NaCl - SALT [= MONEY].... made
the world go round...
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.Ancient Man, the 'hunter-gatherer' had to take in at least 10 grams a day of salt to stay alive, in order to balance his water intake. Agricultural man, consumed up to 150 grams a day, including uses of salt for many other urgent necessities like tanning of leather, glass, and not least 'sacrificial' ritual and meat preservation.... Today the USA consumption per capita, is well over 500 grams per day including all industrial uses. Modern man might be said to be 'drugged' on salt .
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PHYSIOLOGY & SALT
Water/NaCl ratio - Depravation - Dehydration
- Bromide / Chloride ratio - Craving
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PHYSIOLOGICAL NEED FOR 5 GRAMS A DAY It is common knowledge that the blood of animals is saline, that is it contains sodium chloride in solution, and in addition contains smaller quantities of ions of other elements. Of the non-electrolytes most are manufactured by the body and some can be stored, for example, fats. But electrolytes like sodium chloride cannot be stored nor can they be manufactured in the body. They must be taken in with food. Some of them are needed in such small quantities that they are obtainable from almost any diet; sodium and potassium salts, however, are needed in greater quantity. Plants have much more potassium than sodium, so that potassium hunger is unknown except in extreme starvation. There remains the need for sodium , as sodium chloride, or “common salt”. A complex hormone mechanism ensures that the proportion and concentration of salts in the blood remain constant. If a man eats too much salt he excretes what is not needed. If he takes in tool little the mechanism makes the body excrete more water in order to keep the salinity constant. If this is taken to extremes the body is desiccated and death results. The same control mechanism operates when a man takes in tool little water, for he excretes more salt and less water. Death from salt-starvation and from thirst are both aspects of the same vital need for a stable saline environment inside the body. , , .
Many experiments have been carried out to establish the minimum salt requirements for men and animals. The results of these suggest that the minimum amount of urinary sodium lost in twenty-four hours corresponds to between 4 and 6 g. of sodium chloride , this must be replaced. A man therefore needs about 5 grams of salt per day or nearly 2 kg per year for mere survival. A community of 500 would need about 1 ton per year. Clearly, anyone who can control the salt supply of community has powers of life and death. The control of water, being more ubiquitous than salt, is not simple to put into effect.
In regions of the world where the population lives mainly on meat or fish, there is no difficulty in satisfying this physiological need as animal food provides enough salt. Salt-deprivation does however, become a hazard in vast areas where meat is scarce and many depend primarily on a vegetable diet.
Normal water losses in grams per day per person :-
| g/day losses in:- | Urine | Sweat | Excrements | Skin | Lung |
| Common salt | 2.08 | 0.1-0.3 . | 0.1-0.3 | - | - |
| Water | 700-1500 | - | 150 | 500 | 400 |
[From Landow, Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical
Typology in Victorian Literature, Art, and Thought (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1980). The Book of Numbers relates that after the Lord sent
a plague of serpents to punish the Jews for their lack of faith, Moses
interceded with God and was instructed: "Make thee a fiery serpent,
and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that
is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live" (Numbers 21:8). John
3:14, in which Christ proclaims "And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wildemess, even so must the Son of man be lifted up," taught
Christians to see the brazen serpent as a divinely authenticated type of
the Crucifixion, but commentators also emphasize that it is an image of
saving faith. According to the usual reading of this type, the brazen serpent
in the wilderness, which God gave to the people when they repented of their
lack of faith, teaches man that he can be saved only by faith
in Christ crucified.
Commentators like Thomas Scott emphasize that the brazen
serpent is an image of saving faith precisely because the actions commanded
by God were themselves so apparently unlikely to produce any beneficial
result, and, similarly, without the eye of faith one would hardly think
that salvation could conceivably come from gazing with belief at some person
suffering painful execution. The commentators also remark that Moses set
up the brass image upon a pole in the midst of the Israelite camp, like
a standard.
You can't have your water...if you don't eat...your salt!! [...Pink Floyd ?]
The important discovery of pickling was made at the end of the last Ice Age. It coincided with the steep eustatic ocean rise that flooded the continental shelf, which was up to then a rich hunting and fishing ground for Neolithic man. This sudden sea level rise left very few flat areas where salt crusts could form naturally or even within artificial low lying dykes. In order to survive , Shelf man had to migrate inland and he succeeded in developing agriculture and animal herding. Previously, hunting and fishing societies had found salt in the tissues of their prey but under these new conditions, with and increased vegetable diet, more mineral salt was needed to supply what was missing from their diet. In addition, pickling to avoid the seasonal shortage demanded even more salt than the basic 5 g per day. An average of some 25 g were needed , calculated on a per capita basis , and this meant that survival and growth of civilizations were often limited by the availability of salt. Efficient and extended salt production became necessary.
The increased consumption of salt to 29 g, over and above the minimum physiological requirement, had a striking result which might be of some importance. This additional salt intake changed the bromine ratio in the diet because crystallized salt used for food preservation has a chlorine-to-bromine ration of over 2000:1, that is, it contains almost no bromine. As bromine has a sedative effect on the human nervous system one might speculate whether the new circumstances of bromine reduction stimulated greater activity and advance.
It was not until mid-1988 that medical journals began to publish the results of this massive effort, the Intersalt Study. These findings showed a scant relationship between sodium and blood pressure. "Salt has little importance in hypertension" headlined the accompanying editorial in the prestigious British Medical Journal. The Intersalt researchers measured urinary electrolytes and blood pressures in 10,079 individuals in 52 centers in 32 countries using standard methods and analyzing the samples in a single laboratory. The head of the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee and member of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee summarized: "We're trying to back away from our salt recommendation without looking like fools."
Quote......... Low urinary salt levels linked with higher risk in men with HBP June 7, 1995 NR
THE SALT ARCHIVE SUGGESTS THE REAL FACTS: are
BROMIDE / CHLORIDE ION RATIO
The results of an [MRBLOCH SALT Archive] investigation into the correlation of the Cl-/Br- ion ratio in the body shows the regulating mechanism in the kidney, counterbalancing the changes of salt diet, that retain bromides in preference to chlorides.
- Plants have a high Bromide content in their halogenides.
- Any salt free diet has a relatively high bromide content
- Salt (NaCl) used as a condiment has little Bromide to Chloride, and reduces the relative Bromide content in food halogenides
- The bromide content of urine halogenides is always lower than that of bloodserum [twice as low] The kidney reabsorbs bromide in preference to chlorides
- Sweat and saliva, have higher bromide content, than blood and urine. Sweating causes more bromide losses than chlorides, counteracting the reverse effect of the kidneys.
Conclusions:
[from Bulletin of the Research council of Israel 1959
vol 8A no 4]
Bloch , Kaplan, Schnerb 1959
Comment:
It would seem that people who sweat profusely [as in hypertension] lose more bromides [perhaps we should forget about sodium squabbles for a moment], causing salt [chloride ions] to increase in influence. The delicate balance of Chloride ions to Bromide ions is regulated in the kidneys and compensates the losses in sweat and urine.
Conclusion - eat salt - but together with plenty of bromide containing foods.. Better still, eat Bromine rich Dead Sea salt.
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NEWS - ..... quote... University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter July 1995 The many reasons to cut back on salt QUOTE: "The salt wars continue." The anti-salt
forces say everybody should go easy on salt. |
95-4286-(Hypert/Alderman)**
DALLAS, June 8 -- An unexpectedly high incidence of heart attacks was found in hypertensive men with low amounts of salt in their urine, New York researchers reported today. The study is the first to link different levels of sodium intake/excretion with different levels of heart attack risk, its authors say. The findings raise important questions about the low-salt diet that's widely recommended for hypertensive patients, says Michael H. Alderman, M.D., senior author of the study and chairman of epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y. No particular recommendation regarding salt intake is justified on the basis of this single study, however, Alderman says. "Further research is needed to support any new national dietary recommendations," he adds. Alderman and his colleagues at Albert Einstein and at Cornell University Medical College in New York City studied a group of 1,900 hypertensive men for an average of almost four years. More than four times as many heart attacks occurred in men with the lowest amounts of sodium in their urine, compared to men with the highest levels of urinary sodium, the scientists report in the June issue of Hypertension, an American Heart Association scientific journal. The AHA defines hypertension as a chronic elevation in blood pressure to a reading of 140 over 90 millimeters of mercury or higher...........
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