salt and calcium loss?
Aug. 24th, 2006 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omlyBrowsing the internet I ran across this MSN/NBC article (yeah, yeah I know) that was interesting to me. It is about sodium intake, which normally is a pet subject of mine. Salty things are really salty to me and tend to make me flush. According to Fitday, even with all of the crap and processed food I am eating out here, I am still only averaging ~1800 mg a day. Although supposedly you should stay under 2300 mg, most americans get 4-6000mg a day.
Ok so none of that is new. But what was particularly interesting to me, and I hadn't thought about before, was that calcium and sodium are very similar chemically. After all they are right beneath the other in the periodic table, so they are sort of like chemical siblings. One effect of that is that when you increase sodium (in this case from salt) then when your body flushes it out, it also can flush significant amounts of calcium.
With all of the people worried about their bone density, why isn't this expressed more? Heart health is important, but unless your blood pressure is high, most people don't really worry about salt intake. This seems like something that would make more people think about it.
Ok so none of that is new. But what was particularly interesting to me, and I hadn't thought about before, was that calcium and sodium are very similar chemically. After all they are right beneath the other in the periodic table, so they are sort of like chemical siblings. One effect of that is that when you increase sodium (in this case from salt) then when your body flushes it out, it also can flush significant amounts of calcium.
With all of the people worried about their bone density, why isn't this expressed more? Heart health is important, but unless your blood pressure is high, most people don't really worry about salt intake. This seems like something that would make more people think about it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 07:58 pm (UTC)As someone who consumes ridiculous amounts of sodium high foods and not as much calcium rich foods as she should, this is quite an eye opener.
Thank you for sharing.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 10:05 pm (UTC)G didn't push that aspect himself on me so I will take your word for it. Did this come up recently when you went to go visit the girls?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 01:53 am (UTC)but seriously, the real reason i wrote is to tell you how hot you look in that tomato. may i come in?