Salt therapy?

[Anny_Middon]

My cousin gave me a salt crystal lamp for Christmas. A friend gave me a trip to a salt cave for Christmas. We’re going next week. All of a sudden salt therapy seems to be the trendy thing.

Supposedly breathing in dry salty air is good for you somehow. Is this true or is it just hype? When I googled Salt Therapy I got mostly websites from salt caves and salt lamp purveyors, plus one from Prevention that didn’t really say anything substantive.

Also, I have a tendency toward high blood pressure. Will the salt lamp cause me to take in extra sodium and possibly cause a rise in my BP?

[dolphinboy]

Not sure about the BP question, you should confer with your doctor on that, but “Salt Therapy”, or Halotherapy, has been around for a while. Whether it helps most people seems to be up for debate. Again, I would consult with a trusted medical practitioner before going too far down the road, however I don’t think it can really hurt you that much.

[ivylass]

The salt lamps are pretty, but don’t do anything for your health.

[lazybratsche]

Salt… air? How? Salt isn’t volatile. That lamp will remain a solid lump of salt, and unless you’re licking it none of it will enter your body.

Unless it’s finely powdered, and you have a fan blowing it into the air. In that case, I can unambiguously state that it is not a good idea to breath in lots of salt.

[Ruken]

@lazybratsche

Salt… air? How? Salt isn’t volatile. That lamp will remain a solid lump of salt, and unless you’re licking it none of it will enter your body.

Unless it’s finely powdered, and you have a fan blowing it into the air. In that case, I can unambiguously state that it is not a good idea to breath in lots of salt.

By inappropriately extrapolating the Antoine Equation to ludicrously low temperatures, I’m seeing a vapor pressure at 25 C of 10[sup]-34[/sup] bar. Which, if we pretend an ideal gas, gives us 10[sup]-36[/sup]moles per liter, or 10[sup]-12[/sup] molecules per liter

So yeah, not volatile. Homeopathic salt vapors?

Salty aerosols are a thing. They’re well-studied but not fully understood. But they’re formed over liquid solutions. I’m not seeing home air currents over a solid aerosolizing much.

[snfaulkner]

Here’s rationalwiki’s entire entry on halotherapy:

Salt therapy (or halotherapy, speleotherapy, salt cave therapy) is a form of alternative medicine which involves staying in a salt cave to breathe the air and treat respiratory problems. It’s quite popular in Eastern Europe (Poland, for example, is renowned for its salt mines).[1] Currently, not much research has been done on the subject, and the effectiveness of the treatment remains up in the air (no pun intended).[2]

Halotherapy is related to salt lamp use, which involves lighting a candle or electric light inside a salt rock to “release negative ions”. However, salt cave therapy could possibly work, while salt lamps are just woo.

[NinthAcolyte]

Here’s Skeptoid’s article on the same. Nothing but woo.

[Smeghead]

@Anny_Middon

Supposedly breathing in dry salty air is good for you somehow.

“Good for you somehow” isn’t exactly a very precise claim. What, exactly, are the benefits supposed to be? For bonus points, what is the claimed mechanism by which these benefits are achieved?

[AskNott]

It is beneficial only in that “breathing in” is good for you, as compared to “not breathing.”

[iceiso]

On a related side note, I once worked at a salt mine/processing plant, where several of the personnel mentioned that they developed new hypertension/high blood pressure problems since they started working there. I don’t have the background to validate their claims, but there was certainly a noticeable amount of salt in the air; your lips/clothes were always salty, a lot of rusty cars in the parking lot, etc.