Introduction

Today I am writing about one of the world’s favorite condiments. I'm referring to salt. Salt is not an inherently evil substance. In fact, it has an essential role in the human diet. Salt is essential for cellular transmission, so it’s not necessarily evil, but if you consume it in too great quantities, it has some bad effects, and if you consume it in the quantities that most people in the world do, it has downright ugly effects. 

In this blog, we're going to take a look at the following:
What is salt chemically?
Where is salt found?
What is it good for? 
What's wrong if you have too much of it?

What's Salt Chemically?

Well, everybody knows it's that white stuff in the salt shaker on the table, but what is it chemically? 

The chemists tell us it's an atom of sodium attached to an atom of chlorine, and they're held together by their magnetic charges, and because the magnetic charges go out in all six directions, left to right, top to bottom, front to back, then every sodium atom can contact and hold six chloride ions, and every chloride ion is in contact with six sodiums. 

That's what creates a crystal of salt, and when you put the salt in water, the water neutralizes the magnetic charges holding the crystal together, and the crystal falls apart, and that's why salt dissolves in water. When salt dissolves in water, you get a solution of both the sodium and the chloride, and it's the sodium ions that cause the most mischief in our bodies. And we want to focus on that.

Where is Salt Found?

It's found in all living tissues in small amounts and in the same concentration as in our tissues. The concentration of sodium inside a leaf of kale or a piece of carrot is the same concentration that we have in our cells, and for that reason, there is no need to actually add any salt. It's already in the foods that we are eating. The most controllable way to add salt to our diet is at the table. The way that most people consume it, is what is in processed foods because it's in there in large amounts, and there's nothing you can do about it because it's already in the sauces, soups, and chips. And then there's the whole issue of restaurant meals, which are invariably loaded with salt, and we'll talk about that later in this blog.

What is Salt Good for?

Our bloodstream has roughly the same salt concentration as salt water in the ocean, and that's very important because all the chemical reactions in our body take place in this saltwater solution, so you need a little salt to keep your chemistry going. It's not evil stuff. You need some. It's essential for life. And also, a solution of salt water conducts electricity, and that's really important because we are electrical beings. Every time you flex your muscle or fire off a nerve, electrical impulses are going up and down, and you need some sodium chloride to do that. 

What's Wrong with Eating Too Much of it?

Salt's essential for life. However, we tend to eat way too much of it. We sure love salty things. We'll eat it when it's just caked right on the surface, there for everyone to see.

So what's wrong with eating too much salt?  Well, as soon as we eat a salty meal, the salt gets into our bloodstream, and our blood starts becoming saltier and saltier and saltier, and that is not a good thing.

Our Blood Gets Too Salty

Why is it not a good thing if our blood gets too salty? Because if our blood gets too salty, the high salt concentration is going to start pulling water out of our cells, and they will dehydrate and die. You will start to pickle on the inside is what happens. And I mean that literally. How do you make a pickle? You take a cucumber, and you do what? You put it into salt water, right? And the concentration of salt is so high in the brine solution that it pulls water out of that cucumber and turns it into a floppy pickle. Well, that's what would happen to your brain, to your heart, to your kidneys, and your adrenals if your blood gets too salty. Your body will not permit that. 

Nature looks out for us

So as soon as your brain detects that your blood is getting too salty, it immediately wants to lower the salt concentration, and it does it in a very ingenious way. How do you lower the salt concentration in your blood? Like you lower the salt concentration anywhere, add water. Dilute it out. Well, how do we add water to the bloodstream? Well, your body knows how to do that in two brilliant ways: 

1. You get thirsty:  First of all, you get thirsty, and you go over to the water cooler, and you pour yourself a pint of water, and you drink it down, and you add a pint of water to your bloodstream to dilute out the salt concentration. 
2. Kidneys Retain Water: Also, as the brain detects that your blood is getting salty, a little chemical messenger goes from your brain down to your kidneys’ antidiuretic hormone, and this molecule tells the kidneys, Hey, kidneys. You know that water you were going to excrete out in the urine? We need to dilute out the salt in the bloodstream, so hold on to that water, and the kidneys say, Aye, aye, and they retain water, and sure enough, the blood gets more watery, and the salt concentration goes down.

These are two elegant mechanisms that dilute the salt in your blood, keep the salt concentration normal, and let you eat another pretzel another day. Well, that's all very nice. We dilute it out, but we pay a price for that.

What's the price for diluting the Salt?

What's the price? Well, normally, you've got about eight pints of blood circulating around your body. Well, you drink on a couple of pints, you retain a pint or so of water through your kidneys, and suddenly, you're pumping around nine pints of fluid, 10 pints of fluid in your bloodstream. Listed below are 7 consequences.

1. Edema:

People notice it after airline flights and standing all day. People who eat a high salt diet know their ankles are swollen. That's called edema. They notice their tissues feel more bloaty, and they put on weight because water is heavy, 62 pounds per cubic foot, but these are mostly cosmetic issues.

2. High Blood Pressure: 

A high salt load and the resulting dilution of it out in the bloodstream increases your blood pressure. Ask any plumber what happens when you add more fluid to the piping system, and the pressure in the system goes up.

Here you see it. Here's a normal amount of blood going through normal blood vessels, but you put too much blood volume through the same piping system, and the pressure is going to go up. High blood pressure has consequences.

3. Elasticity of Your Arteries
Salt in the bloodstream in high concentrations day after day does something else. It actually seeps into the walls of the arteries. Your arteries are muscular tubes that are constantly relaxing and constricting as you go upstairs or as you sleep. They're amazingly responsive organs, and they need this elasticity and this give. Also, every time your heart beats and a wave of pressure comes out of your heart, the arteries, if they're nice and elastic, they absorb some of that shockwave that comes out of the heart to make it easy on the tissues throughout the body. But if you keep your blood salty from a high salt diet, and the salt oozes into the walls of the arteries, they become stiff. And then when that heart beats and that pressure wave comes slamming down this now rigid piping tubing of your arteries, that pressure wave slams into some very delicate tissues throughout the body, and that has some very bad effects. 

4. Formation of Cholesterol Plaques
First of all, it's hard on the piping system itself. The artery walls, if you expose them to high pressure month after month, year after year, heartbeat after heartbeat, after a while, as the months and years go by, the inner side of the artery walls begin to crack. Tiny little splits and cracks appear in the inside of the artery walls, and in order to patch the cracks, the body starts laying down cholesterol plaques. There's a strong theory that one of the early stimuli for creating plaques in your arteries is the high pressure, causing cracks inside the arteries.

 

• • You're as Old as Your Arteries **
    There's an old saying, you're as old as your arteries, you're as old as your arteries. If your arteries are supple and wide open, you're a young person no matter what the date is on your birth certificate, and if your arteries are stiff and all clogged up, you're an old, old man or an old, old woman, no matter when you were born. You want to take care of your arteries. High blood pressure is hard on them. 

5. Effect on your Retina
High blood pressure damages your body. It's hardest on the very delicate tissues in the body, like the retina of your eye. This is an amazing structure; of course, it lets us convert light into vision, and the cells of the retina are really remarkable. This is what the doctor sees when they have you on the exam table and they turn the lights down.  They take their ophthalmoscope and they look in the back of your eye. This is the retina and the retinal artery comes in with the optic nerve. It has four branches to it, and it delivers highly oxygenated blood to these very active cells out in the retina, and you need them to see. But these arteries, they're divided into small and small arterioles and fine little capillaries; they're very fragile, one cell thin, they do not stand up to high pressure.

Well, you slam a pressure wave, heartbeat after heartbeat, against these very delicate blood vessels, and as the years go by, some bad things happen, that lovely architecture turns into something like this. These yellow and red blodges here are retinal hemorrhages. 

You are looking at bleeds inside the retinal tissues, and wherever this has happened, oxygenated blood that was going to the retinal cells is now just leaking out into the surrounding area. The retinal cells dependent upon the blood flow die from lack of oxygen, and as a result, you get retinal scars throughout the visual area, and the person develops blind spots. This is hypertensive retinopathy, which is why people with uncontrolled high blood pressure go blind. 

6. Effect on your Kidneys
Your kidneys are another organs that get into the neck, so to speak, from high blood pressure.

25% of every heartbeat's blood comes into your kidneys for filtration, comes into the renal arteries, the blood is brought out to the outside of the kidneys, into the renal cortex. The blood is essentially taken apart, run through some very delicate filters. What the body does not want to retain in the bloodstream goes out in the urine through the ureter, and the blood is reassembled and put into the renal vein back into circulation. So these are amazing structures, your kidneys, and the filtration happens in these very delicate structures called the glomeruli. These are gossamer filters, they're one cell thin and your life depends upon them and everyone is precious.

When they're gone, they're gone and they're so fragile they do not stand up to high blood pressure. Well, you pound away at them hour after hour, year after year, and what you get is this lovely architecture turns into something like this. These are glomerular hemorrhages and this person is losing kidney function with every heartbeat and with uncontrolled high blood pressure, it's an express ticket to the dialysis unit or getting your name on the renal transplant list. 

7. Risk of Strokes
High blood pressure is hard on the tissues. And the most feared consequence of uncontrolled high blood pressure are strokes. There are 2 types of strokes:

• • ischemic stroke If the plaque forms in a small blood vessel going to the brain, a little clot appears there, it'll seal off the blood flow to the far areas of the brain which then die from lack of blood flow, that's an ischemic stroke. 
    
  • hemorrhagic stroke If the pressure is so high it just absolutely blows out a blood vessel and you bleed into the brain as a hemorrhagic stroke.

They're both catastrophes, and these are the results of uncontrolled high blood pressure. 

Conclusion

So salt is not evil. We need it for mineral balance and electrical energy. Too much of it stiffens your arteries, raises your blood pressure, and that can lead to absolutely ugly things like strokes and blindness, kidney failure, heart failure, etc.

If you would like to know more about the following: 

1. How much salt do you need?

2. How much salt is healthy?

3. Recommended daily sodium intake?

4. What do you do about it if you want to reduce it in your diet and still enjoy the foods that you're eating?

Click the link below to get a PDF copy of my guide called "Rethinking Salt: Smarter Eating for a Longer, Healthier Life."

Bibliography

1. William Osler, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (New York: D. Appleton, 1892), section “Arterio-sclerosis (Arterio-capillary Fibrosis),”