Eating excessive salt causes bone loss....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-31-2012

Many people in the United States today eat a lot of packaged snacks and bread and other foods that come with a high salt content.   Some of these foods such as salted nuts and chips do taste salty.  But others like different kinds of breads and prepared foods such as TV dinners do not.

Some people, I used to be one!, put extra salt on some kinds of foods BEFORE they taste them.

And, some people by habit add a good bit of salt to some kinds of foods.

Until recently, the only widely known reason NOT to do these things was that some people who do get high blood pressure.

(We did also know that people who take in close to 1500 to 2,000 mg of salt and eat a lot of vegetables have somewhat lower blood pressure than those who do not.  And in people who have high blood pressure, it usually goes down somewhat by eating this low moderate amount of salt.  The studies on this DASH II diet have shown these things.

Note that this is NOT a close to zero salt or sodium diet.  It’s just low moderate intake.  Much lower to zero intake of salt causes other health problems.)

But in the last few weeks, new research is showing that excessive salt intake is dramatically more harmful than most people knew until now!

We posted recently on the discovery that excessively high salt intake, over 5,000 grams a day, was found to cause internal blood vessel damage directly.  Then this damage causes high blood pressure, heart disease, and gout!

The news for such excessive salt intake just got even worse!

Understandably when you eat 3 times too much salt, your body tries to get rid of it.  The recently announced research found that when that happens, it takes calcium out of your bones along with the excess salt.

Medical News today had this:  “Depleting Calcium Stores In The Body

http://mnt.to/a/47pN

The scientific community has always wanted to know why people who eat high-salt diets are prone to developing medical problems such as kidney stones and osteoporosis.

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta may have solved this puzzle through their work with animal lab models and cells.”

They found this effect.  When there is excess sodium and your body gets rid of it, it pulls calcium to go with it.

We now know that eating excessive salt is extremely harmful and in multiple ways including bone loss.

How to avoid excess salt.

1.  Eat more foods that salt has NOT been added to.  Raw broccoli florets and unsalted, raw or dry roasted nuts, whole fresh fruit, and many other foods work just fine with no salt added. 

2.  Either stop eating high salt foods or where salt has been added for you or eat them far less often.

The other ingredients in many of these foods such as packaged snacks, refined grain breads, and commercial baked goods, and fast food are as bad for you as the excess salt because they contain things like oils high in omega 6, refined grains, partially saturated oils high in omega 6, high fructose corn syrup, and excessive sugars.

So, you benefit in multiple ways when you slash your intake of such foods to zero to or near zero.  You’ll not only avoid the excess salt in them and be and stay healthier by avoiding these other ingredients, you’ll be far less fat too!

3.  Always taste your food first!  Then add other spices you like and as little salt as possible.

(One piece of good news is after a week or so of no longer eating excessive salt, you taste salty tastes better and you’ll find you enjoy foods as much as you did before with far less salt.

You do NOT need to eat zero salt.  If the food would taste better with some salt or you have been sweating a lot, adding some salt to taste is completely OK.  Just avoid using five times that much!)

Only spicing foods with salt is like painting with only white paint!  

Eating spices such as basil, oregano, turmeric, curry blends, black pepper, minced garlic, and chopped onion or chives – or ginger or red pepper or cinnamon and more is like painting with all the colors.

These foods also often taste better and mellower and blend better when eaten with some extra virgin olive oil.

Best of all each and every one of these spices and the olive oil has health BENEFITS instead of health harms.

Foods you used just dump salt on can taste BETTER with well chosen spices and no or far less salt.

II.  Quick list of other tips to keep your bones strong

1.  We now know that taking calcium supplements increases heart disease risk; and it doesn’t build bone if you are low in vitamin D.

Conversely, if you eat FOODS high in calcium and take 3,000 iu a day or more of vitamin D3, that DOES build your bones without boosting your heart attack risk.

2.  Vigorous or weight bearing exercise builds bone.  The ideal is to do at least a few minutes of interval cardio and strength training every week in sessions of at least a few minutes most days or every day each week.  Then doing as much walking or moderate leg exercise each week as you can fit in also helps.

3.  Eating foods high in magnesium and taking magnesium supplements has also been found to build bone.  So has taking boron supplements.  Nuts and dark leafy greens are high in magnesium and have other health benefits.  (The people who are allergic to nuts can at least eat the greens.)

4. Avoid the other things that REMOVE bone. 

a) Never or hardly ever drink soft drinks either regular or diet!

The phosphoric acid added to make them taste “crisp” leaches calcium out of your bones.

Avoiding soft drinks is also a very effective way to lose fat and actually be LESS hungry!

b)  We just posted here on why to avoid excessive salt intake because one of its harms is that eating excessive salt leaches calcium out of your bones.

c)  And, completely avoid tobacco smoke.  Another recent research study found that exposure to tobacco smoke causes the bone breakdown process needed for continuous repair of your bones to go into overdrive enough that it causes more bone loss than your body can add back.

That’s a direct cause of net bone loss!