How Shady Science sold you a Lie

To prove that low salt is a scam, I ate an entire salt shaker of salt in one day. Salty diets are leading to health complications around the globe. Too much sodium in the food. A A deadly risk from salt. Salt. Unhealthy Unhealthy salt. This is a worldwide problem. I'm on a low salt diet too. Heart Heart attacks and strokes. Heart Heart attack and stroke. Number Number one risk for a diet related death. Sodium. So we've been told. The The science was settled on so many different things, only to learn later that we didn't get the full story. Are all calories equally fattening? No. No. Low Low fat is not necessarily better. Eggs may be healthier than first thought. But But what if we've been misled even with something as simple as salt? After all, it's so simple. Salt raises your blood pressure because sodium attracts water. So if you have more sodium in. The The bloodstream, it's going to bring in. More More water and increase the blood pressure. But if it's that simple, then my. Blood Blood pressure should raise dramatically or I. Might Might even have a SEIZURE. If I 12 times the daily limit of salt in one day. 60 grams. So that's exactly what I did. I I put this 60 grams of salt in about 5 liters of water and drank it throughout the day while checking my blood pressure. By the way, definitely do not try this at home. People have died from consuming less than 60 grams of salt all at once. I lived because I drank it slowly over a day. I checked my blood pressure five times throughout the day while eating tons of salt around 10 to 15 grams between each blood pressure check. Americans eat almost 3 to 4 times recommended daily amount of salt. I I finished a total of 63.5 grams of salt by 10pm My blood pressure started out at 114 over 66 and ended up at 113 over 61 before I went to bed. So weirdly enough, there was a mild drop in my blood pressure. My blood pressure remained in the ideal range the whole time. Nothing really happened. On another warning, I checked my blood pressure before and after having a monster energy drink within just an hour. A warning about those popular energy drinks. Researchers Researchers discovered those who drank the drinks. Had Had elevated blood pressure. So So I could get a significant rise in my blood pressure with just a single can of Monster in just an hour. But not even entire salt shaker rose my blood pressure. So what's going on here. The reason I decided to do this experiment was because after asking some questions about salt, I learned that the idea that we need to cut down on salt intake to be healthy is a total scam. Let's rewind. The year is 1977, a big year for America. Jimmy Carter became president. Star wars came out, Elvis died. Sugar Ray Leonard made his professional debut. The first professional Apple computer came out. The CIA revealed its involvement in mind control experiments, and people were wearing bell bottoms and had fluffy hair. That year is when the famous dietary goals for the United States were being crafted by George McGovern, which would tell Americans to cut salt and saturated fat. There was actually plenty of opposition to these dietary guidelines at the time. I have pleaded in my report and will plead again or here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the American public. Nonetheless, the famous food pyramid would be rolled out to Americans not just as a guide for what to eat, but it would dictate what would be served to kids in school, people in the hospital, people in the armed forces, and so on. So what about Salt? Well, the 1977 report included the recommendation to limit salt to just five grams per day, the same amount that the WHO still recommends today. But what was this recommendation based on? Well, let me remind you that while we're not often taught much about salt, other than it raises blood pressure and that you should eat less of it, we actually really need salt. A March 1940 paper describes the case of a child who, starting from 11 months, had a very unusual craving for salt. The toddler would throw up almost everything except for mother's milk. At the advice of a doctor, the parents tried giving the child crackers. He threw those up, too. But soon he started licking all the salt off of the crackers and then would ask for more. Once the boy figured out what was in the salt shaker. The mother said he refused to eat anything unless a salt shaker was also on the table. He ate plain salt by dipping his finger into it and bringing it to his mouth. It was estimated that the toddler was eating an extra teaspoon of plain table salt each day, in addition to his foods already being saltier than his parents based on weight, the adult equivalent of that would be around 20 to 30 grams of extra salt per day. Later, the boy's weird behavior made complete sense because his body was urging him what it needed to get. The parents became very worried about his condition and admitted him to the hospital at age three. Unfortunately, after only seven days on the hospital's low salt diet, he suddenly died. In the paper, they specifically wrote that it would seem boy, by increasing his salt intake, kept himself alive for two and a half years. The boy had Addison's disease, a disease that makes you excrete tons of sodium. So salt has always been vital for life. But the idea that salt causes high blood pressure gained popularity thanks to Dr. Louis Dahl. Dahl found some data suggesting that populations who ate more salt seemed to have more hypertension. And then he began studying the effects of high salt diets in rodents. Now, not only were the rats in Dahl's experiments not humans, they were a special type of rat. In 1963, Dahl fed rats a high salt diet and found that some, but not all, developed high blood pressure. He then selectively bred the rats to create a strain of rats that were genetically extra sensitive to Salt. Later, in 1970, he fed the salt sensitive rats commercial baby food. And about half of the salt sensitive rats died. He assumed that the high salt content of the baby food was what killed the rats. After his study was published, the US Senate issued a mandate for lowering salt in baby foods. In his book the salt fix, Dr. James DiNucleantonio says that there wasn't even a single study investigating whether salt causes hypertension in humans until 1983, six years after they crafted the low salt Dietary Guidelines for Americans. He also pointed out that Lewis Dahl didn't mention what the human equivalent dose of salt would be in his rodent studies. Jordan Foucall explained that the human equivalent dose necessary to give the salt sensitive rats high blood pressure in Lewis Dahl's experiments was 40 grams. That is 4.7 times what the average modern American actually eats today. 8.5 grams per day. Remember, this is in the salt sensitive rats. In fact, the human equivalent of what the salt resistant rats were eating was way higher than my salt shaker of salt. In a day experiment, which was 60 grams. The salt resistant rats could eat the human equivalent of 100 grams of salt a day and still not get high blood pressure. So again, the 1977 report told us to limit our salt intake to just 5 grams a day. But there wasn't a single study investigating whether salt causes hypertension in humans until 1983. Let's rewind. We're back in the 1500s. Christopher Columbus was arrested. Magellan went on a big trip. Michelangelo's David and Sistine Chapel were completed. Copernicus said the sun was the center of the universe and refrigerators didn't exist. So people preserved their food with salt. This meant that salt intake in Particular regions of Europe was very high, around 40 to 100 grams, almost two salt shakers worth. They ate plenty of salty foods like salted fish. Then, if you fast forward to the early 1800s until World War II, Western societies consumed three times the WHO's rank recommended limit of sodium between 15 and 17 grams of salt per day, based on military archives data. Yet widespread high blood pressure is a totally recent phenomenon. So how exactly did the 1977 committee arrive at this specific number, 5 grams of salt per day? Well, two people out of Louisiana State University Medical center advised the committee that Americans should reduce their salt intake, except their position was that high sodium in the context of low potassium could cause hypertension in people who were genetically susceptible. The committee report didn't end up mentioning anything about potassium or genetics, though. They just said to cut your Salt intake. As Dr. DiNicolantonio points out, there was no evidence whatsoever at the time that 5 grams specifically is the most appropriate amount of salt for everyone. They just made that up. In fact, some experts were opposing this advice. The American Medical association and the Committee on the Nutrition of the American Academy of Pediatrics both protested the recommendation to restrict salt intake at the time, saying that the data just does not support the recommendation. So we're supposed to reduce salt to reduce hypertension and prevent heart disease. Yet it wasn't finally until 1912 that heart disease was even big enough of an issue to be formally documented. And far before that, we had been preserving food with salt, meaning we had been eating tons of salt, several times the amount the WHO recommends today. So let's take a look at the South Korean paradox. South Koreans eat a wide variety of salty foods, with the easiest example being kimchi, cabbage, and other vegetables preserved in salt and spices. For Koreans, kimchi is served at literally every meal. The average South Korean consumes around 4,000 milligrams of sodium per day, much more than the average American and almost twice as much as the US Dietary Guidelines recommend. Despite this, according to a 2022 report out of the Harvard School of Public Health, Korea has the lowest rates of heart disease in the world. Further, despite no change in their food culture, Koreans death rate from heart disease went down 40% from 2000 to 2019. In fact, data from a September 2015 paper funded by the Korea Food Research Institute suggests extra salt consumption might actually be protective against hypertension, heart disease and stroke. The data shows that the quartile groups that consumed the most sodium had the lowest rates of hypertension, coronary heart disease, and stroke. This has been dubbed the Korean paradox. How is that salty? Now, tons of salt may be bad for you, but too little salt is likely much worse. So you might be curious why nothing happened when I ate that entire salt shaker of salt. Well, let's take a look at this study. In a 1979 study, they gave men with normal blood pressure more and more salt. They kept ramping up the salt until they reached as much as 87 grams of salt, about one and a half salt shakers. This is about 15 times the amount of salt that the WHO recommends and about 10 times what the average American actually consumes. I should probably mention that at some point in the day, I got watery diarrhea. So that's another way the body can excrete large amounts of salt. You spilled the salt. That's what's a matter. The body is well equipped to deal with too much salt. In fact, biologists suggest that too little salt is much worse for the body. A 2014 study in the New England Journal of Medicine proved just that. They found that based on urine samples from over 100,017 countries, if you actually consumed the WHO's recommendation of only 2,000 milligrams of sodium, you would have a higher risk of death from heart disease than if you ate the 3,400 milligrams of sodium that the average American actually eats. Funnily enough, to have the lowest risk of death from heart disease in that study, you'd have to eat about as much salt as the South Koreans, a little bit over 4,000 milligrams of sodium per day. But think about this. What does low heart disease risk feel like? Like, throughout the day, do you walk around saying, boy, I'm really feeling low heart disease risk right now? Well, what you would feel the effects of very clearly are changes in hormones. You might think of, say, protein and vitamins having significant effects on hormones. For example, when it comes to boosting testosterone, things like vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, selenium, boron, and so on can help, though. I'll bet you don't think of salt as having a significant effect on hormones. A study in the journal Hypertension found that compared to people on a high salt diet, those on a low salt diet had twice the levels of two stress related hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine. Simply put, a low salt diet seems to be stressful for the body, Just like when there are thirsty or hungry animals and humans will go to great lengths to get enough salt. Elephants will uproot entire trees to get at the salty soil under the roots, gorillas will chew on rotting wood to eat the salty microbes and some animals will even drink urine for its sodium content. Though as Mark Kurlansky points out in his book Salt A World History, humans easily take the cake for Capture the Salt. In the book he lays out how salt seeking drove civilizations, built empires and won wars. Romans established every major city near a saltworks and for some time Roman troops were paid in salt. At the time salt was referred to as white gold and the word salary salarium comes from the word for salt. The thing is though that when salt is freely accessible, people across many populations tend to consistently consume between 3,000 and 4,000 milligrams of sodium per day. At 126 grams per day, Americans consumption of sugar is roughly double that of Japan's. Yet the two countries salt intake differs by less than a gram of salt, 0.84 grams. Despite dramatically different food cultures and significantly worse eating habits in America, America's salt intake is barely different from Japan. This suggests that your body will unconsciously motivate you to get the amount of salt it needs for proper function. The body will certainly make you feel terrible if you don't get enough salt, but it's not like sugar where you crave more and more. A 1936 paper got people to be sodium deficient through seven days of sweating and sodium free diets. The paper said that the participants reported they experienced extreme unquenchable thirst. One participant reported that he experienced a longing for salt and often went to sleep thinking about it. With regard to mood related symptoms, subjects reported a loss of appetite, anhedonia, difficulty concentrating, excessive fatigue and a general sense of exhaustion. As a 17th century Chinese scientist Song Yingxing said, there are in the world 5 tastes. A man would not be unwell if he abstained for an entire year from either the hot or sweet or sour or bitter. But deprive him of salt for a fortnight and he will be too weak to tie up a chicken. In 2015, researchers out of the University of Manitoba published a review that lays out all the negative hormonal effects of low sodium diets. Low salt diets can have effects on all sorts of functions in the body, including blood sugar control, energy metabolism, heart disease risk, inflammation and the hormones associated with kidney function. And a 2008 study published in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior found that individuals that work day to day in extremely hot environments losing copious amounts of sodium through sweating commonly complain of fatigue, headache, difficulty concentrating and sleep disturbances, symptoms which are often associated with psychological depression I love Salt. All this is not to say that you should force yourself to eat a bunch of salt, but the data suggests that restricting salt could do more harm than good. What this looks like is just salting your food to taste and not ignoring your cravings for salty things. But of course that doesn't mean you should eat garbage snacks like french fries. Now, Now, if you're exercising a lot in. The The sun, going to the sauna, doing a low carb diet, fasting, or doing things that's going to make you sweat and lose more sodium, you'll have to be more proactive about your salt intake. This brings us to the sponsor of this video, Element. Not many people realize just how important electrolytes are when it comes to energy levels. There's a very interesting connection between losing electrolytes and fatigue. I'm actually finishing this video up at 4am and getting plenty of electrolytes and sodium is one of my go to things to do when I'm doing an all nighter. There are many ways that you can get your sodium, but what I like to do is element. It's a convenient way to get a good balance of sodium, potassium and magnesium. You may have noticed me talking a lot about fasting and low carb diets and that's another time when I'm more conscious about replacing my electrolytes to keep my energy levels up. The same thing goes for when I'm sweating a lot at the gym. I don't use any pre workout, but I do take Element. Sometimes we mistake a craving for salt as hunger, which is why I also have a bit of Element if I find myself looking around for snacks. Element tastes great and my favorite thing is its simple ingredients. It has a balanced mix of electrolytes, sodium, potassium and magnesium along with natural flavors and some stevia. A whole serving has only 2 total carbs. If you want 0 carbs, there's a raw unflavored type. If you go to drinklmnt.com what I've learned you can get a free sampler pack with any purchase. Also, be sure to try the new Element Sparkling. It's a bold, refreshing 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water.