But then why do medicine portals advise us to be wary of risks associated with too low sodium? It’s claimed to cause insulin resistance, a higher risk of heart disease, hyponatremia, and whatnot. People with any-cause hyponatremia can cure their symptoms with more salt. These people here[1] claim that it’s probably not good for healthy people to artificially (i.e. against their natural desire) restrict their sodium. After reading these claims, what’s the main good side of reducing sodium intake to pretty low?
Generally the hypothesis is that most people will get more sodium in their diet than they crave with their natural desire, if they just eat the food of least resistance (cheapest or easiest, most shelf stable, whatnot). A lot of the sodium that gets into your diet is not so richly activating your taste buds as table salt applied to taste.
What we want overall with salinity is to preserve it at a level that’s correct for us, because we take it in through our diet and excrete it through various processes like sweat. Excessive salt consumption doesn’t directly affect your overall salt and water balance that much, because the body has hormonal regulation of various mechanisms to keep it stable—it’s presumably the overworking of these mechanisms that causes health issues, which is much preferable than it causing issues directly if you’ve seen the effects of the wrong salinity on cells in a petri dish under a microscope.
(The effects on whatever cells I was looking at, which started at a neutral salinity: Raising the salinity (saltier) caused them to shrivel up and dessicate like raisins; lowering the salinity (less salty) caused them to explode.)
It’s my understanding that the controversy is mostly manufactured by industries with large financial interests in selling foods with added sodium. They pay for misleading/inaccurate studies to be done in order to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Whereas it’s my understanding there is a near consensus towards low sodium amongst scientists without direct/indirect industry ties.
I do think there are probably some cases where increasing salt beyond natural levels can be the healthier thing to do given specific health concerns.
But then why do medicine portals advise us to be wary of risks associated with too low sodium? It’s claimed to cause insulin resistance, a higher risk of heart disease, hyponatremia, and whatnot. People with any-cause hyponatremia can cure their symptoms with more salt. These people here[1] claim that it’s probably not good for healthy people to artificially (i.e. against their natural desire) restrict their sodium. After reading these claims, what’s the main good side of reducing sodium intake to pretty low?
https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcr124
Generally the hypothesis is that most people will get more sodium in their diet than they crave with their natural desire, if they just eat the food of least resistance (cheapest or easiest, most shelf stable, whatnot). A lot of the sodium that gets into your diet is not so richly activating your taste buds as table salt applied to taste.
What we want overall with salinity is to preserve it at a level that’s correct for us, because we take it in through our diet and excrete it through various processes like sweat. Excessive salt consumption doesn’t directly affect your overall salt and water balance that much, because the body has hormonal regulation of various mechanisms to keep it stable—it’s presumably the overworking of these mechanisms that causes health issues, which is much preferable than it causing issues directly if you’ve seen the effects of the wrong salinity on cells in a petri dish under a microscope.
(The effects on whatever cells I was looking at, which started at a neutral salinity: Raising the salinity (saltier) caused them to shrivel up and dessicate like raisins; lowering the salinity (less salty) caused them to explode.)
It’s my understanding that the controversy is mostly manufactured by industries with large financial interests in selling foods with added sodium. They pay for misleading/inaccurate studies to be done in order to introduce uncertainty and doubt. Whereas it’s my understanding there is a near consensus towards low sodium amongst scientists without direct/indirect industry ties.
I do think there are probably some cases where increasing salt beyond natural levels can be the healthier thing to do given specific health concerns.