Don’t toss the salt
I’ve had seniors tell me they don’t eat salt and I shouldn’t either. Salt is an ESSENTIAL nutrient. We do need it. Too little sodium, and your electrolytes will be out of balance. You can over-hydrate without sufficient salt (a potentially fatal condition called hyper-hydration), your heart can beat irregularly, and you can have problems with muscle and nerve function (1).
In the summertime, if it’s hot and I’m at the gym and I don’t have a little salt before I work out, I have trouble concentrating and cannot quench my thirst no matter how much water I drink. Water and salt work together for hydration. A different time, after I ran 5 miles in under an hour in the hot sun, I felt like I was going to pass out, and that was after I drank 50 ounces of water and ate a full meal which included protein, carbs and a few shakes of salt on top. The issue was that I needed MORE salt. Five minutes after crunching on Celtic sea salt, I was back to normal.
I thought that only people who sweat a lot, which I don’t, need to make sure they eat salt before and after exercising. Because I make my meals from scratch, they contain very little salt, so I was actually salt-deprived. Don’t toss the salt, you do need some!
- Source: Weil MD, Andrew. “Should I be eating less salt?” Prevention Magazine. Dec. 2016. p. 26-27
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