Found this on my maniac tour:
The Beat:
Salt is an addiction. It is culturally induced induced by the need to
add some salt for flavour in vegetables. When I gave up salt, the
only food that I ate which seemed to need salt was eggs, but after a
few years this passed- unsalted butter made the difference- without
that added fat eggs are definitely very bland. Take care to only buy
and use unsalted butter. Salt in butter is there as a preservative,
thus the level is very high. Unsalted butter is a bit more expensive
because only very fresh cream can be used to make it, whereas soured
cream, neutralised with soda is used to make 'regular' butter that is
then preserved with salt. The very best and tastiest butter possible
is made at home by shaking pure cream, and separating the resulting
delicious near-white butter from the whey.
Taking in more salt than you body needs is very, very bad for you. If
your sweat tastes salty, you have too much intake. Both the skin and
the kidneys dump salt, but cannot 'change gears' quickly. Both organs
are affected by passing salt. The salt content of sweat and urine can
go down to a few parts per million, to conserve the saline balance of
the bodies tissues. It only takes about one ounce of any meat/day to
supply all the sodium your body requires. for normal saline balance.
I sometimes sweat so proficiently that I need to drink 3 or four
litres of water in less than an hour. I have no effects of low salt,
and my sweat is never salty. I used to watch the other kids in ballet
class scarfing slat tabs, while I just drank water, my shirt was very
wet, but dried out normal but theirs were rimed with a heavy white
salt crust,indicating that the massive excess of alt was simply being
dumped. If they did not eat the salt tabs when drinking water, they
fainted.
If addicted to salt, just like with any other addiction, when you
stop using, you will experience 'side effects', such as everything
suddenly seeming tasteless and bland. If you persist, salt becomes
vile-tasting, and food without salt very tasty (but not (sodium-
deficient) veggies-tasteless by nature, but which we are not talking
about here).
It takes several days for your body to stop dumping salt through the
skin and kidneys and begin conserving it, so when quitting, be aware
of your salt balance- you may experience light headed-ness and the
other classic signs of low sodium, if necessary take a tiny pinch-
but try to stop all salt as quickly as you can tolerate it. Salt was
a significant cause of my grandfather's demise at 91 from kidney
failure. I consider it a chemical poison. Only vegetarians have a
salt-deficiency in their diet.
Our taste buds are important early warning detectors of the nature of
things taken into the mouth. The bitter taste sense, for instance
does not mean that we were destined by nature to like or need Swedish
Bitters, it is there to warn you of alkaloids in plants, common
defensive chemicals which can be very fatal. Likewise, sweet, salt
and sour are not indicators of what you should be taught to like as
food, they are there so you can measure and test- some food may have
gone bad, if it is sour- milk for instance. Taste buds are simply
chemical detectors which every animal has, and are generic in
response- not indicators to any specific food liking, that is learned
behaviour- cued by taste (and smell). Most of what we view as the
taste of something is mostly the smell.
Salt is a simple chemical, sodium chloride, a mineral substance mined
from where it has been deposited from weathered rocks or pools of
seawater. It can be found contaminated with a wide variety of
additional compounds, depending on the source it is derived from.
Some kinds may also be toxic- as well as unhealthful, as is pure salt
in all its forms. Human commerce in salt began with the use of
vegetation as a major item of human food. Only herbivorous animals
will seek out and consume salt- because sodium is lacking in all
terrestrial plant tissues. Carnivores do not need any salt. Your
taste for salt on meat is learned behaviour only.
And this:
sodium in the body is controled by a negative feedback system using the hormones aldosterone as well as other hormones that I do not want to get into at the moment. To make this simple, when you ingest sodium or salt your body inhibits the release of aldosterone and you will excrete more sodium in the urine. Aldosterone promotes sodium reabsorbtion. So if you use salt in your diet and you go a long period of time without it, your body will crave more because you have exreted alot of it in your urine due to the lack of aldosterone. On the other hand if you do not use alot of salt in your diet your adrenals will secrete more aldosterone thus conserving the amount of salt that gets exreted in the urine. If you add salt to your diet at this point in time when aldosterone is high (caused from long periods of low salt intake) you will get edema or water retention in some areas of the body. Continue to eat more salt and the body's negative feedback system will kick in and will inhibit aldosterone becuase the body does not need to conserve salt since it is getting high quantities of it. Now since your body has reduced its aldosterone levels it can handle more salt from the diet because it is being excreted quicker from the body from the inhibition of this hormone.
I personally believe we should not use any salt in our diet and I strongly agree with Bear on this one. I believe once you go long periods of time without using salt your body will adapt and you will feel alot better. Its just like with restricting carbs. You have to restrict them and wait for the adaptation period to kick in so your body will normalize. The Yanomami South American tribe has a super low amount of sodium in their diet (which consits of meat and large amounts of vegtables) and they have the lowest blood pressures on the planet from what I have read.
