Why You Need More Salt in Your Diet

hey welcome everyone i have a very special  guest today um on a book that i wanted to   actually two books that i want to interview this  Dr. James DiNicolantonio so welcome thanks for   having me on dr berg appreciate it absolutely  i'm guessing that's an italian name right   yes it is indeed just a wild guess so listen  um i want to just dive right in um you wrote   a very fascinating book actually too i want  to cover the first one first called the salt   fix and that's such a confusing topic to so many  people and there's a lot of false information so i   want to pick your brain if you don't mind and get  some data on this we've all been told that salt is   bad for us and it causes high blood pressure etc  etc um give us some basics on what you found with   salt sure well i think um even back from an  evolutionary perspective in the book i talk   about this we've had this preconceived notion  that our ancestors ate this very low salt diet   um and these are based on calculations  um simply looking at um land muscle meat   so not aquatic vegetation or aquatic animals  and not um nose to towel where we would have   consumed the salty blood and interstitial fluid  but simply looking at a piece of meat and so   those calculations had put our paleolithic  ancestors are consuming about 500 milligrams   of sodium per day but if you look at it from  the perspective of consuming nose to tail   and the fact that we would actually follow animals  to salt licks and we could consume salt directly   that that's just a complete falsehood and  a very low estimation of how much salt we   would have consumed so yeah uh you had a question  potentially i was just gonna say like uh i think   what we're told is um a certain amount like how  much what what from your viewpoint what is the   um the recommended amount of salt um i guess we  can do it in teaspoons it'd be easier or a half   a teaspoon or teaspoon well so the american  heart association essentially recommends less   than a half of a teaspoon of salt per day however  they also recommend that we should be exercising   an hour per day and we actually lose about a  half a teaspoon of salt per hour of exercise   through sweat um and then you have the us dietary  guidelines that recommend less than a teaspoon   of salt per day now from actually all the  prospective studies the lowest risk of   death or heart attacks is actually a consuming  about one and a half teaspoons of salt per day   or about you know 3.4 grams of sodium is  essentially where the lowest rates of mortality   cardiovascular disease things like that  actually set and not to mention the other big   recommendation is to drink a ton of water right  you start drinking more water you have low salts   then you develop hyponatremia and you have  a whole series of issues with that alone   you're exercising and sweating right and i mean  most of us do are consuming caffeine and i didn't   realize up until a couple years ago how actually  caffeine the reason why it causes diuresis is   because it causes us to lose sodium and chloride  so it is it causes natural recess so the typical   loss of sodium from four cups of coffee is a half  a teaspoon of salt or about 1200 milligrams of   sodium wow i didn't know that that's fascinating  so you know all of us are the our java junkies now   are consuming caffeinated sports beverages and it  that is slowly depleting you of both sodium and   actually even more chloride for some reason  caffeine in coffee is a tremendous chloride   waster about even two times higher than the  amount of sodium we lose so the typical athlete   you know who sweats you know half a teaspoon of  salt out per hour they're also losing iodine too   through swat so you typically lose about 50 to  100 micrograms of iodine per hour of exercise   and so if you're constantly sweating out salt  in iodine and you're never replacing those   things that can lead to hypothyroidism low  salt hyponatremia poor exercise talents wow   now um if you're let's say you're a football  player and it's it's summer and you're you're   in practice i've heard that um if you're doing  some type of intense exercise you could lose up to   six grams of salt or at least sodium per per i  guess workout that's like an ungodly amount of   loss of electrolyte that's true so in in the salt  fix i actually do cite one study it was um soccer   players in practice in the heat and the goal i  believe it was the goalie lost 6 000 milligrams of   sodium in the one hour of practice and i think the  average loss was about 1800 milligrams of sodium   per hour but certain individuals can lose you know  six grams or six thousand milligrams excuse me   six grams of sodium wow now as far as what  people um should be eating and they're let's   say they're concerned about um well there's  their doctor said there's certain studies   what does the actual now you mentioned  the studies that say well if you consume   at one and a half teaspoons then you start to  have issues is that true or just incomplete data   i think um so we have to look at salt which  is sodium and chloride from the perspective of   overall dietary intake because if you consume  a good amount of potassium bicarbonate fruits   vegetables citrate things that are increasing  your alkalinity you can handle and tolerate much   higher levels of salt that's what that's what i  was going to bring up yeah it's a huge it's so   people that are salt sensitive typically a are  either insulin resistant and you fix their you   know high insulin levels and they they're no  longer self-sensitive so it's really they're   sugar-sensitive in a way these people it's just  showing up as salt sensitivity or you increase   their potassium magnesium and bicarbonate forming  substances either potassium citrate or bicarbonate   and you're going to be able to virtually  eliminate salt sensitivity in probably 99 people   that's just a point that i want to bring up  because i found that um the great majority of the   population have no idea that they the quantity of  potassium need to need so they're usually going to   be under doing it especially if they're you know  an average american consumes like one and a half   cups of greens and so now we're going to get low  potassium now you're going to have more tendency   to be more sensitive to sodium just because  that ratio is not there so you can't buffer it   so i guess they didn't play in they didn't talk  about that or study that variable uh with people   i don't know if they looked at the potassium  levels when they checked the sensitivity to   salt at all maybe they didn't i don't know right  and well that's that's the thing and it's very   difficult to actually find studies testing this  out and i do mention a couple in the sulfix   where they actually took these high salt consuming  japanese people who had high blood pressure they   were consuming 15 grams of salt so about twice  what we typically consume or most people only   consume about 8 grams of salt per day in the  united states and they decided to raise their   potassium intake from 3 grams to 7 grams  and they kept the high salt intake the same   and it significantly reduced blood pressure  essentially to a normotensive state or normal   blood pressure so it goes to show you  you can consume a very high salt diet   as long as you get the potassium level  fairly high got it um now as far as what   you recommend um that an average consumer should  consume how much salt should they be consuming   if someone is eating a whole food diet right so  they're not consuming these high refined carbs and   sugars then really that one and a half teaspoons  is perfect for someone because when you start   going below three grams of sodium you start to  see the increases in the sodium retaining stress   hormones aldosterone renin angiotensin ii that  is indicating that your body is in a stressed out   state to retain the salt and so you always want  to keep the body in homeostasis and that starts to   separate from homeostasis as soon as you go below  three grams of sodium per day so this brings up an   interesting point you're saying or talking about  if someone's not consuming enough salt the body   can then start stressing out and activating more  adrenal hormones and other hormones right correct   right and even in animal studies this is really  interesting if you put them on a low salt diet   they have to continuously secrete the  sodium retaining hormone called aldosterone   and that has been shown to lead to hypertrophy of  the adrenal glands and that can lead to adrenal   fatigue but it's physiologically you can see it on  a hypertrophied adrenal gland from a low salt diet   so you can see that this would play out in  humans as well if you're constantly pushing out   10 times the amount of aldosterone because  you're on a low salt diet that can potentially   hypertrophy the adrenal glands and lead to adrenal  burnout wow is there any data that shows that   doing a low sodium diet can trigger increased  cortisol that's a good that's a good question   i don't know not sure but i would assume that  it would because you are stressing the body out   and cortisol helps retain salt a little bit  but it's what i call the the sodium releaser   in the body um it has if you are stressed  out and you're trying to run away from a lion   the cortisol helps the body to release the sodium  increase blood volume so you can run longer   well aldosterone is the salt store so it helps  you store now when someone has a condition   where they're completely shot their adrenals  are shot and they have the condition called   addison's where they don't have any more adrenal  function then they they have to consume salt like   24 7 right because they have a hold of  bucket there's no retention of that salt   right i actually in this in the salt fix i  have this unique story it was a child that was   constantly raiding the um the kitchen cabinet and  just consuming just ungodly amounts of salt and   the the mother was obviously concerned and they  hospitalized this child not realizing that the   child had salt wasting kidney disease and the  child ended up dying because they essentially   restrained the child on the bed from being able  to go and get the salt that his body was telling   him he needed and so right you're correct when you  start losing the cortisol and the adrenal hormone   functions then you're going to start wasting  more salt yeah interesting um what about you you   mentioned this briefly i want to know a little  bit more about insulin resistance so you take   a typical person who's insulin resistant um they  want to get on keto uh if you're insulin resistant   um you have do you have a problem retaining  salt or you just can't absorb it or what happens   so typically if you're if you haven't damaged  the kidneys which can cause salt wasting   and you're sort of maybe early on or  middle stage in your insulin resistance   it's causing you to over attain salt um and  essentially that's because as insulin levels   increase it tells the kidneys to hold on to more  sodium so as soon as you drop the high refined   carbohydrate intake and lower the insulin levels  your kidneys will then start flushing yourself   out of salt and typically most salt sensitive  people become fixed once they do that this is why   you see diabetics uh have these swollen ankles  and they're just filled with fluid like crazy   right they're just holding they're like a a water  water log basically they are they are water logged   and it's also due to the elevation glucose because  glucose also has an osmotic effect as well like   sodium it pulls fluid out of the cell into  the plasma volume so we have so we have   that effect and then we also have the storage of  glucose as glycogen you store three molecules of   fluid or water for every one molecule of glycogen  so there's a there's a lot of different dynamics   happening that you're holding fluid so that's  fascinating um as far as the quality of um salt um   what type of salt do you recommend of course  i'm guessing it's not going to be table salt   yeah i mean i do appreciate the the pink salts  yeah because they contain natural iodine so the   biggest question they get is if someone purchases  a pink salt it'll say not a good source of iodide   d e and that's because they're not artificially  adding iodide to the salt it just naturally   contains iodine so the fda makes them state  that it is not a good source of iodine   but your pink salts do contain natural amounts of  iodine in fairly clinically significant amounts so   i like either the original himalayan pink salt  which um seems to have about 25 micrograms of   iodine per 10 grams of salt and uh redmond real  salt which their mineral analysis indicates 170   micrograms of iodine per 10 grams of salt so  depending on if you are sweating a lot and   if you're not getting a lot of iodine in the  diet maybe a redmond is a better salt for you   if you are someone who already gets a lot of  iodine you're eating a lot of pastured eggs   you're drinking their uh milk or eating cheese  and you're not sweating a whole lot maybe a   lower either in salt pink's himalayan salt would  be better interesting um if someone's going to   do a ketogenic diet and they want to consume one  and a half teaspoons and they're you know they're   they're sprinkling on their food but then they're  short so do you recommend just putting some salt   in some water dissolving it and drinking it or  how would you recommend to consume that salt   it depends on the person i i've noticed that some  people like to take salt straight and then wash   blew it down whereas some other people like to  take it as a shot or they'll put a little bit of   lemon juice a little bit of water maybe just one  ounce and just take it like a quick shot it really   depends on the person and i think you know it  also depends on your activity level too because   if you're going if you're someone who  works out intensely for an hour per day   you probably want to get a  half a teaspoon of salt in you   you know 60 minutes before the workout to boost  blood volume boost performance reduce hyponatremia   interesting when someone goes on a  ketogenic diet and they lose all this fluid   and they don't take enough salt what are some  of the top symptoms that they're going to get that's a good question um based on the clinical  studies we know that it leads to sleep disturbance   fatigue and erectile dysfunction based  on actual people that i've talked to um   the most emails that i've gotten like a couple  hundred emails have been people that have had afib   and just added back salt and it instantly went  away their atrial fibrillation i've gotten the   most emails about that so i'm not saying that  that can um do that for your individual case but   um for some reason salt is obviously is  important for conductivity electrical   impulses that seems to be a big driver  and it could be due to the fact that salt   controls magnesium when you don't get enough  salt you start to pull sodium but also magnesium   and calcium from the bone and that can lead to  negative magnesium and calcium balance if you're   low in salt and so simply adding the salt back can  also fix magnesium deficiency if you're pulling   it from the bone and then muscle cramps exercise  intolerance are very common symptoms but dizziness   going from a seated to a standing position as  well is very common and then muscle cramps too   yes i i've noticed just from also talking with  like hundreds of people uh muscle weakness do   you feel weaker i guess that would be kind of  a fatigue but you feel kind of weak and then   you take salt and just kind of come right up you  feel stronger obviously you you need i mean in all   your cells you have not only the sodium potassium  pump but you have um sodium interaction between   your nervous system and the muscles i mean  there's a it's a required electrolyte obviously   yeah sodium sodium allows you to pull glucose  into the cell amino acids into the cell it   allows you to get acid out of the cell it allows  almost every single neurotransmitter to be moved   in and out of the cells of the brain it allows  you to absorb vitamin c and put vitamin c into   the brain into the adrenal glands into the bone  you can actually induce osteoporosis in animals   by simply lowering their sodium level in the blood  preventing vitamin c from getting into the bone so   it's really interesting sodium is the universal  molecule that is used to move almost any single   substance in the body fascinating now let's  switch to chlorides so you get sodium chloride   as far as building up your stomach acids for  example making hydrochloric acid if you're low on   chlorides what type of problems could occur almost  any nutrient deficiency would happen then because   you need that stomach acid to in order to digest  your food and then in order to absorb nutrients so   you can see things like small intestinal bacterial  overgrowth or a lot of bloating if you don't have   good stomach acid which could be due to a low  salt intake and this has actually been tested   out in studies people have gone from a normal salt  intake to a low salt intake and it's significantly   reduces the the acid in the stomach and raises the  ph of the stomach so it's important to keep a very   acidic stomach and you cannot make chloride  we can't synthesize it you have to get it by   eating salt fascinating that's awesome well that's  awesome so let's switch to your your other book   that actually was co-authored by uh sim land which  uh he came to my summit uh the last last year um   it's called the immune fix so tell us a little bit  about that book in very simple layman's terms i   know it's you're giving a lot of uh natural things  but give us a little bit more data on that book   so the immunity fix was borne out  by some of my publications in the   academic literature i was trying to figure  out what potential nutraceutical strategies   may help against rna viruses including coronavirus  and we actually published a probably the first   review paper in february it was press release  by elsevier on this on this potential strategy   and then i said you know i need to really turn  this into a book because nobody reads academic   literature and it ended up turning into this  2500 referenced sort of like bible on immunity   but in in essence and we're really not being told  this and you know by you know the common process   is that you are in control of your own immune  health and how healthy you are metabolically and   how your nutrition status is can directly  determine how well you can fight off viruses   and i'll give you a really great example of this  there's a virus an rna virus called coxy virus   and in some kids it causes hand foot and mouth  and in most people it doesn't cause anything   you don't even know you have it but if you're  deficient in just one mineral selenium it causes   ketone disease which leads to cardiomyopathy  and death and you treat those people who have   this rna viral infection that are dying by simply  giving them selenium because selenium is important   for your antioxidant status right increasing  glutathione thought making thyroid hormones   so it goes to show you that your resilience  which depends on your metabolic health and   your nutrient status directly determines how  well you are going to handle any type of virus   the elephant in the room is that there's a  huge huge omission with this whole coveted   situation going on it's like there's no no real  focus on building up your own immune system   which is ultimately your greatest protection  instead it's all about avoiding this pathogen   and trying to stay clean and be sterile but it's  it's a huge missing thing and i know in your   book that you go into uh major details so this  book is also really good for people that are um   uh unders want to know all the details um i mean  your immune system also needs salt and chlorides   as they're they use that as part of their  weapons to kill off certain things and so um   so you cover that in great great depth um one  quick question about viruses in general um   in your book you get a lot more into  it but what what is what is like   maybe the top nutrient that someone needs to  focus on more if if they're concerned about   a weak immune system and viral protection i  would say the two nutrients because they're   very highly linked is magnesium and vitamin  d and so you have one billion people globally   that are vitamin d deficient and half the global  population is vitamin d insufficient so and that   increases if you are severely d deficient that  increases your risk of dying from cova 19 by 15   fold and you can't change how old you are but  you can certainly fix your vitamin d levels   um and then magnesium is required to activate  vitamin d in the body of these hydroxylase enzymes   and about 50 of the us population is deficient in  magnesium so taking those two together are very   important for maintaining a healthy immune system  see i thought i thought you're going to say zinc   but but when you said magnesium you're basically  you're telling me that um which makes sense   magnesium is required for vitamin d so without  vitamin d if was that that's like your weak thing   so if you're low on magnesium the vitamin  d really won't work that well right all   so i think what you're saying is like vitamin d is  like the pinnacle the most important thing because   it's like the immune modulator   well right and you have these vitamin d receptors  on almost all of your immune cells and in order   to activate those you have to form the active  hormone called calcitriol and once calcitriol   binds to those receptors you can get you fix sort  of like these over active inflammation when you do   that but in order to get the calcitriol you need  the magnesium to convert d to the active hormone what about um some of the worst foods that someone  should avoid for their immune system probably the   worst would be the omega-6 seed oils and not only  from the fact that they're highly oxidized and you   form more oxidation products in the acidity  of your stomach when you consume these oils   which is very damaging to the gut and then you  don't absorb nutrients once you damage the god   but the fact that omega-6 will actually get into  almost every single immune cell and once you start   saturating your immune cells with omega-6 they  start producing more pro-inflammatory cytokines so   that would be the number one thing to avoid is the  corn oil right safflower soybean oils that a lot   of people are cooking with absolutely um and then  of course uh then on the flip side maybe omega-3   would be good to take as well right yeah so many  people are deficient in omega-3s and that helps   to form these you know pro-resolvents that help  result literally this is how our body resolves   inflammation it's utilizing things like epa and  dha and forming these these substances called   resolvence and protectants and it's essentially  how our body heals from inflammation well this   has been an incredible interview everyone's going  to love this data i put both of your links down   below for both of your books and i highly suggest  you guys get these two books they're fascinating   one is called the salt fix and the other one  is called the immunity fix because it's all   about just gaining knowledge to not just about  you know treating symptoms but getting rid of   getting to the core getting to the cause so thank  you so much for your time thanks for having me on

Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Views: 113,294

Rating: 4.9547057 out of 5

Keywords: salt, sodium, dr james dinicolantonio, dr, dr james dinicolantonio, dr james dinicolantonio salt, dr james dinicolantonio diet, dr james dinicolantonio youtube, dr james dinicolantonio the immunity fix, dr. james dinicolantonio the salt fix, dr. james dinicolantonio superfuel, diet, james dinicolantonio, is salt good for you, is salt bad for you, immune fix, dr berg interview, dr berg on salt, low sodium, sodium deficiency, low salt, low sodium diet, too much salt

Id: RV3o0VWfHuQ

Length: 25min 50sec (1550 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021