Salt Prevents Weight Gain On High Fat Diet

Kartoffel

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What exactely do they actually mean when they talk about reduced digestive efficiency? I am not familar with the effects of angiotensin on digestion.
 

accelerator

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In yet another confirmation of Ray's ideas, this study shows that mice on a high fat diet did not gain weight when supplemented with the extra amount of 4% salt in their diet. The 4% extra dietary salt is equivalent to about 30g of extra salt for a human per day. Peat said in one of his interview that sick people got dramatically better when they increased their salt to about 2 tbsp per day, which happens to be 30g as in the rodent study. The mechanism of salt action was that it suppressed digestive efficiency.
Another interesting finding of the study was that salt seems to act like blood pressure lowering drug, since using an AT2 antagonist resulted in the same effects as higher salt intake. So, taking an AT2 antagonist, which many people do for blood pressure purposes, may be a viable option for people who cannot tolerate that much extra salt.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114419.htm

"...The UI team started the study with the hypothesis that fat and salt, both being tasty to humans, would act together to increase food consumption and promote weight gain. They tested the idea by feeding groups of mice different diets: normal chow or high-fat chow with varying levels of salt (0.25 to 4 percent). To their surprise, the mice on the high-fat diet with the lowest salt gained the most weight, about 15 grams over 16 weeks, while animals on the high-fat, highest salt diet had low weight gain that was similar to the chow-fed mice, about 5 grams."

http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150611/ ... 11123.html
"...Dietary fats and sodium are both palatable and are hypothesized to synergistically contribute to ingestive behavior and thereby obesity. Contrary to this hypothesis, C57BL/6J mice fed a 45% high fat diet exhibited weight gain that was inhibited by increased dietary sodium content. This suppressive effect of dietary sodium upon weight gain was mediated specifically through a reduction in digestive efficiency, with no effects on food intake behavior, physical activity, or resting metabolism. Replacement of circulating angiotensin II levels reversed the effects of high dietary sodium to suppress digestive efficiency. While the AT1 receptor antagonist losartan had no effect in mice fed low sodium, the AT2 receptor antagonist PD-123,319 suppressed digestive efficiency. Correspondingly, genetic deletion of the AT2 receptor in FVB/NCrl mice resulted in suppressed digestive efficiency even on a standard chow diet. Together these data underscore the importance of digestive efficiency in the pathogenesis of obesity, and implicate dietary sodium, the renin-angiotensin system, and the AT2 receptor in the control of digestive efficiency regardless of mouse strain or macronutrient composition of the diet. These findings highlight the need for greater understanding of nutrient absorption control physiology, and prompt more uniform assessment of digestive efficiency in animal studies of energy balance."

I'm trying to understand why losing digestive efficiency would be good.

Is the high salt intake, not actually good except perhaps as a mechanical means for losing weight, the same way adrenaline might help someone lose weight? Effective, but not safe long term.

Or do you think they are wrong about the mechanism of action?
 

rei

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This "digestive efficiancy" is only one effect salt has. It has been quite thoroughly debunked that salt would be unhealthy. Even the official narrative was on the level of "it statistically drops blood pressure a couple points, and high blood pressure is statistically dangerous, so reducing salt is healthy"
 

Hugh Johnson

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What exactely do they actually mean when they talk about reduced digestive efficiency? I am not familar with the effects of angiotensin on digestion.
Digestive efficiency, as assessed by fecal acid steatocrit, was reduced by increased dietary sodium. Mice fed HFD + 4% NaCl lost roughly double the amount of fatty acid to the stool as mice fed HFD + 0.25% NaCl (Fig. 3A). Chronic infusion of a non-pressor dose of Ang II (100 ng/kg/min, s.c.) into mice fed HFD + 4% NaCl increased digestive efficiency to the level of animals fed HFD + 0.25% NaCl. Interestingly, chronic infusion of the Ang II AT1 receptor antagonist losartan (22 μg/hr, s.c.) had no effect to reduce digestive efficiency in mice fed HFD + 0.25% NaCl.​

Read the study.

I am not quite convinced that loss of "digestive efficiency" is the full explanation.
 

rei

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It's probably not. They even hint at it in the study

It appears, however, that dietary fats and sodium content may shift the form of energy utilization toward aerobic processes and away from non-aerobic processes. Respirometric estimates of heat production ignore the contributions of anaerobic and nitrogen metabolisms, and are subject to a long list of required assumptions regarding the test subject’s physiology

It would just be too controversial if they claimed "improved oxidative metabolism with adequate salt intake"
 

Dr. B

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I'm trying to understand why losing digestive efficiency would be good.

Is the high salt intake, not actually good except perhaps as a mechanical means for losing weight, the same way adrenaline might help someone lose weight? Effective, but not safe long term.

Or do you think they are wrong about the mechanism of action?
wouldnt salt improve digestion due to its chloride helping form HCL?
salt should lower both adrenaline and cortisol, so its mechanism for weight loss would need to be something else? apparently it helps glucose oxidation.
im confused as to how salt lowers digestive efficiency or what that means. maybe its that very high salt amounts cause such quick digestion, you don't get a chance to absorb the fats or nutrients from the food?
 

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