I’m about to take off on a short trip to San Francisco, so I probably won’t be writing anything for the next few days—but I didn’t want to leave you completely empty-handed for an entire week! So instead of a full post I’m going to write a really brief one and link you to a recent good article on the same topic.
As an athlete, I consume a lot of salt, mostly from sports drinks during long and sweaty training sessions in a gym or equally long and much sweatier days in the unforgiving Colorado sun. I don’t worry about my salt intake, although I used to. About ten years ago, my systolic blood pressure was “borderline high” and my doctor warned that if it continued in that direction, he’d want to prescribe medication to bring it down. I had just completed my first nutrition course ever (discounting health class in high school) and I countered with “couldn’t I just eat more potassium-rich foods?” He agreed that might work too, and so I started eating more bananas, kiwis, leafy greens, oranges, beans, etc.
I don’t know why I had borderline high blood pressure. Salt is just a single component of that equation, and I can say that today I eat a ton more salt and salt food and my blood pressure is normal. Perhaps it’s because I still eat plenty of potassium-rich foods, and because potassium as an intracellular buffer is at least as important as sodium in the whole blood pressure equation. Perhaps it’s because I exercise more and have a stronger circulatory system. Maybe I’m just less stressed. Whatever the reason is, the sodium content of my diet doesn’t appear to have been the factor I most needed to change.
A lot of people get very concerned about the dangers of excess sodium. I don’t necessarily want to tell them to go hogwild on sodium, but the truth is we don’t really know much about how dangerous excess sodium is per se except that in a certain number of people it can exacerbate high blood pressure, and that high blood pressure is a risk factor (a single risk factor) for cardiovascular disease. Most people just excrete any excess, though. If you don’t have high blood pressure and are otherwise at low risk for cardiovascular disease, then reducing your sodium intake is probably unnecessary. In general, I recommend people just concentrate on eating more high-potassium foods like my younger me did—potassium is one of the few nutrients consistently shorted in the American diet, and we’d all be healthier if we got more of it (beyond just its benefits on blood pressure).
Anyway, as I said, I don’t want to make this too long, and I do want you to read something much longer and more useful about sodium:
Pass the salt, please. It’s good for you. (Marta Zaraska, The Washington Post)
Ms. Zaraska does a great job of presenting the case for why our apparently excess sodium intake is probably fine, as well as why sodium is pretty damn important. So read up—and climbers, be sure to replace that sodium you lose through sweat!
