Added Salt in Diet Leads to Health Problems
Latest trend in alternative health is to use food and diet as a means for preventing, treating and controlling certain medical conditions. A low-sodium diet does all three of these things.
One of the first things a cardiologist will likely tell a new heart patient is to reduce sodium. It’s in everything we eat, naturally, so added sodium isn’t necessary. Learn how eliminating this from your diet can benefit your health.
The first thing my cardiologist did (as well as my pulmonologist) when I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and diastolic heart failure, was to take me down to a two grams per day or less sodium diet. My regular doctors had always told me-and everyone else in my family-that keeping sodium below seven grams per day is the best for everyone, which is really quite a lot of sodium once you start reducing it and realize that.
Low Sodium Diet Good for Prevention and Health
I had never had heart disease or high blood pressure or any other cardiovascular diseases, but since the pulmonary embolisms damaged my heart, I now have all the similar problems, and a restricted sodium diet is essential to heart patients.
Because of this, the things that help cardio patients will also help me, but surprisingly, they will help improve the quality of health for anyone, and might actually help prevent some heart-related and cardiovascular problems in the future too. Doctors and nutritionists are almost always going to recommend lowering the amount of sodium in your diet, probably considerably too.
Why Low Sodium?
Sodium is absolutely essential for the normal and health function of life. We have to have sodium in our diets, in our bodies, in the fluids in our bodies to promote balance, homeostasis, and electrolyte function of the body. But in excess, sodium can cause serious damage in the body. Since most foods come with sodium in them naturally, adding sodium-often used for preservative effect, flavor enhancing, and dehydrating or storing-is really not necessary for health purposes.
Yet, food manufacturers are constantly adding sodium, in various forms, to our processed foods in order to have them last longer on the store shelf without spoiling and to make them taste better (as a flavor enhancer, sodium actually works great) so we are tempted to want to buy more of their product.
But in the end, sodium is bad for health in excess, and anything we get in these processed foods is going to be in excess. Even some natural fruit has a slight sodium content to it, so we’re going to get enough sodium in our diets if we simply eat a healthy diet of non-processed foods. But when we add in processed foods, sodas (high in sodium for a drink, check the label) and then toss in the salt shaker as well, we’re damaging our bodies, quite possibly permanently, all for a little added flavor on our meals.
The No-Salt Taste
Yet, foods have never, in my opinion, tasted as good as when I stopped adding salt to everything. I was a salt addict too. I loved salty snacks, and sweet and salty was a favorite flavor combination. Vegetables take on a type of sweetness you miss when salting them, and other foods lose some of their natural flavors. Salt can also destroy some of the nutritional properties of foods when cooking them with boiling salt water. The only thing I still miss salt on is meats, and I use a special sea salt blend for marinades, to really get the flavor enhanced without increasing sodium too much.
Once you’re used to the no-salt or low-salt diet, eating foods with excess salt simply won’t taste good any more. The flavor takes a week or two in order to get used to not having salt. In that time, food will taste bland, boring, and you’ll crave and miss salt much like giving up any bad habit can cause in the beginning. But stick with it for longer than two weeks, and not only will you not regret it, you’ll be on your way to a healthier, tastier lifestyle with almost no additional effort or modifications to your diet over simply skipping the salt shaker and avoiding packaged meals.