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Low Carbing issues.

Viv - guidelines in the UK do not say to exclude salt - generally use it in cooking or at the table. If you use too much salt you cannot taste the food you eat anyway. So if you do use it in cooking then you will get enough.

Jay - do you mean use a stock cube? I am reading the stuff you sent me - just a little busy!
 
I've started adding a little salt to food - mainly when I have things like tomatoes. I eat a fair amount of cheese though, which, now that I'm eating no processed stuff, often tastes quite salty. I've just come off my lisinopril - but am testing regularly at home to make sure my bp doesn't go too high. My bp is obesity related rather than anything else.

Ailz
 
Broken record time: Use Celtic (Grey) Sea Salt. It tastes amazing, and is extermely good for you.

Table Salt (Sodium Chloride) is the devils own seasoning, and I wil not have it in my house.

I hear it's great for cleaning industrial size chemical tankers, though. :twisted: Why woud you put anything like that into your body?
 


My Doc gives me a repeat script for Fybogel (Ispaghula husk) which is taken in a small (150ml) glass of water after 2 meals daily .. and I can report it works very well indeed. Its cost to the NHS is £1.84 per box of 30 so you wont be running up a large bill for your area health trust.

http://www2.evidence.nhs.uk/search?q=fybogel
 
One question though..

The symptoms that indicate an individual is having too little salt are almost the same symptoms that indiate a individual may be having too much salt..

How do you determine that in fact it is too little salt that is causing the problem!
 
An interesting fact for you all. When i was admitted to hospital last week due to very high blood pressure, headaches and sickness because i'd been being sick for so long i was dehydrated. The heart consultant however would not allow me to go onto a fluid replacing drip or to have the rehydration sachets as they contain sodium and he said it would push my blood pressure up even more.
 
Even with my little knowledge, Claire, the last thing I would give to anyone with blood pressure as high as yours was, is salt!

I don't think there is any doubt that excess salt is bad for you. But I know a number of people who have tried to eliminate all salt from their diet, because of scary headlines. That too is wrong.

I now eat a little more salt than I did previously. I doubt I'm up to the RDA even now, and my BP has not gone up - rather, it's still going down.

Viv 8)
 
My BP has gone down since I dumped the processed carbs and upped the Celtic Sea Salt. So much so that I have also been able to dump the BP tablets. I tended to eat fairly low salt before that but now consume at least a teaspoonful a day. I can control it well because I rarely, if ever, eat any other salt from any other source.

I don't know what kind of salt is used in the electrolyte solutions but I wouldn't mind betting it is pure sodium chloride without all the other elements that help to balance it in the body. I know it usually has potassium and a few other minerals, but real - complete salt has over 84 different minerals and trace elements and they all work to buffer the sodium chloride and help the body use it properly.

I wonder how our ancient ancestors got on when they didn't have the 'benefit' of Government and Medical guidelines! I think they probably learned from experience. That experience got the Human race this far, so they couldn't have been that far wrong, could they.....

The salt gets blamed - but - and it's a big but - what if it is something else that is driving the blood pressure issue, and the salt just exacerbates it because the body chemistry is so out of whack? My BP went down when the commercially-made processed foods, the sugar, the white flour products, the processed meats, etc. - anything I hadn't made myself basically - and knew what was in it, went, and the salt hasn't affected it since at all.
 

Claire, this article is from the Food Standards Agency which is relevant to what you wrote above, take a read:

http://www.food.gov.uk/scotland/scotnut/salt/strategy

Enter the word 'salt' in the search engine on the FSA page and you'll find many more articles warning of the dangers of to much salt in the diet.

Nigel
 
Thanks Nigel
I don't think food has much of a part to play in my high BP levels. I don't eat much bread as i don't really like it and make the majority of my own meals from scratch avoiding processed foods etc. I would also say i have a low to moderate carb intake of approx 70 -100 grams a day. I've been having investigations to see if there is anything causing my high BP but havn't had the results of these tests yet. I suppose we are all different though and what suits some doesn't suit others.
 

No highly unlikely that salt alone would cause your high bp, but salt is well known to be a factor in high bp and this is why the health care profession advice patients to reduce their intake.

Nigel
 
Hi simply-h, to prevent constipation I take Psyllium husk, you can but it expensively at H&B but if you have a local Asian shop then they sell the husks for aroung 90p, either take it in water or mix in with rhubarb or anything else "watery" and drink a glass of water afterwards, Debra
 
People who have high BP or who are taking a BP medication should not add salt to their diet. If, however, you have corrected your BP by significantly reducing your carb intake without meds and are now experiencing problems with constipation, headache, weakness, etc. this is an indication that you do need to add salt back into your diet. By cutting the carbs you have fixed the problem in the kidney that caused you to retain salt in the first place so there won't be a BP problem with increased salt intake. If you have not been able to get your BP down through carb restriction, this is most likely a sign that you have not gone low enough on the carbs.
 
My knowledgeable colleague advises people to make their own bouillon for salt supplementation. I will occasionally use a commercial type but you do have to read the labels to make sure it doesn't contain noxious things like trans-fat, carbs, etc.
 
Can we have a recipe for this bouillion - just curious.

I do not see in practice that all pts low carbing , not just diabetics cure their raised BP - there are other factors such as excess alcohol, a genetic disposition, lack of exercise etc.
I have a family history of high BP but I am slim and so is my mum but all my elderly aunts have high BP but they are all overwt. I eat low GI carbs and my BP is perfect as is my chol, Tg - but I rarely eat sugar maybe that is a factor.
 
Significantly reducing dietary fructose alone could be sufficient to correct high BP. Fructose causes salt retention in the kidney and also generates uric acid which interferes with nitric oxide regulation of vascular tone. By eliminating sugar you may be doing enough to prevent this problem. For people who have developed insulin resistance, however, the additional effect of hyperinsulinemia can also result in salt retention. Insulin also causes the kidney to retain salt. For them, a significant reduction in all carbs is required to correct the problem.

For a bouillon recipe, have a look in the new Atkins diet book. I would look it up for you but my copy keeps disappearing.
 
I guess it will be on the website!

I do enjoy the difference in terminology in English!

The fructose issue is interesting but there are significant numbers of type 2 that I see that do not have high BP.
 
I used to have constipation until I was given a laxative. Then it become alternating constipation and diarrhea. Then I was given powdered fibers, to be mixed with water and taken before breakfast. I also added a high-fiber type of rye crackers. The second type of powdered fiber finally controlled it enough I no longer needed the laxative.
 
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