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Before we start, let's clear up any confusion between salt and sodium. Salt is made up of sodium and chloride; and whilst organic sodium (which you find in fruit and veg and other unprocessed foods in their natural state) is necessary and healthy, getting it in the form of sodium chloride is not as healthy.
Salt plays a big part in normal body function by keeping our muscles and nerves running smoothly. But, as always, too much of a good thing can lead to problems. The RDA for salt is only 4g per day in Ireland. This is the equivalent to less than/around a teaspoon of salt. So, it's easy to see how most of us are having way too much salt in our diets. Statistics show that the average person in Ireland, consumes 9.8g of salt in a day. This is almost 6g more than the recommended daily allowance.
Issues like high blood pressure and heart disease have been linked to excess salt for a long time. But salt intake was never associated with the immune system in a negative way. In fact, until recently, salt was thought to have a positive effect on how the immune system functioned.
Excess salt can be stored in the skin, where it is observed to be useful for fighting skin diseases. The rest of the body doesn't benefit from this excess salt because it doesn't have a storage facility for it.
Instead, excess salt is filtered through the kidneys and sent to the bladder for excretion. New research shows that when the excess reaches the kidneys, a sensor goes off to alert the kidneys to get rid of it. This sensor also causes a type of hormone to build up in the body. These hormones, called glucocorticoids, accumulate in the body. When this happens some of our immune cells can stop working properly.
It's really important that our immune cells are standing to attention when a pathogen (virus or unfriendly bacteria) comes knocking. If our immune cells are not prepared to fight when under attack, the pathogen will run amuck, multiplying and wreaking havoc and chaos. Sort of like a Viking invasion on an unsuspecting, outnumbered little village. Well, maybe a tad less violent than a Viking invasion.
Clinical trials on the human immune system found that volunteers who ate the amount of salt equivalent to that present in two fast food meals per day, coped much worse with bacteria after just one week of introducing the excess salt.
You could be taking in a lot more salt than you realise. So many of the foods we consume regularly contain ferocious amounts of salt. For example, some cereals, readymade soups, bacon and sausages have the same levels of salt as seawater - yes you read that correctly, seawater! In fact, one cup of soup can contain as much salt as two cups of seawater. Remember that the recommended daily allowance is roughly 1 teaspoon, so you could easily be way over your RDA by lunchtime.
Before you start panic googling homemade soup recipes, we have lots of simple, healthy soup recipes right here.
Plus lots of other tips for managing your salt intake:
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Experiment with alternative flavour enhancers. There are lots of herbs and spices that you can substitute for salt. Watch my self-care video to see what my favourite substitutes are:
It takes time for your taste buds to adjust to this new low salt world. Eventually you will become accustomed to it and other flavours you hadn't noticed before will start to appear. Reduce the amount of salt you use gradually, and try to be patient. It can take up to 6 weeks for your taste buds to adjust. Your immune system (amongst other body systems), will thank you for it.
If you feel the beginnings of a cold or flu coming on, Echinaforce tablets or drops can give your immune system a helping hand in fighting back. This will be especially useful if you have been eating a lot of salt regularly and feel the need to give your immune system a helping hand.
https://irishheart.ie/campaigns/strike-stroke/salt/
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/536/eaay3850 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4639973/
We are proud of the products we offer and the high standard of customer service we deliver. Our customers love us so much they give us a customer rating of 4.8 out of 5!
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