If you’ve read any of my earlier posts about high blood pressure and how my husband was able to lower is blood pressure by eliminating salt from his food plan then you’d realize that eating too much salt not only alters your taste buds but it also raises your blood pressure….sometimes even to lethal levels.

Even if you throw away the salt shaker and stop salting your food at the table, you’re only fixing the tip of the iceberg.  There’s a larger, more abundant source of salt in the foods that you bring to the table.  Whether you eat out alot or toss a quick frozen dinner in the microwave every now and then, you’re adding a mountain of sodium to your daily intake and may not even know it.  Because the majority of the salt we consume comes from processed or prepared foods such as pre-cooked meats, luncheon meats, frozen foods and other preserved foods.  Just pick up a container of soup and you’ll see what I’m talking about. 

Now some sodium is needed to perform very important bodily functions that facilitate nerve conduction, muscle contraction and relaxation, and maintain your body’s normal fluid balance.  However, when you consume too much sodium, your kidneys work to maintain enough water in your body to keep your sodium concentration within the normal range and so you’ll begin to retain fluid.  Do you ever notice your ankles tend to swell or you’ve gained a couple of pounds after drinking lots of sodas and eating salty foods?  If this has never happened to you…then ask your parents or older relatives. 

As we age, our taste buds are less sensitive to salt and we may find ourselves reaching for the salt shaker more frequently and more importantly, if our kidney function begins to slow down, the salt that we ingest will remain in our body longer leading to higher blood pressure, more retained fluid and can also cause more damage to our kidneys. 

So now is the perfect time to start cutting back on your salt.  Here’s how:

1.  Take a close inventory of the food in your pantry, your refridgerator and freezer.  And I mean everything….for the bottle of ketcup to the tub of margarine….everything with a nutrition label on it. 

2.  Make a note of the low sodium items and the high sodium items.  Low sodium items are foods with less than 140mg of sodium per serving.  Stick to items that are low in sodium—> Remember to watch the portion or serving size to calculate how much sodium you’re actually getting (if you normally eat a whole bag of pretzels which is 2 servings, then multiply the sodium content listed on the label by 2 to get the total amount of sodium you’re eating).

3.  Do not salt your food at the table.

4.  Cut back on the salt you use to prepare foods.  Half the amount of salt called for in recipes and use other herbs and spices to flavor your food.

and….

5.  Avoid extremely salty foods (and don’t forget the condiments…like soy sauce, ketcup and even hot sauce).

So find out where all the salt is coming from in your diet and put a stop to it…for the sake of your health…..your blood pressure and your kidneys.

To your wellness,

The Health and Wellness Queen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.