Is Salt The New Medicine?
Why You Can Now Ask To Pass The Salt
“Pass the salt, please,” I said to my mother-in-law.
We were enjoying a big, extended family dinner. And you should know, my mother-in-law is a wizard in the kitchen. This time she’d served a savory chicken dish. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
“Don’t you taste your food before you salt it?” I was asked. “It’s not healthy to eat too much, you know.”
Now the truth is two-fold. First, I’ve had this same chicken dish dozens of times. It’s delicious. It’s just better with more salt. Salt enhances the flavor. But I couldn’t very well lead with, “It always needs salt.”
I also didn’t want to pull out my kindle to reference all the highlighted sections I’ve made in various health books. Only, that’s not true. It’s exactly what I wanted.
Who wouldn’t enjoy such a riveting dinner conversation? Can’t you see it now? “Let’s all pause for the next fifteen minutes while I read to you about nutrition. Then you can decide if you also want more salt.”
I could have read from these books.
- The Salt Fix, by Dr. James DiNicolantonio.
- The Longevity Solution, by Dr. Jason Fung and Dr. James DiNicolantonio.
- Lies My Doctor Told Me- Medical Myths That Can Harm Your Health, by Dr. Ken D. Berry.
I could have done that, sure. But my chicken would have gotten cold. So would the stares from everyone at the table.
Instead, I made two quick points and used math to make my argument for the salt. Here are the points.
- The benefits of low-salt diets are based on false premises.
- Low-salt diets can cause multiple health problems.
The math? I calculated that my first, unsalted bite, makes up perhaps 5% of the meal. Yet, 99.9% of the time, I find that I want more salt. This means if I didn’t pre-salt, I’d be reducing my overall meal satisfaction by 4.99%.
Or, as Tony Stark said in Infinity War, “Your math is blowing my mind.”
Let’s leave the math out of this and take those two points in order.
The benefits of low-salt diets are based on false premises.
The year was 1989. Richard Marx was right here waiting for you. Debbie Gibson was getting lost in your eyes. And the Food And Nutrition Board made a health recommendation that we’re still paying for today.
The recommendation? Limit your daily sodium intake to 2400 milligrams.
Their thinking was that people’s blood pressure increases, particularly as they age, if they consume more salt than 2,400 mg. For years, the accepted wisdom has been that sodium causes high blood pressure, which in turn is responsible for cardiovascular events.
The Board conducted a study across fifty-two populations to show that correlation. In The Salt Fix, Dr. James DiNicolantonio explains the fallacy behind the study.
Only five populations of the fifty-two studied consumed less than 2,400 milligrams daily, and four of them were primitive societies. The fifth population that consumed under 2,400 milligrams of sodium actually had a higher systolic blood pressure compared to several populations with a higher intake. In fact, one population consumed more than twice the amount of salt but had a lower systolic blood pressure. —Dr. James DiNicolantonio, The Salt Fix.
In other words, the study showed the opposite expected result. That didn’t stop the Food and Nutrition Board from making its recommendation. How did it get around it?
By faking the numbers.
And when the four primitive societies were excluded from the other fifty-two populations, the data shifted — suddenly there was a clear downward slope for blood pressure as salt intake increased. — Dr. James DiNicolantonio, The Salt Fix.
That’s right. Most of the people who ate more salt saw their blood pressure go down.
In the following video, Dr. Jason Fung, the co-author of The Longevity Solution, breaks down how this publication bias happens. He also goes into multiple other studies that show our long-standing fears of salt are unfounded.
Low-salt diets can cause multiple health problems.
One meta-analysis of sixty-three randomized control trials found that reduced salt intake caused humans and animals’ heart rates to increase.
The abstract went on to say:
As heart rate is independently associated with the development of heart failure and increased risk of premature death a potential increase in heart rate could be a harmful side-effect of sodium reduction. — Reduced Dietary Sodium Intake Increases Heart Rate. A Meta-Analysis of 63 Randomized Controlled Trials Including 72 Study Populations
In The Salt Fix, Dr. DiNicolantonio mentions several times that a salt reduction can increase insulin levels and insulin resistance.
He cites studies that show this could “increase the fasting insulin level from 10 to 50 percent, which could throw someone from a healthy level to one that’s trending toward diabetes.”
In addition to diabetes, high insulin levels can also cause weight and fat gain.
In Lies My Doctor Told Me, Dr. Berry puts it simply. “Salt is necessary for optimized health.”
The surprising thing is this goes beyond simply heart heath or even physical health. Salt can also be key in preventing addiction and our overall mental health.
Marla Szwast wrote a fascinating article back in 2019. How Low-Salt Diets Give Fuel to Addictions. In it, she quotes from The Salt Fix, making the same argument that Dr. DiNicolantonio did.
In fact, people with obesity, ADHD, and drug addiction to cocaine and heroin share a similar brain signature. All three have the same down regulation of the dopamine D2 receptors in the brain, indicating a lack of normal dopamine function in all three conditions. — Dr. James DiNicolantonio, The Salt Fix.
In addition to this, Dr. DiNicolantonio argues that low-salt diets increase anxiety and that people feel better when they eat sufficient levels. That argument is made in part by looking at studies like this one.
Here is the takeaway. Salt has a bad reputation. It’s become ingrained in our collective consciousness. And by believing the myth and leaving the salt shaker untouched, we’re potentially harming our health.
Back to my chicken dinner. I told my concerned family the same points I made above. The evidence behind salt being bad for you is faulty. And low-salt diets cause health problems.
I was then asked, “How is your blood pressure?”
I was happy to report, “For the first time in my adult life, it’s normal. I’ve been testing in regularly.”
The concerned family member wasn’t sure what to make of this. “Well, how much weight have you lost?”
“Somewhere around forty pounds. I don’t have the exact number.”
“Oh, it must be because of that,” he said.
And he was partly right. But throughout the weight loss, I’ve also increased my salt intake, and my health markers, including blood pressure and resting heart rate, have all improved.
And I ended up salting the chicken. It was a fabulous meal.
Scott Hughey is not a doctor. He urges you to do the research around this touchy subject. That includes talking to medical professionals, but maybe do like Scott did and read The Salt Fix first.
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