Sodium

[BRCMM]

I've been always told, when dieting among other things take it easy on the salt, why? They say because it retains water. Well, so what? Who cares, all I care about is lossing fat. If seeming to be a little fatter on the scale because my body has retained water, but I get to have the little of my restricted food I do get to eat, tasting better then great. Or is there another reason I want to stay away from salt?

Also, if for some reason having to much salt in the system is bad, can I counter that by running and sweating allot, say with a sweat/sauna suit? I mean I don't know alot about what goes on in the body, but my sweat tastes salty so I'm guess at least part of the salt you ingest ends up there?

Also talking about sweat suits. I know you don't lose weight with them, but I use it for a variety of reasons. First sweating releases toxins from the body so by using the sauna suit your cleaning out the body. Also even though you don't lose fat, but water weight when you use it you do feel thinner and that provides a placebo effect that helps you stay on your diet/weight loss training because your seeing "progress". Also for me, using it under my close when I go jogging every day helps me basically eliminate nipple burn and I actually can jog every day.


Please let me know if anything in the way I'm thinking about this is wrong?

Thanks

[falconfootball]

i think you answered yourown question- sort of.

Sweat is almost totally water. Sure there is more to it than that, but you can't eat all the salt you like and simply 'sweat it out'. The only thing the sweat suit is good for is draining the water from your body, which you (should) replenish once to head to the water fountain. The suit also puts you at risk of not only heat exhaustion, but dehydration; and you don't want either of those in your cardio routine

[BRCMM]

Thanks for the reply. So if all your sweat suits is good for is draining the water out of your system which you have to replenish right after anyways, then it no good at all. You didn't make a difference except putting yourself at risk for dehydration and heat exhaustion.

Also if all that salt does is retain water whats the harm in that if it make my food taste better?

[falconfootball]

well by retaining water you keep excess water (which we all know has weight) around and look/ feel more bloated than you really are

[falconfootball]

do a search about sodium and see what others have posted, that may help too

[johnny_on_the_spot]

Originally Posted by BRCMM

First sweating releases toxins from the body so by using the sauna suit your cleaning out the body.
Thanks

i dont know if i agree with that or not - i've read articles and studies that say sauna's and steam rooms DO do that and i've also read that they DON'T do that. what you want to believe is up to you, but from what i've seen there really isnt any evidence for or against it (and some scientists will say lack of evidence is evidence enough to prove the contrary). it still wont stop me from sitting in the steam room but i feel it loosens the muscles and helps my back, so i do it more for pain relief.

[pliny_2001]

BRCMM - I think that everything you said might be wrong. I'll elaborate:

Sodium: It does more than make you retain water. Elevated sodium levels lead to an elevated blood pressure, which puts you at risk for any number of cardiac problems. Elevated sodium levels makes your kidneys work overtime 24 hours a day. Elevated sodium levels put your potassium/sodium levels out of equilibrium, and may decrease the your overall ability to exercise. Here's something from the Mayo Clinic:

Your kidneys regulate the amount of sodium kept in your body. When sodium levels are low, your kidneys conserve sodium. When levels are high, they excrete the excess amount in urine.

If your kidneys can't eliminate enough sodium, the sodium starts to accumulate in your blood. Because sodium attracts and holds water, your blood volume increases. Increased blood volume, in turn, makes your heart work harder to move more blood through your blood vessels, increasing pressure in your arteries

So "just retaining water" isn't quite as benign as it sounds.

As for making food taste better: sodium (and, oddly enough, salt-peter and gunpowder) are flavor enhancers. Adding it to food helps stimulate some areas of the tastebuds. All of that's true. However, the reason people like salt nowadays isn't so much to enhance the taste of food, but rather for the taste of salt - it's a learned (and, thankfully, unlearnable) taste. It's being added in quantity to food - mostly processed foods that you probably shouldn't be eating anyway - in order to cover up the fact that mass-produced foods taste like ass.

So how much is a little salt, anyway? Healthy adults need about 2300mg of NaCl a day. That's one teaspoon. So those 3000mg of salt added to meals aren't there to enhance it's flavor, but rather to make it taste like salt, which is something food companies have had Americans learn to like over the past few decades, so they don't have to worry about flavorful foods, but can instead just add more salt.

Getting rid of salt: like it said earlier, you lose salt when it's processed out by the kidneys. You'll lose a little from sweat, but it's generally not that high (if you've lost a significant amount of salt from sweat, you've probably lost a very significant amount of H20, and are therefore dehydrated, which leads to its own set of problems). Putting on a rubber suit will only magnify these problems. I'd suggest doing a brief google about sauna suits and learning how they effect the body (I'll give you the Cliffs' notes version: they're terrible, and anyone who recommends them either doesn't have your best interests at heart, or is an idiot. Or both).

More on sauna suits: your sweat glands don't have any magical properties where they filter out toxins - they just sweat out liquids in your body, and whatever dissolved things (salt, alcohol, whatever) that happens to be along for the ride. Your kidneys and liver, on the other hand, do have these magical properties. So sweating out 'toxins' is pretty much the stuff of snake-oil salesmen. Letting your body process it is how things actually work.

Sweating off weight in a sauna: you lose water. The first time you eat or drink, you gain it immediately back. Saunas are great for hot/cold baths, or for relaxing, or whatever. I personally love the steamroom/frigid shower combination. But they're crap for weightloss, or the placebo effect.

Nipple burn: instead of covering your entire body, you could just cover the nipple (there are a few nipple-specific patches, there are bandaids, and I like body-glide if I'm going above 4 miles), or you may be able to simply change shirts (I had issues with the technical fabrics - switching to cotton made it alot better).


Really - high salt levels are bad. Super bad.

[Italianangel]

When you have salt, it can make you appear bloated, even if you are lean, many people do not like the look or feel.........that's all.
Healthwise, I personally feel that we get enough sodium in our veggies, a pinch of table salt offers iodine and that is fine. Now if you were to see how much sodium is in the foods that most people eat, fast foods, cans, frozen, prepared foods, its WAAAAAY more than anyone needs so that is why some people get diseases which are led by poor diet including too much salt.
Linda

[BRCMM]

Ok, I’ve always known that sauna suits are not for weight loss. Although they do make you burn more calories. Your body has to work harder while running with a sauna suit and after your done because you drink all that water back more than you would normally drink your body has to work extra to rehydrate itself. I know its nothing significant, but something’s something. Also I only use the shirt not the pants. And I do rehydrate myself immediately after.

Now forget about the sauna suit for a minute. Say you eat a lot of salt, and to combat that you just drink a lot of water. I mean so much water you piss clear throughout the day. Would eating too much salt in that scenario be bad? If your drinking that much water your kidney is constantly being flushed clean and its never really overwork due to increase sodium processing. Nor would you ever have thickened blood due to unprocessed salt remaining in the bloodstream.

Now its not that I love salt, nor do I eat a lot of processed food. I actually stay away from processed foods and eat well balanced meals, fruit, veggies… But when I eat or prepare food that calls for salt as a seasoning I don’t want to hold back. And if I can drink a lot of water or run with a sauna suit to help out the situation then great. There’s nothing like a nice corn on the cob with butter and salt. That alone puts me over the margin.

[johnny_on_the_spot]

not that this is entirely in line, but what about pepper? what does that do to you?

[falconfootball]

Originally Posted by BRCMM

Now its not that I love salt, nor do I eat a lot of processed food. I actually stay away from processed foods and eat well balanced meals, fruit, veggies… But when I eat or prepare food that calls for salt as a seasoning I don’t want to hold back. .

If you don't use more than say, a teaspoon, than I don't see much of a risk.

I use a little bit of seasoning or my foods, but there is no need whatsoever to layer on the salts- even for taste. Try a few more herbs, they pack quite a punch of flavor

[pliny_2001]

Originally Posted by BRCMM

Say you eat a lot of salt, and to combat that you just drink a lot of water. I mean so much water you piss clear throughout the day. Would eating too much salt in that scenario be bad? If your drinking that much water your kidney is constantly being flushed clean and its never really overwork due to increase sodium processing. Nor would you ever have thickened blood due to unprocessed salt remaining in the bloodstream.

I'll backtrack - I assumed that if you're concerned about sodium intake, there was a reason for you to be concerned about sodium intake (a blood test, high blood pressure, etc). If you've got a clean bill of health and the MD says that there isn't too much salt in your body, then feel free to continue doing what you're doing. If you're just concerned about sodium b/c you've heard people talk about it, I wouldn't worry too much, other than to say that I look and feel alot better since I went on an extremely low-sodium diet (a family member had kidney stones, so I figured why risk it).

But for the plumbing of it, salt is only going to be removed at a set rate. I don't think that drinking extra water (above optimum) is going to lead to more salt being urinated out -- i.e., your kidneys are doing the work, not the bladder, so if you have to process out 3000 mg of sodium, your kidneys will do it over the course of some period of time, regardless of if you've had enough or extra H2O. And it doesn't make your blood "thicker" - it leads to increased blood volume, which means more blood pressure (more fluid in same-sized container), which means your heart beats harder/faster (and not in a good way).

I'm not being a salt nazi, though - if you want some on your corn, by all means go ahead. But I'm willing to bet that if you worked on getting the extraneous salt out of your diet, you wouldn't miss it in the things you cooked, and when you ate out you'd be amazed at how everything seems too salty to eat -- your preference for it really is something that's been learned.


EDIT: don't worry about pepper - it's just a spice (no salt at all). I think that the only downside is that it can make you sneeze in cartoons.

[Italianangel]

pepper rocks, can eat it anytime, even when leaning, gives my food some flavor, as I get closer to my show in 2 mths, my food is getting plainer and my choices thinner...........
Linda

[wildstang]

ive come across some articles stating pepper actually helps stimulate your metabolism.