Sodium versus Sodium chloride

Here is an interesting article on salt, magnesium, minerals and blood pressure from Anne Hart at the Sacremento Nutrition Examiner at http://www.examiner.com/.

April 19, 7:41 PM ·

Sodium chloride will raise your blood pressure if you’re salt-sensitive and also have inherited your family’s gene variation for hypertension.

But it’s the chloride in sodium as well as the chloride in calcium chloride (put into some canned vegetables to preserve color) that significantly raises your blood pressure.

Is it chloride in calcium and chloride in sodium rather than sodium by itself that aggravates hypertension?

At the Solay Wellness Inc. site and at Natural News.com, you’ll see an article published Dec 14, 2005 titled, “Blaming dietary sodium for high blood pressure is too simplistic; the real problem may be mineral deficiencies.”

The problem to be solved may be about imbalance in minerals: how too little or too much  of magnesium, calcium, and potassium (out of balance) play a role in your hypertension.

Can ionic multiple minerals that might be more absorbable actually help if your body isn’t absorbing minerals from other sources?

A variation in genes working together may be why some people respond to salt with hypertension and others are salt-resistant. See the book titled, Healing with Vitamins: Straight from Nature, Backed by Science–The Best Nutrients to Slow, Stop, and Reverse Disease (Rodale Health Books) by Editors of Rodale Health Books   (Paperback – Mar 17, 2009)

Research on how sodium alone, as in baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) affects hypertension are ongoing.

Baking soda contains sodium but not chloride. It’s known that calcium chloride put into food cans to preserve color significantly raises the blood pressure in some people that are sensitive to calcium chloride. And sodium chloride also raises the blood pressure of salt-sensitive people.

The best way to handle the issue is to find out which mineral raises your blood pressure. In the meantime, balance is important, the balance of potassium along with magnesium and calcium.

On one hand people can’t live without salt, but salt is found in many foods such as celery, carrots, and animal protein.

Scientists are researching how potassium lowers blood pressure by relaxing small vessels and helping to remove excess water and sodium. But too much potassium can kill you.

If the potassium is unbalanced with other minerals it can raise blood pressure.

A number of studies have found that limiting sodium alone doesn’t lower blood pressure in many people unless potassium intake is upped simultaneously. But some people using the potassium chloride in salt substitute find their blood pressure rising after they stopped eating salted foods. What’s happening?

There are a lot of issues involved. For example, your individual blood pressure problem could be associated with a high level of rennin.

It’s an enzyme released by the kidneys that eventually leads to the formation of angiotensin and the release of aldosterone. These compounds cause the blood vessels to constrict and the blood pressure to increase. If you cut out salt completely, your blood pressure could rise significantly from the imbalance of too much potassium.

See The Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements. It lists foods by their sodium:potassium ratio. Also see Debra’s Natural Gourmet site. Be careful if you’re sensitive to the potassium chloride in salt substitutes.

A teaspoon generally provides 1200-1300 mg, potassium. If your kidneys or heart can’t handle that much potassium chloride, your blood pressure could skyrocket, especially if you’re not eating salt and other minerals in a balanced state. That’s why it’s important to be tested anytime you are taking something like potassium, magnesium, sodium or any supplements. You need tests of what minerals actually are being absorbed in your cells.

What’s happening inside your body? In which minerals are you deficient? What are your cells actually absorbing? Is your doctor ordering the correct test of what minerals are being absorbed by your cells and not just what’s in your blood serum? 

Or if you have "elevated intracellular sodium or decreased intracellular potassium levels," maybe you’d respond better to magnesium supplementation.

Only you and your doctor can find out by testing or giving you a four-week trial of a mineral such as magnesium to see how your body is reacting to that basic mineral. The goal is to see what could be out of balance or deficient in some areas.

Your doctor may want to put you on a month-long trial of taking magnesium. No one wants to be low on magnesium if and when that person ends up in the emergency room.

If you don’t like the way conventional medicine is handling your nutrition questions, talk to a reputable medical doctor who also has training in naturopathy, complementary medicine, preventive medicine, integrative medicine, or alternative medicine and nutrition…and who knows what tests to give.

Is there competition between what big business gains by selling more drugs versus various natural solutions?

And do these solutions appear in a variety of natural health-oriented books? Such solutions include “eating four stalks of celery to lower essential hypertension (for one week on and three weeks off).” I also see studies on drinking beet juice or using slow breathing machines.

In the meantime, I am now reading the label printed on a container of a particular antioxidant supplement that has a little baking soda added to its capsules. I see the following statement: “Research suggests that sodium may impact blood pressure in some individuals only when it is consumed as sodium chloride (NaCl) table salt and not in other forms.”

This means maybe your next topic to research is whether sodium alone, such as found in baking soda has a different effect on your hypertension than table salt, including sea salt and mineral salt, which is sodium chloride. Could that be why magnesium is added to restaurant salt shakers in parts of Finland?

I’d like to read those studies online about sodium alone affecting the hypertensive person differently than sodium chloride. And I’d also like to know how much sodium (as in baking soda) is okay to use to make a dozen muffins rise without making one’s pressure rise as well.

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