the topic of how much salt that you should consume daily is one of the most controversial
and misunderstood topics that we could have about your health today so that's why in this video we
are going to take it head on we're going to first discuss whether or not salt is even healthy for
you to consume and then also we'll discuss how much you should be consuming every day
hey wellness warrior it's dr zyrowski and for me growing up salt was always considered something
that was not that healthy for you you never wanted to overdo it at the dinner table you
had to make sure that you kept it to a minimum because it could ruin your health it could cause
things like high blood pressure and so many things that you don't ever want to deal with things that
so many people are facing today it's one of those things where if we look at all the people who are
suffering from cardiovascular complaints whether it's cholesterol issues high blood pressure
or even worse heart disease we always look back to salt and say hmm that potentially could be
the culprit in today's western medicine but the fact is is the reality is much
different i want you to tell me in the comments below is this something that you were taught
that you should be avoiding salt and who taught you this because i'd be curious to know was it
your doctor was it just maybe a family member who taught you that you should be avoiding salt now i
today have patients come in all the time and they tell me dr zyrowski you know i have high blood
pressure and it just won't go down i'm avoiding salt i'm eating all the things i'm supposed to and
it just stays up there as they are sitting there with insulin resistance and on medication for that
and they're obese they have all these problems and their main concern is salt and the fact is is that
they're looking for health solutions in all the wrong places so let's go ahead and take a look
at this whole salt topic now the american heart association the cdc and even the fda have their
own recommendations as to how much salt you should be consuming now the reason that they think this
is a big deal is because they are telling us that consuming too much salt leads to a few things high
blood pressure heart attack and even strokes so if you're consuming too much salt you could end
up in those shoes and that's something you should reasonably be concerned about if you
look statistically how many people suffer from this it's a huge number now according to the
american heart association they recommend that you consume less than 1500 milligrams of salt
per day now if we look at the fda and also the cdc they're saying that you should be consuming
below 2 300 milligrams per day when we look at this we're going to first of all look at how
much salt i think you should be consuming daily and also what are the resources you should be
looking to for good salt intake so we'll get to all those but first i actually want to talk about
some of the symptoms that are associated with a decrease of salt or sodium intake so here's
some of the symptoms we have to look at first is going to be increase in cravings so if you have a
sodium intake essentially you are going to crave likely sweets much more so more carbs more sweets
and just a lot of foods that you shouldn't be eating so you're gonna have increase in
cravings of course probably causing you to consume too many calories throughout the day
which could lead to a problem with you gaining too much weight so anyway increasing cravings the next
is going to be increase in insulin resistance can you believe that if you have a depletion
of sodium in your body and you're not consuming enough sodium every day it increases your risk of
insulin resistance pretty crazy it also increases your blood glucose increases stress hormones which
we know increases insulin resistance and blood sugar so it's increasing those stress hormones
so you could see like these couple things could work synergistically off of each other
now also it's going to lead to a decrease in energy and more fatigue okay so if you're feeling
fatigued all the time and i have been in these shoes before because when i was training really
heavily for spartan races and competing in a lot of different races essentially i was putting
myself into this huge sodium depletion now at the time back when this was all happening to me nobody
was really talking about increasing your sodium intake in fact it was still kind of frowned upon
to increase sodium intake simply because it was dangerous for you so i would have these awful
awful energy problems that would just kill me and then you know what i would do is i would turn to
caffeine and we'll talk about the problem of doing that in just a second especially if you already
have a low amount of sodium in your body so next thing it leads to poor sleep people who have a
lack of sodium in their diet they find themselves waking up more throughout the night it leads to
arrhythmias okay i felt this at a very young age this is a huge thing so if you're getting
arrhythmias look to increasing your sodium intake it's very important you know the electrical system
in the body requires sodium it is a electrolyte and so your heart which is a muscle will suffer
if you don't have proper amounts of sodium in your diet next is muscle weakness okay this is also
very common you're gonna get more spasms you're gonna just feel weak and lethargic all the time
on our list next is erectile dysfunction increase in ldls now this one actually is pretty surprising
because the research shows that it actually leads to an increase in ldls if you have a lack of
sodium in your diet and you would think according to what we hear from like the american heart
association and typical western medicine doctors that you need to avoid salt if you want to avoid
high ldls well if you don't have enough increase in ldls and that's always considered you know
the bad cholesterol according to today's doctors which we don't want to get too far down that path
but that's kind of a myth too and then also it leads to an increase in triglycerides okay so
all of these issues happen due to a lack of sodium in the diet so this is something we
really want to pay attention to and make sure that we are getting adequate sodium okay now
a good question that i typically get is well how do you get a depletion of sodium in your body well
there's a couple things first of all maybe you just weren't consuming enough to begin with right
but the other thing is that you will lose sodium when you exercise it's estimated
that you lose about 1200 milligrams of sodium per hour of exercise now here's the thing too
is that it depends on the intensity of exercise too now imagine like you're a football player
in the heat of florida right you are going to lose a lot more versus
somebody who's maybe doing some light jogging in a cooler temperature so you have to consider that
so it does depend on the intensity of exercise but in general around 1 200 milligrams per hour
of exercise now the other thing that causes you to lose sodium is drinking coffee it's estimated that
two coffees will cause you to lose right around 1200 milligrams of sodium and a lot of people
drink around two coffees a day now the irony of all of this is that if you follow the american
heart association recommendations of consuming around 1500 milligrams or less of sodium per day
and then you drink a coffee or you exercise you're pretty much going to net zero sodium
intake right and so you could imagine what that's going to cause in the way of problems health
problems and symptoms for you so you know their recommendations are silly because not only do they
recommend that you only consume 1500 milligrams or less they also recommend that you exercise
every day so therefore if you're exercising and only consuming that little amount of salt you're
pretty much going to be net zero at the end of the day and your body needs this it's very important
so that's kind of the irony of that situation now the other thing that we really have to take into
consideration here is it's not just about sodium the fact is is that sodium works synergistically
with other minerals and electrolytes in the body so for instance when we look at
these electrolytes we have to consider sodium we have to consider potassium we have to consider
calcium and magnesium and this is very important to consider all of these because the fact is if
you have low amounts of potassium it will cause you to have a sodium depletion if your calcium is
off if your magnesium is low and vice versa so we want to make sure that we're not only increasing
our sodium intake but we're also getting adequate amounts of all of those other electrolytes as well
and this is why every day i drink an electrolyte formula and this is very important to me because
i exercise and and you know have stress and i drink coffee and all these things that could cause
me to lose sodium from my body so therefore i use an electrolyte formula i'll put a link
in the description to the one that i use and now as we look at just general sodium intake we have
to take into consideration two ways that we can increase this sodium intake into our daily diet so
first of all sodium and all these electrolytes shouldn't just come from an electrolyte powder
i use it as a booster it also should come from your meal so eating leafy greens is going to
be something that's very good in order to increase your mineral intake now also
you can use other things in order to help increase sodium intake so first of all pink salt himalayan
salt or even redmins sea salt is going to all be good for you in order to actually increase your
sodium intake every single day now how much of this sodium should you consume well according to
most of the literature in order to reach adequate amounts daily and not suffer from many of the
different symptoms i've mentioned today what you want to do is you want to consume between three
thousand and five thousand milligrams daily okay now think about this the american heart
association said fifteen hundred the uh fifteen hundred or less the fda the cdc said 2300 or less
i'm telling you three to five thousand milligrams if you're somebody who's exercising it could be
more than that if you're somebody who's exercising heavily it'd be even more than that so you want to
take all of these things into consideration when you talk about improving your health and doing it
naturally okay because the fact is is you've been lied to about salt salt is very good for you it's
very healthy and quite frankly when you look at a lot of the the health problems that people face
today in the way of obesity in the way of insulin resistance and all the other issues out there what
we realize is that if people weren't avoiding salt and they're actually increasing their intake of
salt you would see a lot of that stuff start to go away because you take salt out of the diet
you have more cravings for sugar for bad foods and then also you get more insulin resistance you get
higher blood sugar and so this is just something that spirals out of control so we definitely want
to make sure that we're keeping our salt intake up to adequate amounts between three to five thousand
milligrams per day so that we can experience the best health possible and the thing is is if you're
having people tell you to avoid it because it's dangerous you just maybe could educate them or
you just don't take their health advice and if your doctor is telling you that maybe it's time
to consider a different doctor because the fact is assault is something that is good for you i hope
you enjoyed this video and if you really like this video i recommend that you check this one out next