My dumb question is this. So salt has sodium but sodium is not salt it is just IN SALT. And I get confused reading online... Do I want a low SALT diet? Or is being low sodium good enough? Do I need to be shooting for say less than 2000mg of SALT? Or is is acceptable to have less than 2000MG of sodium? Seems I remember if you did not have iodized table salt in your diet you would die.. Or can your body process naturally occurring sodium in natural foods to survive?
I'm really glad you asked, because I was talking to someone about this the other day and I was starting to doubt myself. Haha From my understanding it is sodium. My doctor said to keep it between 500mg and 1000 mg a day. But that seems low based on what I've read.
American heart association says you can do 500mg a day.. They recommend 1500 or less. I myself do not feel super comfortable at 500 because I like to jog and workout and I sweat like a pig and I already have a heart issue and I do not want my sodium to already be at the bare minimum daily. I "feel" that the low sodium even this short time has helped to relieve pressure. I can definitely see an increase in pressure and tinnitus after a salty meal. It just sucks with the wife around and she cooks this and that and I am always not able to eat any of it.. I know it is as frustrating for her as it is me for dealing with the stupid diet. On the bright side... Reducing salt to sub 2000 levels is about impossible to do without eliminating processed foods and breads.. So just by forcing low sodium your diet turns to a more healthy unprocessed kind and I quickly lost 5lbs of water weight the first two days and 4 more lbs of what I suspect is fat over the next 5 so. I am happy about that.
I have always believed that they amount to the same thing. Table salt is sodium chloride which is 40% sodium and so the ratio between sodium and salt values is 2.5. Manufacturers often prefer to give the sodium content as it looks a lower number. The RDA for an adult of 6g salt a day which equates to 2.4g sodium. Now that RDA is for a healthy adult without Meniere’s so a reduced salt diet is less but by how much is open to interpretation. The heart foundation recommendation is 1500mg sodium which is 3750mg of salt. More than 75% of the salt we eat comes from processed foods and it is practically impossible to meet these targets without, as awesometx says, eliminating them from your diet. When you start to read the labels you will be surprised at how much salt is omnipresent in your diet. Even milk has a salt content!
Yeah I LOVE MILK lol. Though I have recently eliminated dairy to see if that might help or there be some allergic or inflammation going to from it with my immune system that might worsen my symptoms. But yeah milk lol.. 8oz about 10% of my sodium threshold. Almond milk the same. My biggest shock was I recently went non gluten to see if that might help symptoms as well. Non gluten bread has about TWICE the salt regular bread does. UGH lol Yeah so I am basically not eating gluten or dairy or more than 2000 mg of salt a day. Kill me now lol
I love milk too. For me taking out cow milk made a big difference in reducing my sinus congestion, which I believe is helpful for my ear. I have learned that for a lot of people it is the A1 protein in the cow milk that causes that reaction. So great news is that if that is the case with you (as it is with me), you can have jersey cow milk that is A2 protein only, and all the non-cow-milk dairy products. There are lots of good goat and sheep milks, cheeses and yogurts. I have found a jersey cow butter recently and am so glad to be back to real butter. Dairy, and especially goat milk, is high lysine/low arginine so it is good for us in many ways. Regarding sodium, someone here recommended to me that if you have high potassium things like coconut water and bananas that helps balance out the sodium. I try to have coconut water with a meal that is a little salty (and for me that means not very salty). Note that coconut milk is super high arginine, but coconut water is okay.
Did not know that about the Jersey Cow Milk... Good stuff. Ohhh and goat milk.. That is awesome! Low Arginine so good lol.. I do not mind almond milk but nuts are higher in arginine and honestly almond milk tastes so fake to me. SO many thickening agents. Though Goat milk does have that grassy taste I find. I have always wanted to get on the raw milk train as I have heard it is much better for allergens than processed milk. Maybe I can find a farm around here for that