[akhilpotla]

We should investigate the benefits of sodium as well. Sodium is vitally important for many bodily function and is a very misunderstood nutrient.

Historically people consumed much more salt, and don't give me the "people used to die when they were 35" nonsense. There is a big difference between being kicked by a horse vs dying of a stroke.

[mrfusion]

I have a lot of older tennis friends and they suffer through cramps all the time. I ask if they’re getting enough sodium after sweating for hours and they say they’re on low sodium diets for blood pressure.

Folks you need to replace your sodium when you sweat!

/soapbox

[Datagenerator]

Doing strength exercises for many years now, increased sodium reduced muscle cramps and lowered recovery times. If you experience nightly cramps, increase the regular sodium and magnesium citrate intake and reduce when symptom free. Unrelated, doing breathing exercises just before going Max helps to execute in near tranquility.

[nradov]

There's a strong genetic factor in the link between sodium intake and blood pressure. Some people are very sensitive to it, others can consume larger amounts without causing hypertension.

[adrian_b]

There are also sex differences in sodium handling ability.

Older women who have taken blood pressure medication for many years, e.g. 10 to 20 years, have risks of losing the ability to control well the concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood.

If they follow a low-sodium diet, they have a high risk of hyponatremia (too little sodium in the body). Depending on the diet, hypokalemia (too little potassium in the body) is also possible.

If these conditions are not diagnosed promptly, severe illness or even death are the consequence.

Unfortunately, I was not aware of these risks. My mother belonged to this risk group, but nobody knew this and her periodic blood tests were perfect, because they included many other tests, except the sodium and potassium concentrations in blood, which are mandatory to detect this problem.

My mother had very serious problems because hyponatremia was detected too late, so I believe that more people should become aware of this risk.

There are a lot of old women taking medication for high blood pressure, so all should know that a periodic cheap test for sodium in blood can easily prevent reaching a stage when complete recovery becomes difficult or impossible.

Also, any low-sodium diet should actually measure or compute how much salt you eat, because too low sodium is even more dangerous than too high sodium.

[leke]

I can't really remember the last time I sweated though, even though I do cycle 30-40 mins a day depending on the season.

[Retric]

People sweat regularly without any noticeable moisture droplets etc. As long as evaporation >= perspiration rate nothing builds up. It’s why a tight watch will often have moisture behind it even though you don’t seem to be sweating.

[typon]

Wasn't most meat also salted in the past?

[hypertele-Xii]

Yes; Salt was among the first preservatives discovered and used.

Bacteria landing on salt will quickly find all of their water exiting their insides towards the salt. Life ceases to function sans water.

[Datagenerator]

Great description. Now I'm grossed out but had fun imagining bacteria dying perpetually until it's some sort of additional crust on the dried meat..

[londons_explore]

A lot of meat is salted today... Ham... Bacon....

[marcyb5st]

I think there is a substantial difference as back then the meat was literally "submerged" in salt to preserve it.

Nowadays I believe it's simply lightly coated in salt to only maximize flavor since we have fridges.

[throwaway316943]

You can still buy salt beef. It usually comes in a plastic tub. You must soak it in water before cooking in order to remove most of the salt otherwise it is inedible.

[nsajko]

Depends on the past.

[firecall]

The past is a long time!

[justinator]

And incidentally, seems to always be getting longer

[leke]

I've also heard that was an average, when at the time infant mortality was around 50%. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past

[johntfella]

granted this org/source isn't the most credible, it still made for an interesting listen. https://wisetraditions.libsyn.com/105-salt-friend-or-foe-pri...

[gnulinux]

I love sodium and virtually never heard of this "sodium is the devil" narrative before! (I know right, was I living in a cave?) Anyway a few weeks back me and my friend was ordering Chinese food. And he was like, meh Chinese food has too much sodium let's order something else. Turns out sodium is bad because it accumulates water in your body? After that I started being super particular about my sodium intake.

[skohan]

I don't think sodium accumulates in the body - Na+ and Cl- are both ions which are relevant to a wide variety of cellular processes, and as far as I know your body has a lot of tools for maintaining the balance of electrolytes in the body.

As far as I understand, the health risk associated with excess sodium intake is high blood pressure, i.e. more stress on your cardiovascular system.

[hnick]

Kidneys too, last time I looked. Apparently it's kind of a feedback loop where salt makes them work poorly which leads to high pressure which leads to damage and repeat. Some details here:

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/kidneys-salt-and-blood-pr...

[jnellis]

As I understand it's related in that salt dissolves in water easily and somehow causes your body to retain water. This in turn increases the water in your blood (plasma I guess), thus the pressure increases. A 'water pill' (hydrochlorothiazide) is often prescribed along with blood pressure reducing medicine to make you urinate and remove water from your system. While my salt intake is normal, it wasn't until I was prescribed a water pill in conjunction with my blood pressure pill that I was able to see better results and also able to take less of the blood pressure med.

[skohan]

I mean that is just basic chemistry. Basically your body wants to have a certain concentration of ions in your bodily fluid, so if you put more sodium in, your body needs to hold on to more water to dilute it until you're able to pee it out

[bregma]

Sodium levels are so vitally important to our health that we we have a couple (more or less) of specialized organs for keeping it at the right balance, called 'kidneys'. Oh, OK, they also balance magnesium and potassium and maybe some other iums, but the little glomerules function by pumping sodium ions around to adjust concentrations of solute on either side of a semi-permeable membrane. Or something.

Don't worry about sodium unless you've been diagnosed with a metabolic problem.

[batter]

Don't agree with that. For example here it shows that sodium might increase your chances to survive heart desease: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/good-heart-keep-holding-... Kidneys require sodium to function properly. Adrenals via aldosterone impact sodium. And when you're stressed, your adrenals might be in a bad shape. I think sodium is a big deal. And some people hit with that especially hard.

[samatman]

I think GP meant don't worry about an excess of sodium.

I do feel kind of bloaty when I eat wretched excesses of sodium all at once, usually ramen, but it passes.

Generally eat a high salt diet, add other minerals (mostly potassium) to drinking water, and take magnesium glycinate before bed. Minerals are easy to eliminate and if I'm not getting enough there's no alternative.

[selimthegrim]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_salted_fish#Health_c... was an eye-opener to me

[foota]

This[1] rather lengthy article suggests that the issue there isn't the salt, but rather the interaction between the salt and the raw fish which causes carcinogenic compounds to form.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK304384/

[exdsq]

I have pre-hypertension which is a BP between 120/80 and 140/90 and the quickest 'fix' is to follow a lower sodium diet. I think it's pretty common for people around 'parent' age to have this, especially if they eat the SAD, so it'll be something you hear as a kid. I know I did!

[mmerlin]

Maybe your friend was referencing MSG? Makes me extremely thirsty hours later, and then I HAVE to "accumulate water in my body", on purpose, to satiate the unquenchable thirst caused by MSG

[plaguuuuuu]

MSG is often used as a food additive in combination with heroic amounts of fat and sugar which would otherwise be unpalatable without it - particularly in a Chinese restaurant setting which is what people associate with MSG...

You're probably experiencing a sugar crash.

I suspect you don't experience the same after eating a bag of Doritos but they're absolutely loaded with MSG.. plus in all likelihood also sodium inosinate, sodium guanylate and who knows what else.

[bigmattystyles]

I don't want to kick the hornet's nest, but isn't MSG avoidance just an example of nocebo? It's just a salt right and its connection to headaches has never actually been established, it's jut something people say.

[dane-pgp]

> isn't MSG avoidance just an example of nocebo?

In fact, the fears around MSG seem to have some overlap with negative racial stereotypes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005

[TwelveNights]

I have heard of some people experiencing sensitivities to MSG, but as the exception and not the norm.

[Google234]

I imagine they are feeling a similar thing to the people that can “feel” 5G cell towers

[mmerlin]

never got a headache ever, just super thirsty afterwards

[pengaru]

Chinese restaurants in the US are notorious for using excess salt and sweeteners.

Though to be fair it's a form of arms race, most US restaurants overdo it if the regional palette has become desensitized. It's not strictly a Chinese restaurant issue.

But many Chinese dishes on the menus are defined by their sweet and salty axis, and being in this environment they're pushed to the extreme.

[adrianN]

Many foods contain rather large amounts of glutamate naturally. Do you get especially thirsty after eating meat or dairy?

[psychometry]

People used to die when they were 35 because they were getting stomach cancer from a lifetime of eating salted meat. The invention of refrigeration was one of the most important public health accomplishments of the last 150 years.

[eloff]

No, salted meat wouldn't make a list of the top ten causes of mortality back then. I doubt even the top 100, but I can't say for certain without doing more work than a comment is worth.

Apparently lots of people disagree with something that seems obvious? Source?

[psychometry]

Do you honestly think that "salted meat" would be listed on a death certificate?

Here's a source for you: https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2008144

[eloff]

> Do you honestly think that "salted meat" would be listed on a death certificate?

Strawman argument.

So stomach cancer is currently 10% of cancer deaths, and cancer is currently the second leading cause of death at all ages. One can't extrapolate that back historically safely because cancer primarily affects the old and people didn't live long enough back then. But even if we just single out stomach cancer and assume incorrectly that 100% is attributed to salt, when frankly that would be a minority of stomach cancers, then it still wouldn't even make the top ten causes of mortality today. Never mind historically when people commonly died from lots of things we no longer worry about, like simple bacterial infections, childbirth, or poor dental hygiene.

The OPs argument is ridiculous and I'm surprised how many people can't see that.

[bloaf]

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020...

Everything old is new again.

[layoutIfNeeded]

[citation needed]

[psychometry]

Ok: https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2008144

[echelon]

Infant mortality is what brought the average lifespan down.

People also had harsher lives and were exposed to a wide variety of stressors, diseases, malnutrition, etc.

[bregma]

Life expectancy at birth, not lifespan.

[secabeen]

Life expectancy at birth is a worthless statistic to compare to when looking at modern humans. Infant mortality was so high that it distorts the numbers. A more useful statistic is the modal age of adult death, which peaks between 65 and 75 across most estimates, regardless of era: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1728-4457....

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-did-humans-star...

[craftinator]

No, they died from being overly alkaline, from eating too many vegetables. Get your facts straight.