Salt - What we need to know about it!

All About Salt

Notes by: Peter Greenlaw

We get too much salt in our foods today.

Too much salt will cause high blood pressure, water retention (swelling), kidney problems, heart problems and the list goes on.

We are told a low salt or salt free diet is best for good health.

2000 years ago salt was used as money. Gold and salt had the same value. The word salary comes from salt.

In old times salt was used to preserve foods but now we have refrigeration.

Salt is not required with refrigeration and the freezing of our foods today.

All warm blooded animals must have salt to maintain the fluid balance of the cells in their body.

The human brain and spine is in a sac of salt water called CSF (cerebrospinal fluid). This liquid circulates throughout the brain and spinal cord.

We all spent approx 9 months in our mothers belly in a sac (placenta) of salt water (amniotic fluid).

Our tears are salty and we sweat salt.

Our bones are hollow in the center (marrow) where blood cells are made and the marrow is covered with many strands of calcium salts, the way rope is woven together. Salt crystals are woven in with the calcium and calcium phosphate.

27% of the body’s salt is in the bones. When the body requires more salt it can borrow it from the bones. When this happens, calcium is also removed with the salt making the bones thinner, soft and brittle.

Salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine, put together they are called Sodium chloride (Na Cl ).

Sodium is a soft positive-charged metal where chlorine is a negative charged gas and when put under pressure it becomes a liquid.

All salt on planet earth comes with many trace minerals mixed into the sodium and chlorine.

Chlorine is a gas/liquid but somehow when the earth was formed the chlorine became a solid with the sodium and the trace minerals.

You can crush the salt crystals into a powder and the chlorine stays with the sodium. Chlorine as a solid is called chloride.

Another compound found in nature is potassium chloride. It is used as a salt substitute because it tastes like salt. It also comes mixed with trace minerals.

So we can assume that these trace minerals are very important or they would not be combined with the salt. Because of the commercial value of these minerals we remove them and make big profits.

The human body is able to split the chlorine from the sodium as needed because many of our organs and blood must have the chlorine to function. Our stomach needs the chlorine to make hydrochloric acid that’s vital to good health.

Our body also uses the sodium chloride as salt to keep the brain, spine, tears, bones, sweat glands, organs and blood topped off with salt. The body benefits from the other trace minerals that help keep the body alkaline and healthy.

Just as drinking too much water can put a person at risk of intoxication (hyponatremia) without taking enough salt. The same thing is true with taking too much salt, it can cause swelling, diarrhea, and death.

Purified Salt is 40% sodium and 60% chlorine. Sodium is very abundant on earth and used as a binder with many of our food additives.

Sodium bicarbonate ,sodium aiginate, sodium phosphate, sodium benzoate, sodium citrate, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, sodium stearoyl fumerate, sodium propionate and MSG mono sodium glutamate are just to name a few.

Sodium, potassium and chloride are minerals that dissolve in water and carry electrical charges anywhere there is water in the body. These minerals are called electrolytes.

Sodium and potassium are positive charged where chlorine (chloride) is negative chaged. Salt is a compound of sodium (+) and chlorine (-) charged.

These electrically charged minerals can freely move into a cell and back out again carrying nutrients in and removing waste products and excess water as to keep the cell balanced.

At the same time as these electrolytes move in and out of the cells making their exchanges a delicate balance of potassium inside the cell must be maintained with a special amount of sodium and chloride to hold the potassium in the center of the cell.

Electrolytes are found in all fluids of the body and carry impulses along your nerves, help make your muscles contract and relax, like your heart muscle and diaphragm for breathing.

Electrolytes carry glucose (blood sugar) into the cell after insulin opens the door (gate) for the sugar to be taken in.

Electrolytes also turn cation pumps that generate electricity to be stored in the Mg ATP’s and Mg GTP’s batteries of the body.

High blood pressure can occur when there is too much sodium outside of the cells causing an out- of- balance of fluids. When this happens, cells and organs don’t work right and you can get swelling, aches and pains and don’t feel well at all.

Too much sodium can happen from eating too many food additives containing sodium as a binder. Sodium is not salt. Salt is sodium chloride a positive charged sodium and a negative charged chlorine (chloride). They are + and – so they balance each other plus the chloride is 60% and the sodium is 40%.

Scientists and doctors still don’t know how salt dissolves in water or how it can keep getting saltier and saltier. Scientists and chemists have some theories but can’t prove any of them. Salt is only bad for a person when they don’t drink enough plain water.

If a person loses too many of these electrolytes from having diarrhea or from taking a water pill (diuretic) they can become very sick and must go to the hospital and get IVs of saline (salt water) dextrose (sugar water) and minerals containing potassium. If your potassium level drops to low your heart could stop beating.

Many of our beverages today contain caffeine that is a diuretic (water pill) causing a water shortage in the body. Nothing replaces plain water according to Dr Batmanghelidj (Dr B or Dr Batman).

Our blood is 94% water
Our brain is 85% water
Our soft tissue is 75% water

Dr Batman has printed in his book ABC of Asthma, Allergies and Lupus on pages 142-150 what he has discovered about salt in his practice and research.

Dr Batman says water, salt and potassium together regulate the water content of the body. Salt forces some water to stay with the salt outside the cells (osmotic retention of water by salt) and potassium holds water inside the cell.

Basically, there are two oceans of water in the body: one ocean is held inside the cell and the other ocean is held outside the cell. Good health depends on a most delicate balance between these two oceans.

When the body is low on water it will increase the volume of salty water on the outside of the cell and through a special mechanism the cell can filter out the salt and inject some fresh water into the center ocean as needed to maintain a balance.

For this mechanism to function the capillaries (blood vessels) must constrict by the use of Vasopressin. As its name implies, it causes vaso-constriction and higher blood pressure is required to filter and inject the fresh water from the outside ocean into the inside ocean of fresh water and potassium.

One of the causes of high blood pressure is a lack of fresh water for the inside ocean of the cell according to Dr Batman. We call it hypertension.