Sodium and minerals arrive as one question, which is how mineral salt is sold. They are two different problems.
On minerals, the arithmetic rules it out, and not because of the brand. Every unrefined salt is about 98 percent sodium chloride. Everything else is in the last two percent, split among a couple dozen elements. An Australian group measured 31 pink salts and found you would need something like six teaspoons a day before the minerals amounted to anything, and six teaspoons of salt is its own problem. The dose is set by the minerals, the ceiling is set by the sodium, and the two do not meet.
One thing from that study interests me more than its headline: the darker salts had more minerals and also more heavy metals, and one exceeded the lead limit. Whatever makes it pink is whatever else was in the deposit, and nobody is checking batch to batch.
Sodium is the better question, and it is about a ratio, not a brand. The kidney was tuned by natural selection on a diet low in sodium and high in potassium, so it holds sodium and sheds potassium. We have since inverted both inputs. Trace minerals do not touch that.
Potassium chloride does. I use Lite Salt, which is about half and half, and it is the one thing in that aisle with a real outcome trial behind it instead of a blood measurement, some 21,000 people, nearly five years, less stroke and fewer deaths. If your kidneys are impaired or you take an ACE inhibitor, an ARB, or spironolactone, that is a conversation with your doctor rather than with me.
The honest limit, mine included: in a blended salt the potassium always comes with sodium attached, so it can even the ratio out but never reverse it. The salt helps at the margin. What moves the ratio is what you stopped eating. Potassium sits inside living cells, so it is in anything that was recently alive and has not been processed in a way that drains it, and the processed middle of the grocery has almost none of it, which is precisely where the sodium was added.
So: no argument against Real Salt, and I understand liking how it tastes. For minerals it is out on the arithmetic, and that is not the brand’s fault. For the ratio, the groceries do the work.
Reverse Osmosis - I gave up buying bottled water about 2 years ago and installed a reverse osmosis system under the kitchen sink. RO systems are a relatively easy DIY install, and mine was about $250 from Home Depot. Saves lugging cases of water bottles from the store, disposing the bottles and ingesting plasticizers - tastes great. too!
Thanks so much…have just finished reading both of your books this past week. Regarding the sodium
And minerals… what do you think about REAL SALT and other mineral salts?
Thanks for reading both of them.
Sodium and minerals arrive as one question, which is how mineral salt is sold. They are two different problems.
On minerals, the arithmetic rules it out, and not because of the brand. Every unrefined salt is about 98 percent sodium chloride. Everything else is in the last two percent, split among a couple dozen elements. An Australian group measured 31 pink salts and found you would need something like six teaspoons a day before the minerals amounted to anything, and six teaspoons of salt is its own problem. The dose is set by the minerals, the ceiling is set by the sodium, and the two do not meet.
One thing from that study interests me more than its headline: the darker salts had more minerals and also more heavy metals, and one exceeded the lead limit. Whatever makes it pink is whatever else was in the deposit, and nobody is checking batch to batch.
Sodium is the better question, and it is about a ratio, not a brand. The kidney was tuned by natural selection on a diet low in sodium and high in potassium, so it holds sodium and sheds potassium. We have since inverted both inputs. Trace minerals do not touch that.
Potassium chloride does. I use Lite Salt, which is about half and half, and it is the one thing in that aisle with a real outcome trial behind it instead of a blood measurement, some 21,000 people, nearly five years, less stroke and fewer deaths. If your kidneys are impaired or you take an ACE inhibitor, an ARB, or spironolactone, that is a conversation with your doctor rather than with me.
The honest limit, mine included: in a blended salt the potassium always comes with sodium attached, so it can even the ratio out but never reverse it. The salt helps at the margin. What moves the ratio is what you stopped eating. Potassium sits inside living cells, so it is in anything that was recently alive and has not been processed in a way that drains it, and the processed middle of the grocery has almost none of it, which is precisely where the sodium was added.
So: no argument against Real Salt, and I understand liking how it tastes. For minerals it is out on the arithmetic, and that is not the brand’s fault. For the ratio, the groceries do the work.
I appreciate the post and photos! It makes eating healthy feel very possible!
What is “RO water?”
Reverse Osmosis - I gave up buying bottled water about 2 years ago and installed a reverse osmosis system under the kitchen sink. RO systems are a relatively easy DIY install, and mine was about $250 from Home Depot. Saves lugging cases of water bottles from the store, disposing the bottles and ingesting plasticizers - tastes great. too!