Optimal Sodium Intake Is At Least 230% Higher Than RDA

[Giraffe]

High sodium intake is associated with increased glucocorticoid production, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome - Baudrand - 2013 - Clinical Endocrinology - Wiley Online Library
"High sodium diet was associated with increased urinary cortisol and its metabolites. Also, HS diet was associated with HT, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia and hypoadiponectinaemia, even when adjusting by confounding variables"

They measured urinary sodium excretion. I wonder if this accurately reflects the sodium intake at all. A lot of sodium is lost in sweat. Most hypothyroid folk does not sweat a lot, and their cortisol and lipid levels are high. Also hypothyroid people lose more sodium in their urine, so they need to ingest more in order to maintain a certain level. -- To blame increased urinary cortisol, insulin resistane etc. on a 'high sodium diet' is short-sighted (or criminal).

.....

Below a few figures to get an impression of the magnitude:

The study linked by @Barry Obummer considered an estimated salt intake of maximum 9 grams (= 3,510 mg sodium) as adequate. Everything above is called 'high sodium intake'.

Perspiration - Wikipedia
The solute loss can be as much as 350 mmol/day (or 90 mmol/day acclimatised) of sodium under the most extreme conditions. During average intensity exercise, sweat losses can average up to 2 litres of water/hour. In a cool climate and in the absence of exercise, sodium loss can be very low (less than 5 mmols/day). Sodium concentration in sweat is 30-65 mmol/l, depending on the degree of acclimatisation.

Expressed in milligrams of sodium this is:

• 8,050 mg/day (extreme conditions) or 2,070 mg/day (acclimatised)
• 115 mg/day (very low loss in cold climate, absence of exercise)
• 690 - 1490 mg/l (sweat).

1 gram of salt contains 390 mg sodium.

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A person should take in 2 quarts more fluids than they lose per day in urine. That two quarts would be an average evaporation if your thyroid is good. But many people evaporate less than a quart a day [...]

[...] in the average level of activity and the average relative humidity, a person will evaporate a liter per thousand of calories burned so if you only have a missing liter of fluid a day, you know you are only burning 1000 calories.

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Renal sodium and water handling in hypothyroid patients: the role of renal insufficiency.

Hypothyroidism has been associated with abnormalities in renal sodium and water handling. There is a defect in maximal free water clearance during water loading and an impaired ability to conserve sodium during dietary salt restriction. These effects are not corrected by the administration of corticosteroids or mineralocorticoids, but they do improve after thyroid hormone replacement.

The fractional excretion of sodium was twice as high in the hypothyroid patients than in the normal subjects, but it was similar to that in the CRF patients.

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I found it mentioned quite often that dietary recalls of sodium intake and urinary excretion do not correlate well.

Difference between 24-h diet recall and urine excretion for assessing population sodium and potassium intake in adults aged 18–39 y

We found the difference between sodium and potassium estimates to be greater in men than in women and in those with a normal BMI compared with overweight or obese participants.

You could also put it this way: In men with normal BMI you grossly underestimate sodium intake when you base your estimate on 24-hour urinary sodium excretion. The difference between dietary intake and 'adjusted urinary excretion' of sodium was ~ 1,150mg in normal-weight men, but only ~110 mg in women. Go figure!

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Water: swelling, tension, pain, fatigue, aging

When extra water consumption is combined with a low salt diet--as physicians have so often recommended--a healthy person can adapt easily, but for a hypothyroid person it can have disastrous effects.

 

[Amazoniac]

ARL : Hypothyroidism

Foods that cause a calcium loss may enhance thyroid activity. These foods include citrus fruits, salt and all foods high in sodium.

"A tendency to retain water and occasionally also sodium chloride, is common in the hypothyroid, particularly in the obese type, while the lean type hypothyroid is more likely to show dry salt retention. Restriction of salt is advisable in both cases. Potassium is often beneficial." --Practical Endocrinology pp. 255

"What causes all this thyroid trouble? Well, a lot of the problem is in the way we eat. Many of us include salt in our diet, for example, in endocrinology (56:387, 1955), mice tested for goiter-activating foods showed an enlargement of the thyroid could be caused by salt. With omission of salt, goiters decreased in size..." --EOCD pp.760

Salty foods tend to lower magnesium, which enhances thyroid activity. Many people mistakenly avoid all salt in their diet. Adding back a reasonable amount of sea salt can often improve symptoms of hypothyroidism.

(for real)

Is it just a lack of potassium?

 

[Whataboutbob]

....more of the same.......is this sudoscience ?

 

[Whataboutbob]

 

[Whataboutbob]

YExcessively low salt diet damages the heart through activation of cardiac (pro) renin receptor, renin-angiotensin-aldosterone, and sympatho-adrenal systems in spontaneously hypertensive rats http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity Files/Nutrition/ReviewDRIforSodiumandPotassium/March Public Workshop/Powerpoints/42 David McCarron.pdf

 

[stargazer1111]

I just reduced my sodium intake because I was becoming severely bloated and was retaining too much water. Also was unable to sleep. Felt wired all night despite consuming sugar and sat. fat before bed.

Sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride both caused it, so it wasn't the chloride.

Only small amounts of salt actually taste good to me, so I must be weird and only need a small amount.

 

[baccheion]

I just reduced my sodium intake because I was becoming severely bloated and was retaining too much water. Also was unable to sleep. Felt wired all night despite consuming sugar and sat. fat before bed.

Sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride both caused it, so it wasn't the chloride.

Only small amounts of salt actually taste good to me, so I must be weird and only need a small amount.

Are you taking in other electrolytes (proportionally), especially magnesium? Do you drink enough water? You could also add 1g vitamin C for each gram NaCl.

 

[stargazer1111]

Are you taking in other electrolytes (proportionally), especially magnesium? Do you drink enough water? You could also add 1g vitamin C for each gram NaCl.

Oh yeah. I get over 7 grams of potassium, 3 grams of calcium, and about a gram of magnesium.

My diet consists of orange juice, skim milk, and meat. I consume about 2.5 quarts of milk and 1.5 quarts of OJ.

 

[postman]

I just reduced my sodium intake because I was becoming severely bloated and was retaining too much water. Also was unable to sleep. Felt wired all night despite consuming sugar and sat. fat before bed.

Sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride both caused it, so it wasn't the chloride.

Only small amounts of salt actually taste good to me, so I must be weird and only need a small amount.

Salt makes me wired too. Maybe even agitated. It does make my face bloated, it's probably making all other cells take up too much water as well. Magnesium doesn't make a difference. Maybe potassium would but I doubt that. But I might try that in the future.

Both of the minerals Ray always say we need more of, calcium and sodium, cause a lot of problems for me. They are supposed to be mostly extracellular but my body doesn't seem capable of regulating that properly. And just adding more of them doesn't fix the issue at all. And magnesium isn't helpful either, although I must say I haven't tried taking huge doses of it, I've only tried RDA and maybe like 2x RDA.

 

[baccheion]

Oh yeah. I get over 7 grams of potassium, 3 grams of calcium, and about a gram of magnesium.

My diet consists of orange juice, skim milk, and meat. I consume about 2.5 quarts of milk and 1.5 quarts of OJ.

Is thyroid function normal? Aldosterone? Sex hormones? Your situation is strange, I suppose. Magnesium clears out sodium and even calcium tends to result in diuresis (as the body clears excess).

 

[stargazer1111]

Is thyroid function normal? Aldosterone? Sex hormones? Your situation is strange, I suppose. Magnesium clears out sodium and even calcium tends to result in diuresis (as the body clears excess).

Yeah. Actually, I recently had a blood test done because I had severe hyperthyroidism 2 years ago after my vitamin A overdose. My thyroid is edging on the hyper side, but still normal. Haven't had aldosterone checked. My testosterone is probably normal given my high libido.

But, you are correct. I've known for years that my body is very strange.

 

[Amazoniac]

- High-Salt Diet Has a Certain Impact on Protein Digestion and Gut Microbiota: A Sequencing and Proteome Combined Study

 

[stargazer1111]

- High-Salt Diet Has a Certain Impact on Protein Digestion and Gut Microbiota: A Sequencing and Proteome Combined Study

This study looks pretty poor at first glance. Several of the figures lack statistical analysis. Also, and I really hate when groups do this in their papers, they tell us the percentage of the diet NaCl was. That tells us absolutely nothing because we don't know how much the mice ate so we have no idea what a low-salt diet or a high-salt diet is in this context.

A little more than 4 grams of sodium per day seems to be associated with the lowest all-cause mortality, which is the most important outcome. See the attached paper (figure 1).

 

[Amazoniac]

This study looks pretty poor at first glance. Several of the figures lack statistical analysis. Also, and I really hate when groups do this in their papers, they tell us the percentage of the diet NaCl was. That tells us absolutely nothing because we don't know how much the mice ate so we have no idea what a low-salt diet or a high-salt diet is in this context.

A little more than 4 grams of sodium per day seems to be associated with the lowest all-cause mortality, which is the most important outcome. See the attached paper.

When I post something without commenting anything, it's not because I endorse everything there, it's so that the reader picks whatever it's found to be useful. I think it's unnecessary to repeat the consensus.

You clearly didn't read it anyway, they provided how much animals ate throughout the experiment and the content of salt in each diet. The hate has to be channeled into extracting something practical out of texts.

 

[stargazer1111]

When I post something without commenting anything, it's not because I endorse everything there, it's so that the reader picks whatever it's found to be useful. I think it's unnecessary to repeat the consensus here.

You clearly didn't read it anyway, they provided how much animals ate throughout the experiment and the content of salt in each diet. The hate has to be channeled into extracting something practical out of texts.

My analysis of the paper is strictly academic in nature. I am a biomedical scientist, picking apart studies is what I do. Please quote to me where they state how much by weight the animals consumed. I cannot find this in the paper. I can only find percentages which tell us nothing about how much salt was actually consumed.

I always go for the raw data first. I never read the author's conclusions before looking at the data because the raw data tell the real story.

You misconstrued my post. There is no emotion or hate, only scientific analysis.

 

[Amazoniac]

My analysis of the paper is strictly academic in nature. I am a biomedical scientist, picking apart studies is what I do. Please quote to me where they state how much by weight the animals consumed. I cannot find this in the paper. I can only find percentages which tell us nothing about how much salt was actually consumed.

I always go for the raw data first. I never read the author's conclusions before looking at the data because the raw data tell the real story.

You misconstrued my post. There is no emotion or hate, only scientific analysis.

Guru, if you're going to insist on not reading, search for '(feed) intake'.

 

[stargazer1111]

Guru, if you're going to insist on not reading, search for '(feed) intake'.

I never claimed to be a guru and there is no need to be so rude, I haven't been so far.

Okay, fair enough, my mistake. Usually, authors make this clearer in their methods section and they did not in this study which is what threw me off.

So, based on figure 1, the mice consumed somewhere between 2 and 4 grams of food per day. The methods section states that the low-salt group consumed 0.25% of the diet as NaCl and the high-salt group consumed 3.15% of the diet as NaCl (I'm assuming this is percent of the total weight of the diet in grams). This means that the low-salt group consumed between 5 and 10 mg of NaCl, or roughly 2 to 4 mg of sodium per day (I'm basing this off the molar masses of sodium and chloride which puts sodium at 40% of the NaCl compound). The high-salt group consumed between 63 and 126 mg of NaCl, or roughly 25.2 mg to 50.4 mg per day of sodium.

The rats weigh somewhere between 20 and probably 27 grams based on figure 1. Let's take the mean to be 23.5 grams. This equates to 0.0851 mg to 0.170 mg of sodium per gram of body weight in the low-salt group and 1.07 mg to 2.14 mg per gram of body weight in the high-salt group.

Extrapolating that to human size, assuming a body weight of 75 kg (75,000 g or 165 lbs), that equates to 6,382.5 mg to 12,765 mg of sodium per day in the low-salt group, and 80,250 mg to 160,500 mg of sodium per day in the high-salt group. This means that even the low-salt group is consuming more salt than most humans would consume on a daily basis.

This is what I consistently find in the anti-fructose literature, feeding mice insanely large amounts of the substance and then concluding that it's having harmful effects on the animal.

The results of this study don't tell me much because the mice are consuming unnaturally large amounts of sodium, unless my calculations are off and I am certainly open to being corrected if they are.

 

[Amazoniac]

I never claimed to be a guru and there is no need to be so rude, I haven't been so far.

Okay, fair enough, my mistake. Usually, authors make this clearer in their methods section and they did not in this study which is what threw me off.

So, based on figure 1, the mice consumed somewhere between 2 and 4 grams of food per day. The methods section states that the low-salt group consumed 0.25% of the diet as NaCl and the high-salt group consumed 3.15% of the diet as NaCl (I'm assuming this is percent of the total weight of the diet in grams). This means that the low-salt group consumed between 5 and 10 mg of NaCl, or roughly 2 to 4 mg of sodium per day (I'm basing this off the molar masses of sodium and chloride which puts sodium at 40% of the NaCl compound). The high-salt group consumed between 63 and 126 mg of NaCl, or roughly 25.2 mg to 50.4 mg per day of sodium.

The rats weigh somewhere between 20 and probably 27 grams based on figure 1. Let's take the mean to be 23.5 grams. This equates to 0.0851 mg to 0.170 mg of sodium per gram of body weight in the low-salt group and 1.07 mg to 2.14 mg per gram of body weight in the high-salt group.

Extrapolating that to human size, assuming a body weight of 75 kg (75,000 g or 165 lbs), that equates to 6,382.5 mg to 12,765 mg of sodium per day in the low-salt group, and 80,250 mg to 160,500 mg of sodium per day in the high-salt group. This means that even the low-salt group is consuming more salt than most humans would consume on a daily basis.

This is what I consistently find in the anti-fructose literature, feeding mice insanely large amounts of the substance and then concluding that it's having harmful effects on the animal.

The results of this study don't tell me much because the mice are consuming unnaturally large amounts of sodium, unless my calculations are off and I am certainly open to being corrected if they are.

- A simple practice guide for dose conversion between animals and human

 

[stargazer1111]

Okay, let's go on the guidance of that paper:

That equates to 6,688 mg per day to 13,375 mg per day of sodium in humans in the high-salt group.

Humans naturally tend to consume right at about 4.5 grams per day. It's still physiologically much higher than what most humans would consume.

 

[Amazoniac]

Okay, let's go on the guidance of that paper:

That equates to 6,688 mg per day to 13,375 mg per day in humans.

Humans naturally tend to consume right at about 4.5 grams per day. It's still physiologically much higher than what most humans would consume.

0.25%* of 3 grams of food: 7.5 mg NaCl/d. *(there's no doubt that it was based on diet, it was next to other constituents)
7.5 mg ÷ [25 g (mice weight) ÷ 1000 g]: 300 mg/kg.
300 mg/kg ÷ 12.3 (equivalence to humanoid): 25 mg/kg.
25 mg/kg × 70 kg: 1.7 g NaCl/d.