Salt — good for health

By Ward Degler/Times Sentinel columnist

Show of hands, how many of you have been told salt is bad for you? Whoever told you that is right, of course. But, he is also wrong, dead wrong.

Without salt, the body couldn’t function. Salt regulates the water in our bodies and works with it to generate and release energy vital for human activity. Sort of like a storage battery.

And, like any battery, the water and salt must remain balanced. In his insightful book, “Your Body’s Many Cries for Water,” Ferrydoon Batmanghelldj, MD (aka Dr. Batman) points out that too little water and we develop edema and our feet and fingers swell. Too little salt and we starve vital organs and set ourselves up for disease.

So, it isn’t a matter of whether we need salt or not, it’s a matter of what kind of salt. I know what you’re thinking: salt is salt; right? Nope, there is a huge difference between natural salt and refined salt.

Natural salt exists in two forms, rock salt and brine. Brine comes from the ocean, of course, and rock salt comes from ancient oceans that dried up millennia ago and left their brine behind. A lot of the rock salt in this country was found by frustrated wildcatters drilling for oil in Texas and Louisiana. Just when they thought they had hit pay dirt, a geyser of salt water came roaring out of their wells. The chronicles report that a few of the smarter wildcatters gave up the oil business and began processing salt.

Rock salt is mined in the same way coal is mined, underground by men in hard hats wielding pneumatic drills and explosive charges. Brine is converted to salt through the process of evaporation.

Natural salt contains umpteen different elements and minerals. Eighty-four of these are beneficial and even vital to our health. There are some elements, of course, that are potentially harmful and need to be removed. Unfortunately, in the process of refining natural salt into table salt, all but two elements are removed.

What’s left is nothing but sodium and chloride. Did you know that raw sodium will ignite when it comes in contact with water? Who knows, maybe chowing down on a salt-laden super-sized burger and drinking a glass of water could turn us into a walking time bomb. Could happen, I suppose. Hey, Mom, watch this!

One element that occurs naturally in raw salt is iodine, vital for thyroid health and preventing goiter. Since it is processed out in refining, they add it back in by infusing the salt with potassium iodide.

Unfortunately, they also fortify refined table salt with magnesium silicate and aluminum silicate to keep the salt from absorbing moisture and caking up. When I was a kid, my mother put a few grains of rice in the salt shaker to do the same thing.

Both additives are toxic, and aluminum in any form has been proven to cause nerve damage and contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

Incidentally, most underarm deodorants also contain aluminum, and anything you put on your skin is immediately absorbed into your body. If you are also dehydrated, the heavy metal will accumulate in your blood.

So, natural salt is good for us while refined table salt is generally bad news. And in our zeal to avoid heart disease and stroke — both attributed to high sodium diets — we launch willy-nilly into salt-free diets and unwittingly deprive ourselves of the basic chemistry needed for good health.

And a salt-free diet also puts us at serious risk for thyroid deficiency. In fact, two studies by the National Health and Nutrition Survey pointed out a dangerous trend in that direction. The first, conducted from 1971 to 1974 determined that 2.6 percent of all Americans suffered from iodine deficiency. The second study, conducted between 1988 and 1994 showed the percentage had skyrocketed to 11.7 percent.

Salt has a rich history, of course, dating to ancient times. It was once considered valuable enough to serve as currency. Soldiers and laborers were once paid in salt giving rise to the phrase, “being worth your salt.”

Good health calls for salt with all its beneficial elements. And the best source of natural salt is sea salt. You can get it at most specialty food stores, and some companies even sell it on the Internet. Caution, however. According to an article published by curzone.com, not every box labeled sea salt actually contains sea salt. Real sea salt is usually slightly brown or gray in color. If it’s pure white, the chances are it is nothing more than refined table salt.

We all want to be healthy, of course, so maybe this is good advice. And even if you don’t buy into all of it, maybe you can at least take it with a grain of salt.

Ward Degler is a Zionsville writer and artist. E-mail him at wdegler@comcast.net.

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