Salt Tips #5

If you are really going to limit salt, look for foods that are labeled as salt-free. However, you still need to look at the label to see what is in the food. Other forms of sodium salts are sodium citrate and sodium bicarbonate.

How The Nutrients Work When Your Engine Is Running #3

In addition to the blood vessels dilating and bringing blood to the surface to cool the body, your body also begins to sweat. This is the body's most effective way of cooling itself. The sweat evaporates and results in cooling of the body.

There is a downside to this and that is if you sweat a lot, you can become dehydrated for two reasons. First, if you are sweating you are usually doing some activity that is going to require more oxygen, so you may have an increased respiratory rate. Usually, as you begin to breath faster you will open your mouth and breath through both nose and mouth. This will begin to dry the membranes of the air passages and hence begin the dehydration process. Secondly, as you sweat, you are not only losing water through the skin. If you lick your skin after you have been sweating, it will taste salty, because you lose sodium, chloride and potassium through the skin as well with the sweat. These elements stay on the skin while the water evaporates. Beware that you are replacing what you are losting.

Another Word About Sodium

Recently I wrote about how much salt you should intake in a day. One of my readers wrote and asked about what happens when you exercise very vigorously and you sweat, don't you lose more than just water? The answer is yes, you do lose sodium as well.

So here is the answer. If you are going to be doing vigorous exercise where you will be sweating, keep hydrated. You don't need any fancy vitamin water or gatorade. Just keep drinking plain old water. I recommend that you drink filtered water, but if you don't have filtered water then plain water from the tap will do.

To replenish the sodium, do it with organic foods like fruits and vegetables or nuts. If you go for the electrolyte drinks, you will likely over shoot and you will end up raising your blood pressure.

Sodium Intake

How much salt should you actually be getting? That's a common question that I get asked frequently. The normal, healthy adult (no know medical problems) should eat no more than 2300 milligrams of salt a day. This is about 1 teaspoon of salt. Now that is not just what you add at the table. Read the label of any processed food such as canned soup and you will see that you are probably way beyond your daily amount with one serving.

Most of the sodium that we get in our diets today comes from eating in restaurants and eating processed foods. Be sure to read the labels on any food you purchase. Many restaurants now will tell you the sodium content of their foods. You can always ask for a low-sodium entree, just ask the waiter.

Your best choice is to pick fresh fruits and vegetables.

If you are at risk for or have heart disease, stroke or high blood pressure your daily salt intake should be no more than 1500 milligrams a day.

Vegetable Juice

One of the juices that is good for you is Low sodium V8 juice. Be careful not to get the regular V8 juice as it has way too much sodium in it. The low sodium V8 can actually help your blood pressure, while the regular V8 may make your blood pressure go up as a result of the sodium content.

High Blood Pressure

You may be surprised to learn that in 2007, the American Medical Association indicated that 30% of US adults have hypertension or high blood pressure. I believe that number is quite a bit higher today. The interesting part is that they also reported the 70% of people with high blood pressure do not have it under control.

While medicine may be necessary to get your blood pressure under control, there are somethings you can do to get it under control without medication. Cut down on the amount of salt in your food and certainly remove the salt shaker from the table. Get on a good balanced diet that will help you attain your appropriate weight. There are a lot of extra miles of blood vessels for every pound of extra weight that you are carrying. Start exercising on a regular basis. If you can find a hundred excuses why not to exercise, go pick up my free ebook and making exercise simple.

Decreasing Sodium Tips

Yesterday I mentioned reading labels carefully. Add up all of the sodium from the foods that you eat and if you're over your limit of 2300 or less, cut something out.

But there are other ways to cut sodium. Most of the sodium as I mentioned yesterday comes from processed foods. the other place that we get a lot of sodium is in restaurant food. So if you eat out a lot, ask about low sodium items on the menu. You can also ask to see nutritional content for the menu items you're thinking of choosing. If you're doing fast food, not to pick on McDonald's, but a Big Mac has 1040mg. So almost half of your day's allotment is taken in that one thing. If you do the large fries, you're adding about 300mg, so now you would definitely be over half way to your daily limit. Wendy's Baconater has 1880mg!! The Burger King Whopper has 1020mg.

If you're eating out, either stay away from foods with sauces or eat very little sodium at any of your other meals for the day.

When cooking, do not add salt to the food. My mother had heart disease, so I learned to cook without salt and while my mother-in-law was a big user of salt in food, my husband is just fine with very little salt. We use other spices for flavor so no sodium is required.

Know Your Sodium Limit

Sodium is becoming more and more of a problem within our society. This is because we have a large portion of the population with high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or stroke. People at risk for these diseases are anyone over 40 years of age, African Americans, and anyone with high blood pressure. Almost 70% of the US population is at risk.

So how much sodium should you be getting each day. Most of the federal and nutritional guidelines indicate that 2300 mg of sodium each day is the right amount, as long as you are a healthy, normal adult without heart disease, stroke or hypertension. If you have high blood pressure, then you need to decrease the amount of sodium intake each day to 1500 mg.

Now the first thing is how much is 2300 mg. In the form of salt because that is how we get most of our sodium, 1 teaspoon = 2300 mg approximately. If you have heart disease or hypertension, the 1500 mg is about 2/3 of a teaspoon of salt per day. Now this means total intake. This does not just mean you can add that much salt each day to the food you eat.

Read the labels. Especially processed food contains large amounts of sodium. Tune in tomorrow for some tips on deceasing sodium in your diet.