“Everyone Knows Someone Who Needs This Information!” TM
I’m in Arizona for just a few more days before driving back to brave the Los Angeles freeway system again, but before that, I am braving 103 degree temperatures outside! This brings up the need to continue our conversation about water and salt – and to learn more about sweating. In the Titles Archive on the upper Nav Bar you can read many of my articles to re-educate yourself about table salt and whole salt differences, as well as why one is healthy and the other is not.
With my diabetes diet plan, I include specific natural, whole sea salts as they help mineralize and alkalinize the body, whereas table salt is quite detrimental as it is a fractionalized, incomplete, factory-made product (that’s why it causes high blood pressure because it is incorrect proportions and only 2 minerals rather than 98), and I encourage continual, consistent hydration with quality water! Salts, sunshine, Omega oils, especially Omega 3, pure water and air are the basic building blocks of Life.
Sweating happens due to high external temperatures — while exercising, or not — and half the world is heading into summer now, but for those who are exercising vigorously, even indoors, even if it is winter, you can be sweating profusely … so this information applies all year.
According to Aqueduct Magazine, http://www.mwdh2o.com/Aqueduct/june2002/body.htm, the minimum amount of sodium required per day is 500 mg, found in 1/4t of table salt (NaCl). I have only ever seen the usual guideline of less than 2000mg “salt” (i.e. really “sodium”) for a male — that’s roughly 3/4t table salt total per day … and everything counts and must be deducted from the total; even tap water has sodium in it. If you eat processed, packaged foods (bad), it’s easy to go way over this amount in one day. Even certain vegetables have more sodium content than others, but if you eat the whole food, usually Nature makes it all “balance” out with the needed complementary minerals.
It is important to keep up water consumption, as drinking too little water will increase the amount of sodium in your blood. Your water company can give you a mineral profile of your town’s water. Desert areas are likely to have salts more concentrated in their ground water. If your source has higher sodium, then talk to your physician about alternatives. Distilled water is usually not an option, as all minerals are removed, and it is essentially “dead” water. Distilled water is only used to help you when you need to detoxify, and it is important to learn HOW to do that process properly.
Sodium and chloride are needed to conduct the electricity that runs your nervous system, and the other minerals that whole salts provide have other important uses in our body. We came from the sea, and our body tries to mirror it inside as our internal ocean, bathing our cells. Table salt, with just sodium and chloride, just doesn’t do that properly. We cannot drink ocean water, which is about 3.5% salt, but those who are marooned have survived by bathing in the ocean and letting skin cells help to rehydrate them through osmosis of cellular membranes.
For our electrical system, the sodium in table salt or sea salt is a positively charged ion and chloride is a negatively charged ion. Sodium likes to lurk in the interstitial spaces between the cells, where it can help one cell communicate with another cell. And for muscle groups to work properly, as huge communities of cells, this communication is essential, and the same for organ systems. Sodium also helps maintain healthy cellular pressures, so organs can function.
Normally, blood is about 9 times more salty tasting that the maximum allowed for legal tap water in the United States. Mineral waters can have really high sodium content, so again, check with the company assay report, and most of these minerals are NOT bio-available and may require more water, yet again, to “flush” them from your body. Imbibing mineral waters is not meant to be an every day occurrence.
Your body should be responsible for balancing the salinity of your blood and therefore it’s pH, and you should not overwhelm your system with excess. Your kidneys know when to eliminate and when to keep certain minerals, depending on the levels they are at hour to hour. This is why kidney care is critical to diabetics, and kidney disease is often “silent”, so make sure your doctor is regularly checking your kidney’s health. “Salt-sensitive” people, about 1/3 of the population, are not as efficient in getting rid of sodium, when needed, through their kidneys.
Sweat is the way we cleanse ourselves and naturally detoxify through our largest organ, our skin, and we can lose tremendous amounts of fluid during hot weather, hot weather and exercise or just when vigorously exercising, regardless of season.
According http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1608/is_3_19/ai_97390090 , people lose at least several quarts (about 2.5 liters) of water an hour when exercising vigorously, and it MUST be replaced, on a regular schedule, or dangerous dehydration can happen. The “electrolytes”, like sodium and potassium, have to be replaced along with the water, too, then. More people fall victim to having too little sodium replenishment, especially after vigorous exercise or in hot weather, than falling afoul of having too much sodium. Too few electrolytes can kill you too, just as surely as all the warnings about how too much sodium kills through high blood pressure causing strokes.
And, excess sodium causes fluid retention. For every grain of sodium retained, 20 times more water is kept, too. But, if there is too much sodium in your body, it’s more likely to have arisen from processed food than from high concentrations in your water.
Another benefit of sweating regularly is that it helps our body purge itself of toxins, so the Native Americans built sweat lodges for that purpose, and the Finns and other Europeans used saunas. If you use these modalties, remember to replace your fluids and electrolytes, too, afterwards.
As we age, our thirst-signal message center becomes impaired, and so it is critical for elders, and especially diabetic elders, to be monitored closely. Even now, in this hot weather, my 85 year old Mum is NOT “thirsty”. Frankly, it’s scary. You must drink a regular amount by the clock, and monitor your elderly. If they are not drinking enough, it causes their brain to shrink, and I wonder how many “elder’s brain problems” are really dehydration issues.
Be sure to read Dr. Batmanghelidj’s humanitarian site about “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water” at www.watercure.com and interview at http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_water_cure_0.html . His obit is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64133-2004Nov19.html
OK. I have to get to packing and my last sight-seeing etc., so I will try to write again next week, depending if I have access to a computer or if I am driving. Meanwhile, start paying attention and follow through, especially at the sites I mentioned and the archive.
Best to all — Em
(c)2008 Em https://diabetesdietdialogue.wordpress.com
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