How to Stay Hydrated. Salt might kill your plants, but it won’t kill you

Electrolytes. It’s what plants crave.

Ok, I hope we all know not to pour salt on our plants. But, it’s starting to feel more like a scene from the movie Idiocracy every time I hear someone still claiming that salt is bad and reasons to lower it.

The key to staying hydrated is electrolytes. Salt is an important electrolyte. Look at just about any hydration product from Gatorade to liquid IV or Pedialyte (I’m looking at you drunkies and you’re hangover cures) and one of the first ingredients you’ll see is sodium or salt.

Salt Isn’t bad for you. We used to know this.

We like to demonize foods. Blame them for our health problems. Eliminate this from your diet, cut out that.  This has contributed to the toxic relationship many people have with food. 

Salt is a critical component to many important bodily functions as well as how to stay hydrated, and there’s a chance that you might not be getting enough.

Throw me in the pro salt camp, along with the folks from LMNT and Re-lyte.

So let’s briefly explore the concept of why salt has gotten such a bad reputation and what’s wrong with that.

Your body needs salt to stay hydrated. And…

The first thing to know is that your body needs salt.  In fact, the systems of your body work very hard to maintain a specific salinity level.  How much salt you eat generally doesn’t affect this number because well, you’d likely die if your blood salinity level fell outside this range.

Salt is directly involved in the process that allows your cells to function.  It’s critical in the process that makes your heart pump, your kidneys function, and the communication of nerve cells.

Without it, you would quite literally die.  So if salt is so critical to these processes? How could it possibly be bad for you?

I really can’t explain this much better than Dr. James DiNicolantonio, in his book The Salt Fix, which I highly recommend but I’ll spare you with some cliff notes.

Salt doesn’t raise your BP.

Salt doesn’t really raise your blood pressure.  Now this is going to sound very controversial, but we need to talk about this. 

The idea that salt increases blood pressure is based on the idea that salt increases water retention and therefore increases blood volume.  This additional blood volume is what increases your blood pressure…supposedly.  There’s just one problem.  This is just a hypothesis that has never really been validated by science. Salt doesn’t actually raise your blood pressure.

It’s worth mentioning that some people may be salt-sensitive.  These people may see changes in their blood pressure with changes in dietary salt.  That said, the real question is…are you born salt-sensitive? Or do you become salt-sensitive? Perhaps through consuming not enough salt, and more importantly, not enough potassium.

This might be similar to being insulin-sensitive if you don’t consume very much sugar or glucose.  You’re light-sensitive when you wake up early and it’s still dark outside.  You’re also noise-sensitive if you’ve been in a quiet environment for a while.  Sensitivity is generally driven by a lack of exposure, not abundance.

Additionally, your body doesn’t just hold on to excess fluid and salt in perfect amounts until you explode.  Your body does what it needs and gets rid of the excess.  So when it’s time for your body to express fluid (and any extra salt it doesn’t need) mostly through urine.  

Kidneys also help to regulate your blood pressure through the balance of fluid and salt.  Not enough salt makes your kidneys work harder, not too much salt.  Not enough potassium makes your Kidneys work harder too.  More on that later.

Can I consume too much salt?

So, what is too much salt?  A separate condition defined by too much sodium in the blood is called hypernatremia.  This is a condition defined by high sodium outside of the reference range.  Specifically 145 meq/L.  

According to Dr. D’Nicolantonio in The Salt Fix, your kidneys filter the daily recommended intake of sodium every 5 min.  With this information, consider how much salt you would need to consume in order to make the kidneys work “too hard.” Exceeding your ability to filter and excrete what it doesn’t need might be harder than you think.

If you consume higher sodium than you need, your kidneys, liver, and gastrointestinal systems can all work together to absorb less dietary sodium in the first place.

Is it possible to exceed your body’s ability to do its job?  It would certainly seem so. A sodium excretion (measured in the urine) above 7g per day is associated with negative health outcomes.

What they generally don’t tell you is that sodium below 3g per day is also associated with negative health outcomes. 

Now urine isn’t the only way your body excretes sodium, but it can be a good proxy for how much sodium you are consuming.  The sweet spot appears to be between 4-5g of sodium per day which is more than double the recommendations of the AHA and the WHO.  More if you consider again this is based on urine excretion and if you sweat a lot, that’s more sodium you’re excreting, meaning more you’re going to need.  

You probably need more potassium to stay hydrated too.

The other thing they fail to mention in study after study after study that supposedly shows high salt is bad for you is that high potassium seems to eliminate the risks associated with high salt.  Oh yeah, there it is, that potassium thing.  Nor do they mention in their flawed analysis that increasing potassium appears to have a greater BP-lowering effect. As much as 3 times greater.

Now where I come from there’s a simple explanation for this.  Too much salt isn’t bad for you.  Not enough potassium is.  If eating potassium eliminates the risk of “too much salt,” it’s not the salt that’s the problem.  Yet in many of these cases medical professionals just can’t help themselves to continue pressing the too much salt is bad for you button.  

If effect, increasing potassium intake makes salt not bad for you.

With this logic, saying too much salt is bad for you is roughly the equivalent of saying in response to obesity, “Food is bad for you, you should restrict your calories to 1000/day,” about half of what the average person needs.

Oh, by the way, exercise and healthy calories appear to “attenuate the effects” of eating too much.  So combine severe calorie restriction with exercise (see how well that goes for you).

Ask an overweight person how well crash dieting works.  Hint: it doesn’t.  Oh, and we also tell obese people to reduce their sodium, which increases fatigue. Yeah, I wouldn’t exercise either if I was tired all the time.  

If my sarcasm hasn’t communicated my frustration with the absurdity of the low-salt proponents I’m not sure what else will.

How can I tell If I’m getting enough salt?

Well, there are at-home sodium tests that you can use to see where you land if you want to know immediately or ask your doctor to what your levels are/were in your next check-up.

Aside from making sure you’re safely in the middle of the 3-7g range, if you’ve been on a low-sodium diet for a while, here is a short list of things that may be related to not getting enough salt.

Listen. I’m not telling you to consume huge amounts of salt here.  Just that the AHA recommendation of 2300mg per day with 1500mg preferred is just way too low.  It’s absolutely possible to eat too much salt.  This is why you would never want to drink salt water.  It’s just too much.

However, it’s also possible to drink too much water, a condition called hyponatremia (also categorized by not enough salt).  A condition that is primarily treated by consuming…you guessed it, salt. But we’re not running around demonizing water, are we?

Instead of demonizing foods, focus on getting enough of the things you need. Like potassium, and Salt.  You know, NaCl, the whole thing.  Those sodium levels on your packaged foods are just a distraction.  

So how do I use this information to stay hydrated?

You need salt…but you also need potassium. Proper hydration comes down to a balance of all essential electrolytes. Don’t forget things like magnesium or calcium.

For most people, all you need to do is listen to your body (i.e. salt cravings) and eat plenty of potassium-rich foods.

If you exercise, or sweat a lot working outside you likely need more. Hydration packs can go a long way to combine with your water in order to stay hydrated both before and during high-intensity activity. It may even be beneficial to get some in your body first thing in the morning. Plus they taste great.

So stop restricting salt and start getting more potassium-rich foods.  

If you’re looking at the label to figure out how much sodium it has in it you’re already missing the point.  Eat a wide range of fruits and vegetables for gut health and potassium levels, and make it all taste better with salt.  How much salt?  As much as it takes for you to be able to eat and enjoy it every day.

So how do you stay hydrated?

Listen to your body, and enjoy real, healthy, food.  With a little bit of salt.