29It is one of the ingredients in oral rehydration therapy which can save a child from diarrhea. It tastes like your tears. In search for it, man discovered kissing. And it is found in most Filipino foods including the celebrated bagoong. Yes, you’re right, it’s salt.
Sodium and chloride ions, the two major components of salt, are necessary for the survival of all living creatures, including human beings. It is involved in regulating the water content (fluid balance) of the body. Scientist Claude Bernard made that discovery in the mid-1800s, and he realized the fluid must contain the right amounts of sodium, chloride, and potassium to allow our cells to grow, work, and survive.
One hundred years later, researcher Homer Smith theorized that the cell-bathing fluid contains similar to the salty seas that bathed and nourished the earliest one-celled organisms.
Salt is so important that it has been mentioned in the Holy Bible several times. In the English translation of the King James Bible, there are forty-one verses which reference salt, the earliest being the story of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she disobediently looked back at the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:26). When King Abimelech destroyed the city of Shechem (Judges 9:45), he is said to have “sowed salt on it” – a phrase expressing the completeness of its ruin. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus referred to his followers as the “salt of the earth.”
Ancient Greeks found out that eating salty food affected basic body functions such as digestion and excretion. This led to salt being used medically. The healing methods of Hippocrates (460 BC) especially made frequent use of salt. Hippocrates mentions inhalation of steam from salt-water.
Today, people are consuming salt more than they should have. The Geneva-based World Health Organization recommends that adults should only consume less than 2,000 milligrams of sodium or 5 grams of salt per day. “The average Filipino diet is nowhere near this level,” deplores Dr. Castillo. “It is around 12-15 grams per day.”
Although salt is needed in our body, taking too much of it is bad for our health. “There is convincing data showing that people who eat salty food excessively have a shorter life span than those who eat salty food less,” wrote Dr. Rafael R. Castillo, the health columnist of Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Dr. Castillo cited the study done in Japan. “In the 1950s, the incidence of strokes in Japan reached alarming levels, prompting the government to take urgent action. The salt intake of the Japanese was very high then, and through a concerted multisectoral program which included a lot of public education, the Japanese reduced their salt intake by half. This reduced the average blood pressure of the population, and the rate of stroke was cut down by 80%. The average life span in Japan also increased significantly.”
Dr. Castillo believed that what the Japanese did could also be done in the Philippines, more than 50,000 lives can be saved annually.
Meanwhile, in their collaborative book, Doctors’ Health Tips and Home Remedies, Dr. Willie Ong and his wife, Dr. Liza Ong, lists four benefits of a low-salt diet. These are:
Lowers hypertension: “Reducing your salt intake can be an effective way to reduce high blood pressure,” the authors explain. “The less salt you take in, the less water you will retain. This will reduce the volume load or strain on your heart and will lower blood pressure.”
Now, if you are already taking several medicines for your hypertension, adopting a low-salt diet may help reduce the number and dosage of your maintenance medicines. “You save on money and become healthier, too,” they point out.
May treat resistant hypertension: There are patients who have “resistant hypertension,” which means that their blood pressures are very difficult to control even with 3 or more medicines.
“Doctors tend to add more and more antihypertensive medications, but thee patients could have their blood pressure controlled with a low-salt diet and fewer medications,” claims Dr. Eduardo Pimenta, clinical research fellow at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
In his study, which was published in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association, Dr. Pimenta found out that participants who followed a low-salt diet had an average reduction of 22.7 points in their systolic blood pressure (the top number) and 9.1 points for the diastolic blood pressure (the lower number).
Dr. Pimenta believed that those with very high blood pressures may be more responsive to a low-salt diet.
May possibly reduce heart attacks and strokes: Once the blood pressure is lower, then the risk for heart attacks and strokes also decreases. This was Dr. Nancy R. Cook, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, found out in her study which investigated the long-term effects of a low-salt diet in participants who previously enrolled in low-salt clinical trials.
After 10-15 years from the original trials, Dr. Cook observed that those in the low salt group had 25-30% lower incidence of heart attacks compared to those on a regular diet.
“The observed reduction in cardiovascular risk associated with this sodium decrease was substantial and provides strong support for reducing dietary sodium intake across the population to prevent cardiovascular disease,” wrote Dr. Cook in her study which was published in the British Medical Journal.
May reduce symptoms of heart failure, kidney failure or liver failure: “Patients with a weak heart, kidney or liver, may present with signs of fluid overload, such as leg swelling, face swelling, water in the abdomen or lungs,” says the Ongs. “Hence, going on a low-salt diet may help these patients’ symptoms by reducing the fluid in their bodies.”
Before doing so, however, the husband-and-wife physicians suggest that you should consult your doctor.
“Limiting salt may be a good idea,” the editors of Super Life, Super Health point out. “But don’t make a huge effort to cut back to less than the recommended limit unless you have high blood pressure.”
“We usually recommend cutting down on salt used in cooking and to remove the salt shaker on the table,” Dr. Castillo noted. “But these sources only constitute 20% of the salt one usually takes in. The bulk – around 80% – of the salt being consumed come from processed food and food we order in restaurants.”
For instance, some soups (and this includes instant noodle soups) contain more than 1,000 milligrams (mg) of sodium per cup. Pizza pies can have 400 mg to 1,200 mg per slice. So if one eats two slices, he or she has already exceeded the recommended daily sodium intake.
Dr. Castillo wrote: “We hope that the Philippine Food and Drug Administration will push through with its move to require all food manufacturers, restaurants and food outlets to put prominently on the label or on the menu the amount of sodium and other substances in the food products they manufacture or serve. This will enable the consumer to make an intelligent choice whether or not to buy their products.”
