scientific American:
It's time to end the war on salt
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
CFTR, being a chloride channel, most likely leads to diabetes as a consequence of its effects on the voltage-regulated insulin release in beta cells from glucose sensing. [1] It strikes me as unlikely to be related to the salt-wasting that occurs from failure to reabsorb chloride in the epithelium. 1 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104438/
I think it is probably a lot more complicated than that. CF does a great many things to the body. It is an inflammatory condition and I have seen multiple articles linking diabetes and inflammation. People with CF tend to be seriously underweight and I have recently seen articles that link inadequate muscle protein to insulin resistance. There is no doubt more than that going on, those are just a couple of things tha…
It would be nice of you to provide some sources for your claims. I don't know if you are right or not, but at least providing links to the articles you are referring to would be appreciated.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#13I think Thor Heyerdahl or someone on one of his crews noted that when they added seawater to the freshwater to make it last longer it also made them less thirsty. IIRC they thought it was an interesting observation since it was against all common understanding, but I don't think they ever came close to a solution to why.
Did he (or they) happen to mention the ratios of salt water to fresh? I don't know a whole lot about this topic, but I do recall reading somewhere that thirsty seafarers who succumbed to the urge to drink seawater ended up dying more quickly. I wonder if they figured out how much was okay to drink before it started negatively impacting health.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#14my n=1: I am on an extremely low sodium diet (around 500mg/day) and I didn't find any difference in thirst or hunger levels compared to when I was on a more typical 4000-5000mg/day one.
The only change for me (besides of course a period of adjustment where food didn't taste like much) has been a significantly lower blood pressure (from typically 145/85 to 105/65), everything else has remained pretty much the same.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#15> Instead of drinking more, the crew were drinking less in the long run when getting more salt. So where was the excreted water coming from? “There was only one way to explain this phenomenon,” Dr. Titze said. “The body most likely had generated or produced water when salt intake was high.”
That's odd, what if simply a high-level of sodium reduces your perspiration? Wikipedia[1] says "The volume of water lost in sweat daily is highly variable, ranging from 100 to 8,000 mL/day." so between 0.1 and 8 liters per day! [2] even says 10 to 12 liters per day!
If on average over a long period the subjects drank let's say exactly 1 liter per day and peed strictly more than 1 liter of water, then I'd agree with what this Dr. said, but neither this nytimes article, nor the 2 papers mentioned [3][4] mention the word perspiration or sweat in their abstracts/summaries, why not?
Off-topic: Did nytimes.com made it hard on purpose to select text from their article? On Chrome and Firefox I can't select text easily, only Edge lets me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267797/
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#16my n=1: I am on an extremely low sodium diet (around 500mg/day) and I didn't find any difference in thirst or hunger levels compared to when I was on a more typical 4000-5000mg/day one. The only change for me (besides of course a period of adjustment where food didn't taste like much) has been a significantly lower blood pressure (from typically 145/85 to 105/65), everything else has remained pretty much the same.
That's interesting, did you control for changes in other diet elements, exercise, and water intake ?
Some more recent studies show that except for short term spikes in blood pressure, salt isn't that guilty for high blood pressure in healthy individuals.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#17my n=1: I am on an extremely low sodium diet (around 500mg/day) and I didn't find any difference in thirst or hunger levels compared to when I was on a more typical 4000-5000mg/day one. The only change for me (besides of course a period of adjustment where food didn't taste like much) has been a significantly lower blood pressure (from typically 145/85 to 105/65), everything else has remained pretty much the same.
That's interesting, did you control for changes in other diet elements, exercise, and water intake ? Some more recent studies show that except for short term spikes in blood pressure, salt isn't that guilty for high blood pressure in healthy individuals.
I'm going to throw a wrench into the gears by sharing the following: I had high blood pressure- not medication-triggering, just high-eyebrow stuff when I was younger (30s-early 40s). As a teenager I learned of the dangers of salt and weaned it out of my diet.
I got married and am the cook of the family, so after much complaining I started to add salt to my dishes when I cooked.
My blood pressure when down. Not by a little, but to the "wow your blood pressure is amazing" category (105 or 110). So, yeah, I don't think we know how salt works.
NB my exercise/habits stayed pretty much the same in this period.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#18This didn't surprise me so much. In several hot countries I have noted people taking salt to relieve thirst. In Mongolia I drank heavily salted tea (the usual there) all summer and it becomes quite natural. Maybe I'm missing some of the subtleties here?
You'll notice the same behavior from long distance runners, cyclists, hikers, etc. At some point you start feeling dehydration because you're missing electrolytes. If your water intake isn't salted or packed with minerals in some other way, it just makes you thirstier and thirstier.
Especially when it's hot out.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#19For the past year I've been on a low sodium diet, not so easy to achieve. After reviewing the renal physiology I learned about years ago re: sodium and calcium regulation, I'll testify it's every bit as complex as I remember and then some.
I'll be interested in reading the articles the newspaper report is based on, but ATM not sure how much the new findings contradict (vs. extend) what's thought to be true about the physiological roles of sodium. In terms of implications for health issues, conditions like hypertension are enormously heterogeneous in origin, salt intake being only one factor among a huge number of factors involved.
I was interested in the comment that high salt intake was potentially adverse for bone health via glucocorticoid stimulation. One thing I've recently learned is how high dietary sodium negatively affects bone calcium balance via mechanisms within bone cells, and in some people, excessive renal calcium excretion as well. These issues aren't AFAIK primarily mediated by elevated cortisol. So it seems to be suggesting another way high sodium intake promotes bone loss.
Goes to show we know a lot less than we think we know, in this case about body regulation of essential minerals like sodium and calcium. When we realize that also applies to every other factor we think related to high blood pressure or osteoporosis, it's very humbling indeed.
Re: Our understanding of the way the body handles salt may be wrong
#20> Instead of drinking more, the crew were drinking less in the long run when getting more salt. So where was the excreted water coming from? “There was only one way to explain this phenomenon,” Dr. Titze said. “The body most likely had generated or produced water when salt intake was high.” That's odd, what if simply a high-level of sodium reduces your perspiration? Wikipedia[1] says "The volume of water lost in swea…
It's not odd though, water is one of the outputs of our energy metabolism.