An eight-year study of a New York City hypertensive population stratified for sodium intake levels found those on low-salt diets had more than four times as many heart attacks as those on normal sodium diets – the exact opposite of what the "salt hypothesis" would have predicted.
The past president of the American Heart Association, Dr. Suzanne Oparil of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, said her personal view is that the government may have been too quick to recommend "salt restriction as a solitary recommendation for the population for the prevention or the treatment of hypertension" and therefore that "everyone should reduce their salt intake." In 1995, Dr. Jeffrey Cutler documented no health benefits of low-sodium diets.
Potassium and sodium are very closely linked. To keep your body healthy, your cells need to have a lot of potassium inside and a lot of sodium in the fluid outside. To keep the balance, potassium and sodium constantly move back and forth through the cell membrane.
Cells need the correct balance of sodium and potassium. The ratio that your body maintains is about three parts potassium and one part sodium. Thus, the problem of too much sodium (salt) cannot be overstated. If the body becomes oversupplied with sodium compared to the amount of available potassium, the body excretes more of it to try to maintain the balance. If the kidneys cannot excrete it, this causes the vascular system to constrict, and then the body dilutes the extracellular sodium in the body by increasing the fluid volume in the body. Thus, you get fluid retention.The solution here is to increase the potassium intake and decrease the sodium. How? Consume bananas, pumpkin seeds, apples, apple cider vinegar (a rich source), oranges and other fruits as well as natural, unrefined sea or rock salt (which contain potassium anyway).
We need less than 500 milligrams of sodium a day to stay healthy. This is enough to accomplish all the vital functions that sodium performs in the body – helping maintain normal fluid levels, healthy muscle function, stomach and nerve function, and proper acid-alkaline balance (pH) of the blood.
Taking diuretics may lead to a salt deficiency. Symptoms of sodium deficiency can be serious enough to include abdominal cramps, anorexia, confusion, dehydration, depression, dizziness, fatigue, flatulence, hallucinations, headache, heart palpitations, impaired sense of taste, lethargy, low blood pressure, memory impairment, muscular weakness, nausea and vomiting, poor coordination, recurrent infections, seizures and weight loss.
Diarrhea or vomiting can also cause you to quickly lose electrolytes (especially potassium) with the fluid. If stricken, you need to replace the fluids and electrolytes quickly.
A good way to do this is to make an 8-ounce mixture of apple, orange and other fruit juices – freshly squeezed if possible – with half a teaspoon of raw honey and a pinch of unrefined salt. In another glass, combine 8 ounces of water and a pinch of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). Take a few sips from one glass and then a few sips from the other until you've drunk them both. The fruit juice contains the potassium you need, while the salt and baking soda provide sodium. The sugar from the juice and honey helps you absorb the electrolytes.
The best advice: Throw away your refined common salt (which didn't cost you much anyway), buy some good-quality unrefined salt instead, and use it freely.