Excerpts:
One of the most pervasive and stupid things that we are currently told to do is to reduce salt intake. This advice has never been based on controlled clinical studies, ever. Yet, as with the cholesterol myth, the dogma that we should all reduce salt intake has become impervious to facts. I find that the ‘salt hypothesis’ is rather like a monster from a 1950s B movie. Every time you attack it with evidence it simply shrugs it off and grows even stronger.
Very recently, a study was done in Australia looking at salt intake. Actually it looked at sodium intake, not salt intake. I find this interesting, as no-one that I know eats sodium. In fact, it would be interesting to see someone try.
Consuming two grams sodium would likely cause you to explode, splattering sodium hydroxide over the walls. Along with various organs and other body parts.
So why do people talk about sodium consumption? I have never really worked this one out. But it does make things rather confusing. The latest guidelines suggest we should consume less than 2300mg of sodium a day, even as low as 1500mg. Go on, try it. Any idea how much salt (NaCl) that would be? Any idea how much salt you consume every day? No, thought not.
Yes, we have been given guidelines that are totally meaningless, and impossible to follow. In fact 2300mg of sodium is roughly 6000mg of salt (NaCl). So why are we not advise to eat six grams of salt a day? I have no idea. Perhaps someone can tell me. What is this sodium nonsense? [Not that anyone has any idea what six grams of salt even looks like poured out of a salt shaker – I know, I have tried this several times.]
Of course, when I started looking into this area, I went at it sideways. If we eat salt we are eating both sodium, and chloride. You cannot have one without the other. So I became interested in the chloride issue, not the sodium. We are always warned about sodium, but no-one ever mentions chloride levels. Is there any evidence that high chloride consumption is bad for us?
This is an area mostly defined by silence, and zero research. But I have found a few papers looking at chloride levels in the blood and, guess what? They have all found that a low chloride level is associated with a higher mortality. Here is one such, entitled ‘Serum chloride is an independent predictor of mortality in hypertensive patients.’
‘Low, not high Serum Chloride- (<100 mEq/L), is associated with greater mortality risk independent of obvious confounders. Further studies are needed to elucidate the relation between Cl- and risk.’ (view here)
There you go. Having a low chloride level makes it more likely you will die early. Yet, having a high level of sodium consumption makes is supposed to kill you? And you cannot eat sodium without eating chloride at the same time. Go figure.
Read the Full Article Here.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick is a Scottish Doctor and the author of “The Great Cholesterol Con.”
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