The Importance of Good Ocean Sea Salt in the Diet
You can purchase unrefined Celtic Sea Salt, a “true” ocean sea salt at iHerb – Products Bee Recommends.
Ocean Sea Salt Doses:
- Unhealthy people need 1.5 teaspoons of the large gray ocean sea salt crystals or 1 teaspoon of fine grades (ground up) per day.
- Healthy people need 1 teaspoon per day of the large gray ocean sea salt crystals or 3/4 teaspoon of the fine grades (ground up).
Ocean sea salt should be taken with meals. It can be added to foods before or after cooking, or added to water you drink with meals. Measure out the amount into a small dish every day to ensure you are getting enough.
You need salt to live!
A healthy, active lifestyle demands sufficient salt intake. Human life is dependent on the presence of sodium.
If you were to ask anyone to pass the salt, it is a given that in most restaurants you would receive a shaker full of processed sodium chloride. This modern salt is not what it used to be. It is not, in fact, the composition that it was when it became our condiment of choice.
Today’s table salt is 98% sodium chloride; no trace minerals, no natural balance. Ordinary table salt is a chemical as clean as Heroin or White Sugar.
It almost always contain additives, like 0.01% of potassium-Iodide (added to the salt to avoid iodine deficiency disease of thyroid gland), sugar (added to stabilize iodine and as anti-caking chemical), and aluminum silicate.
However sodium, in the form of sodium chloride, plays an important part in the primary processes of digestion and absorption. Salt activates the first enzyme in the mouth, salivary amylase.
Sodium chloride is used to make hydrochloric acid, a secretion needed for digestion. Sodium functions best when other minerals, such as magnesium, calcium and potassium, which are also contained in good ocean sea salts.
Our own cellular makeup and fluids are very similar to sea water, i.e. your tears. Much more than a solution of salt water, the ocean’s waters contain a complex combination of minerals and elements.
It is this coincidence that has likely made salt, which is essential to life, the condiment most used for thousands of years.
"Salt" is actually a chemical term for a substance produced by a reaction of an acid with a base. The terms, "salt" and "sodium" are used interchangeably, but technically this is not correct. "Salt" is sodium chloride. By weight, it is 40% sodium and 60% chloride.
Sodium is an essential nutrient, a mineral that the body cannot manufacture itself but which is required for life and good health. Human blood contains 0.9% sodium chloride, or salt—the same concentration as found in saline solutions used to cleanse wounds. That coincidence is why we crave it and why man came to cherish it.
Dr. Bernard Jensen, author of Come Alive, stated, "All cellular structures become alive through electrolytic activity. Life begins with electrolytes. Trace minerals carry the life force in our bodies more than any other substance."
Mineral salts create electrolytes. Electrolytes, often called the spark of life, are what carry the electrical currents throughout our bodies – sending messages to the cells in all of the different systems.
Electrolytes are minerals that are also necessary for enzyme production. Enzymes are responsible for breaking down food, for absorbing nutrients, muscle function, hormone production and more.
Our biological need for salt that contains a balance of naturally occurring minerals and trace elements is very real. These minerals must be replenished regularly in order to maintain health.
Water and salt regulate the water content of the body. Water itself regulates the water content of the interior of the cell by working its way into all of the cells it reaches.
It has to get there to cleanse and extract the toxic wastes of cell metabolisms. Salt forces some water to stay outside the cells. It balances the amount of water that stays outside the cells. There are two oceans of water in the body; one ocean is held inside the cells of the body, and the other ocean is held outside the cells.
Good health depends on a most delicate balance between the volume of these oceans, and this balance is achieved by "good" unrefined ocean sea salt.
For thousands of years, we have known that salt intake can affect blood pressure. But scientists disagree over how much is too much. For years many researchers have claimed that salt threatens public health by contributing to high blood pressure.
Over time, studies investigating the relationship between sodium and high blood pressure have produced mixed results. Most doctors and major health organizations around the world recommend a diet low in sodium. Some go towards the extreme and prescribe a no-salt diet.
What science is now telling us is that a balance of minerals is necessary and is more beneficial than eliminating sodium. The featured study in the September, 2002 issue of the British Medical Journal states that significant sodium reduction would lead to only very small blood pressure changes in the limited sodium-sensitive populations and would not produce the health benefits presumed.
After years of promoting what may be unhealthy low levels of sodium, science may soon prove that it is a diet with a balance of mineral salts that is the answer. Eating a diet with a balance of sodium, magnesium and potassium may actually help to lower blood pressure and promote good health.
Sodium, potassium and magnesium help to regulate fluid balance in the body and allow nutrients and oxygen to travel to their necessary destinations within the body.
The saying that "rubbing salt into a wound," may come to mean something different. Sea salt is linked to healthy immune and adrenal function. Doctors at one hospital have discovered that a treatment for chronic fatigue includes sodium supplements and plenty of pickles and other salty foods.
A number of medical studies suggest that soaking in sea salt baths rich in minerals such as magnesium, potassium, and calcium may be beneficial in the treatment of various diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and osteoarthritis.
Some people find that adding Celtic Sea Salt to their diets helps to re-establish proper regulation of bodily fluids. According to Dr. Esteban Genoa, a Miami physician, "a lot of people are not overweight because of excess body fat; they are overweight because of excessive bodily fluids. This type of person may go on a starvation diet and gain weight. But these people are mineral depleted, and are unable to maintain homeostasis (the process by which an organism regulates internal conditions).
These people will benefit from adding the right salt to their foods because their kidneys are not working correctly, the water exchange between the body’s organs, as well as between the extra cellular fluid and the intracellular fluid, does not flow properly.
These people are not moving fluid through the system, they are water intoxicated, and they are really going to benefit from the proper kinds of salt. In addition, a person with this sort of weight problem should limit carbohydrates."
Given the latest health findings that a balance of minerals is the healthiest choice, it makes good sense to switch to natural salts which contain magnesium and potassium. Not only do these salts promote good health, they also taste better.
The changing of sea water into salt allows sea salt to keep all of its essential nutrients (minerals), thus the benefits and flavor of the minerals that is not in table salt.
The goal of optimum health, a balance of nutrition and lifestyle, can go a long way to preventing illness. This goal begins with our everyday decisions, such as what kind of salt to use and to regard it as a very important nutrient to have daily.