I recently changed my diet, and I don’t get enough salt through my diet. I estimate 720-900 mg a day from eggs, meat, and green vegetables. I don’t eat any processed food. I drink a lot of water, too (easily over a gallon). I started taking salt pills that have helped with leg cramps when swimming and my resting heart has dropped from mid to upper 60s to upper 50s.
I’m thinking of just continuing to add another 1000 mg of sodium through salt pills. Anyone do this? A lot of websites say salt pills are bad and will thicken your blood, but it’s this true if you are low on sodium?
Who is telling you that you’re not getting enough salt in your diet? Did you hear that from a doctor or other medical professional? If not, do nothing. And if the doctor told you to take more salt, ask the doctor for a recommendation or prescription for salt pills.
I’d agree with this, sodium is essential for life but with modern diets it’s all but unheard for someone to not be getting the daily amount of sodium needed (which may only be around 500mg.) There’s tons of “phantom” sodium sources in our diets, unless you are very, very rigorously logging every item of food going into your mouth and you know for sure you’re consuming such an extremely low amount of sodium, I’m skeptical that it’s good to take a 1000mg salt pill.
So you think you’re consuming excessively small amounts of salt but have no evidence of that. I think you should ask your primary care physician/GP if this seems correct, based on your last blood tests.
I question why you are “estimating” how much sodium you’ve consumed then. You either log your food rigorously and know exactly how much sodium you’re consuming, or you don’t. If it’s the latter, it is my experience that almost all humans I’ve ever known are bad at estimating their food consumption without rigorously tracking literally everything they consume. i.e. if you’re eating chicken, what kind of chicken? Fresh raw chicken that you cook? Do you use any sauces on it? Do you drink anything other than water? What specific meats do you eat? Do you eat only fresh vegetables or do you ever eat frozen or canned vegetables?
If you’re actually consuming 900mg a day you aren’t in the range for insufficient sodium intake for most people, although drinking a gallon of water a day is a lot, and also likely too much if you aren’t exercising heavily.
Salt does not “thicken your blood” and taking 1000mg of supplemental salt likely doesn’t cause anything negative to happen to most people, but you also likely shouldn’t supplement sodium without consulting with a doctor as in 99% of cases I don’t think you need to do so.
I am not a doctor but how about waiting until the next blood test to see if the doctor thinks you need supplemental sodium? (Which would be rare; as said, most people consume too much.)
Low sodium is pretty rare. The only person I’ve known to experience that was my spouse during chemo. Even so, we didn’t need to give him salt pills, we just made sure he had original recipe V8 juice on hand.
So, the OP is claiming he eats ONLY eggs, meat, and vegetables? No bread whatsoever? No cheese? That’s a little unusual.
The body has an amazing ability to conserve sodium when salt intake is sparse, so it’s very uncommon to suffer from hyponatremia (low sodium) without either having a renal abnormality or ingesting large quantities of water, like over 10 liters a day for your average 70 kg healthy person.
I’d advise consulting a physician before supplementing, and getting blood sodium levels and kidney functions checked, at the very least, before taking regular salt supplement. Though in the amount proposed by the OP, a healthy body would not have any problem handling that load, an extra gram or two a day.
I guess it’s unusual, but the world is big enough that many of us have been in equivalent situations. When we came back to civilization, I found store-bought bread almost inedible for that reason.
1000 mg (1 gram) of salt is ~1/2 teaspoon, or about the same amount in a 1 cup serving of chicken noodle soup. As noted above, the body is pretty efficient about conserving sodium, although if you are sweating or otherwise exerting one’s self it is certainly possible that supplementation is needed, although in such a case you’d expect a potassium deficiency (hypokalemia) first, and the effects from that are definitely observable. If the o.p. is showing low sodium blood levels then @Qadgop_the_Mercotan’s advice to consult a physician (and probably a registered dietician) is appropriate.
Although sodium is used in a lot of processed foods as a preservative, and has been blamed for hypertension and heart disease, it is a necessary nutrient and also key in the preparation of many foods, even those of the unprocessed variety, and can be readily integrated into many cooked items without producing excessive flavor. In cooking scrambled eggs or an omelette, for instance, the addition of a pinch of salt a few minutes before cooking helps break down the proteins making the texture of the eggs more tender and ‘fluffy’, and does not noticeably alter the flavor. Adding an additional 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the diet is pretty trivial without resorting to “salt pills”, and frankly the salt is probably better absorbed and tolerated with food than in dissolving pill form.
Interesting. Are you on a Keto diet by chance? Because that is what it sounds like when you say you are eating what you eat. Also the gallon of water definitely sounds like something someone would do on a diet to help satiate hunger.
How many calories do you eat ? Do you know?
I need to “estimate” because I don’t weight vegetables, and with meat, I’ll just go with it if it is up 10% heavier than I want. There is also a difference between chicken
I cut out all canned vegetables. I don’t use any sauces. I do use black peppers, which doesn’t have significant sodium–less a than half a mg per tablespoon.
I don’t eat bread or drink juice (or anything other than black coffee, water, and green tea. )