Has Any Lady Here Succeeded In Alleviating Her PMS By Increasing Her Salt Ingestion ?

burtlancast

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I wonder if any lady member here has managed what Ray has spoken in his 2012 interview on blood pressure (alleviation of PMS with increased salt). (Blood Pressure Regulation, Heart Failure And Muscle Atrophy - Kmud, 2012-07-20).



"HD2: It can be a little bit confusing for patients sometimes.
I wanted to talk about salt, and how this affects water retention, swelling of the heart, heart failure and pregnancy toxemia. I think they are all linked to a salt deficiency. And scientific studies have shown that.


RP: If you just inject a fairly concentrated salt solution, you can see that it directly reduces the leakiness of blood vessels; but once anything such as starvation or high estrogen or whatever starts the leakiness problem of your capillaries, sodium tends to be the first thing that you lose. Estrogen is a major factor in causing the retention of water and the loss of sodium. So your fluids become hypotonic and they tend to force water into your cells, rather than drawing water out, as it's produced.

HD2: And this is common with PMS, when the estrogen rises. A lot of women experience increased swelling and bloating around this time.

RP: Yah. And the toxemia symptoms of pregnancy are essentially the same as PMS symptoms. And surprisingly, menopause involves many of the same symptoms as premenstrual syndrome. And that's one of the great mystifications created by the estrogen industry: they say [claim] that all of these bad symptoms are caused by a deficiency of estrogen. But in fact, you see the effects on the circulatory system - high blood pressure, leakiness, a tendency to form aneurisms and to have the aneurisms rupture and cause bleeding, the spontaneous hemorrhaging - all of these tend to associate with the time of menstruation, at the end of the premenstrual time (when the progesterone falls, leaving unopposed estrogen) and in toxemic pregnancies (when a women isn't getting good nutrition, especially not enough protein and salt, and in menopause).

The menopause, in particular, has been characterized as a time of estrogen deficiency; but if you look at all of the events of menopause, the health failures of the various systems, they’re all identical to these other times of estrogen excess.


HD2:So, how does salt play a part in helping relieve this edema and excess of leak of water from the blood into the surrounding tissues, causing a puffy feeling and appearance?


RP: It has some direct effects on the mitochondria, increasing energy production and shifting the balance of the cell in the right direction to produce more carbon dioxide. And working with the carbon dioxide, it's very close to thyroid's effects in regulating its own concentration in the body (it increases carbon dioxide; and the carbon dioxide helps to retain as much sodium as you need). Without the sodium or thyroid, you tend to produce more lactic acid, displacing the carbon dioxide, causing inflammation and water retention. So many doctors will just insist that the more salt you eat, the more water you will retain and the higher your blood pressure will be. But David McCarron was the first medical person to point out that it's a calcium deficiency rather than a sodium excess that accounts for so much of the high blood pressure related to nutrition."



Salt ingestion could be a very easy and cheap solution to PMS; but Ray doesn't mention real-life cases in this interview.
 
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marikay

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I figured out the connection between lack of salt and menstrual problems on my own before I even found Peat. It makes a huge difference. I highly recommend salt and am pretty sure that a lot of menstrual pain/problems are related to dehydration, which salt cures. Hope this helps.
 
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burtlancast

burtlancast

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I figured out the connection between lack of salt and menstrual problems on my own before I even found Peat. It makes a huge difference. I highly recommend salt and am pretty sure that a lot of menstrual pain/problems are related to dehydration, which salt cures. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info. :grin

Did you manage to resolve all your PMS symptoms with this method ?

How much salt intake did it take , and for how long ?

Have you helped others persons in this way ?
 
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marikay

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Thanks for the info. :grin

Did you manage to resolve all your PMS symptoms with this method ?

How much salt intake did it take , and for how long ?

Have you helped others persons in this way ?

you are most welcome. i grew up in the sixties and seventies when salting food was normal and even snack food (even m&m's) had some salt in it. I didn't suffer too much from pms as a young woman and any cramps could be solved by eating something salty and sweet (even coke had more sodium in it than it does now). It wasn't until the low salt craze came along that things started getting weird for me. And it did take several years before I figured out (with the help of a psychiatrist believe it or not:) that I needed to massively increase my salt intake. The problem went away completely and I always keep salt pills with me just in case.

Ray Peat says to salt to taste, but I find sometimes I don't eat enough food that takes salt, so I still take a little bit of a salt pill with food. I also put some salt in milk and even coke sometimes. I need somewhere close to 2,400 milligrams (which is the FDA amount I think).

After you take the salt, the pain should subside within minutes and go away completely within an hour after taking the salt. Just taking a pinch or two and washing it down with coke or oj might help.

The only caveat I would give is to not take too much salt at once, but rather get the 2,400 milligrams spread out over the day.

And salt can help with sleep as well.

I don't remember if I ever mentioned this salt thing to friends or not. I just know that I do salt my food more than most others I know do.
 

SarahBeara

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I eat a lot of salt and still have PMDD.

Progesterone didn't help, in fact I believe they made things worst and messed up a few cycles.

Currently 1 week into trying vitex. Apparently it takes 2 months to really kick in but there's loads of studies on it for pms.
 
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marikay

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I eat a lot of salt and still have PMDD.

Progesterone didn't help, in fact I believe they made things worst and messed up a few cycles.

Currently 1 week into trying vitex. Apparently it takes 2 months to really kick in but there's loads of studies on it for pms.

How much salt is "a lot of salt"? I thought I was eating a lot before it was pointed out to me that pre-prepared food has a lot less salt than it used to have. I counted the milligrams of sodium I was getting and realized I wasn't getting anywhere near the recommended daily allowance by the FDA. And even that is probably too little in hot weather. The same goes for sugar. What we are told is a lot of sugar is really way way too little. Both help menstrual problems, but only if you get enough of each.

You don't say what type of progesterone you tried. Was it ProgestE?
 
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burtlancast

burtlancast

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. I counted the milligrams of sodium I was getting and realized I wasn't getting anywhere near the recommended daily allowance by the FDA. And even that is probably too little in hot weather.

So, do you live in a place which is often hot ?
 
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marikay

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So, do you live in a place which is often hot ?

At the moment, I'm in Southern California (only hot in August really). But I learned of my salt deficiency while living in New York City. One summer (during my period) I was in so much pain I fainted in a diner. This was after years of problems in this area. And drinking alcohol made things, much, much worse.

My landlord (who is a psychiatrist) suggested the salt pill. It worked. And all menstrual problems pretty much ceased from that point on. I have since learned how little sodium is in prepared food nowadays, and so I work to keep the salt intake up. I use the non-iodized white table salt (that costs practically nothing) and sometimes buy salt pills when I can find them at a pharmacy. I am not a medical professional, but I am convinced that dehydration is the unseen cause of a lot of physical pain nowadays, along with low blood sugar. The two do seem to go hand in hand.
 
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burtlancast

burtlancast

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Cheers.

In general, do you feel your PMS got worse in the summer, and better during the winter ?
 

tara

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I was in so much pain I fainted in a diner.
I collapsed on the floor behind the counter at work once when mine was bad.
I had awful dysmenorrhea from late teens to early twenties. And I'd been convinced to reduce my salt intake. I know I sometimes craved salty things - eg marmite on toast, miso soup. But my digestive system would go dysfunctional for that day too, often quite nauseous, sometimes with diarrhea and/or vomitting. And faint - crawling to the loo cause I couldn't walk sometimes. Pale and clammy. So I would groan through that one day with little or no food.
When I first heard a description of shock, it sounded exactly like what happened to me the first day of every period. When I read Peat on estrogen and shock, it made sense to me.
Mine improved around 30 years, and I can't remember i this coincided with relaxing about salt restriction, but it might have.
 
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marikay

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Cheers.

In general, do you feel your PMS got worse in the summer, and better during the winter ?

didn't really notice too much difference between summer and winter. like i mentioned above, when i was a young woman i ate a lot of salt and did not suffer from pms. it's only after the low salt craze in the u.s. came about that i noticed something was wrong. i also started to notice really really bad hangovers after drinking what was really just a modest amount of alcohol. the whole thing now seems clear to me that i had slowly stopped getting enough sodium on a regular basis. consciously putting more salt into my diet (and increasing sugar) cleared up almost all pain i was experiencing.
 

Sheila

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Mr Burtlancast
Increasing salt directly has made a big difference to me and many females that I know wrt pms-related oedema. I work to taste now with my dose and take my 'extra' salt in my brewer's yeast water. If 1/2 tsp is too salty a taste, the next day I take 1/3 etc and go up and down like that. If I am away for a few days and miss this 'mix', I can put 1/2 tsp in the mixture on my return and not even sense that it is salty which is interesting to me. 1/2tsp daily and repeatedly becomes increasingly salty and unpleasant hence the titration. Hope that helps.
Sheila
 
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SQu

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I made my bedtime gelatin drink salty not sweet last night and slept better than I have for weeks, (sugared milk as usual during the night) and excessive menstrual flow slowed. One night isn't enough to be sure, but it's promising seeing as I need to manage this time more than ever before. Salting to taste clearly isn't enough usually. I'm going to look into brewers yeast water as a base.
 

SarahBeara

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How much salt is "a lot of salt"? I thought I was eating a lot before it was pointed out to me that pre-prepared food has a lot less salt than it used to have. I counted the milligrams of sodium I was getting and realized I wasn't getting anywhere near the recommended daily allowance by the FDA. And even that is probably too little in hot weather. The same goes for sugar. What we are told is a lot of sugar is really way way too little. Both help menstrual problems, but only if you get enough of each.

You don't say what type of progesterone you tried. Was it ProgestE?

Well over 6g salt a day, of that I am sure. I live in a cold climate, and yep, it was progest-e I tried. I also have a lot of sugar. Lots of fruit and processed sugar. Still suffer terribly from anxiety and depression 1 week beforehand.

Pinning all my hopes on vitex, after that I might try a tricyclic anti-depressant.
 

PakPik

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I suffered from slight hyponatremia the last few years -sodium levels at the very bottom of range-, and no matter how much salt I ate, my sodium levels wouldn't change. I believe that's why salt didn't touch my severe PMS. I believe I was very far there in the degenerative/inflammatory process, with probably high Vasopressin levels. What has dramatically improved my PMS has been Progest-E and Aspirin, but even with those I was getting bad PMS. Reversing the generalized inflammatory state is what is finally allowing me to have better periods, and I probably not hyponatremic anymore -I need to do bloodwork!-.
 

SarahBeara

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Hi SarahBeara.....Have you tried red light therapy?

And YES burtlancast, LOTS of salt and Protest-E completely cured my PMS.

I have a really cool red light machine that is fab for skin but doesn't do much for PMS. Currently on day 27 of my cycle and have been taking vitex since day 5. I've had no debilitating depression yet this month, so fingers crossed although I have heard it can take 6 weeks or more for vitex to kick in.
 

honeybee

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My pms symptoms are usually not too bad but I did try to increase salt to alleviate cramps, bowel issues. It did relieve the former but it not the latter.
Also a little friendly advice - if anyone does try to increase salt pls make sure you are balancing your potassium too. My little experiment created an imbalance resulting in low potassium symptoms. Nothing scary like heart palps but annoying mostly.
I'll try again next cycle,
 

Luann

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I remember chocolate used to make my cramps especially bad, as in hot chocolate and chocolate milk.
Looking back though, chocolate candy made it better.
I think the problem could have been the potassium in chocolate beverages, in light of what you said, and knowing that potassium and salt are antagonists (they say)
 

lindsay

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Somewhere around my late 20's and into my early 30's, when my health issues peaked, I switched from being a lover of sweets to salty foods. I mean, I still liked sugar, but I gravitated towards salty savory snacks. I feel that reducing fluid intake and eating cheese has really been beneficial for me. I love cheese - the high fat salty good kinds and eat a good amount. I tolerate it better than milk and I would say it helps my happiness. But sadly, I still don't menstruate (it's been 3 years), so I cannot attest to it helping PMS.
 

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