Lower Your Blood Pressure by Eating Less Salt

What’s so great about salt? For starters, it is one of the most versatile and yet cost-effective natural ingredients. Salt is an essential part of many cooking and baking recipes and yet is used in such diverse ways, from sprinkling on foods as seasoning to the container in which they’re stored to the extent that it is now even used in detergents. If you thought salt was just a mineral compound, think again: It can be an excellent cooking ingredient, and it is often used to add flavor to foods.

As for its salt content, table salt and sea salt have similar composition, consisting mainly of sodium and chloride. Because chemically, there’s no major difference between sea salts or table salt that is NaCl. Rather, because sea salt is mined from salty waters underground and refined to get rid of impurities, it appears to be a crystalline powder of fine white grains.

There is some controversy about sea salt’s health benefits, however. Some scientists theorize that because it’s so close to the source of its salt, sea salt may contain up to 80% more salt than normal sea salt. More salt content can possibly be harmful to your health, because excess salt intake can cause excessive water loss from your body and increase your body’s water levels. There are also some claims that pickling salt and other “salt-free” foods may be more harmful to your health than regular table salt. This is due to the fact that pickling salt, unlike table salt, doesn’t contain any bicarbonate or carbonate elements.

So, what does all this have to do with brine water and saltwater brines? Well, salt water lines have been shown to have healing properties, especially to wound healing, skin irritation, respiratory infections, constipation, athlete’s foot and bacterial and fungal infections. The reason they are referred to as brine pools is because they’re so similar to seawater – they have both evaporated into the environment and absorbed by the human body. When placed in a body pool or other body of water, sea salt and table salt lose a lot of their moisture, became crystal salt and begin to deteriorate over time.

So how does this effect me? Well, you can take a salt bath or treat yourself to a brine treatment once a month or so to help replenish the water in your body and keep you hydrated. As mentioned, it has been shown to help with sea salt and pickling salt issues. However, not enough evaporation has taken place to make sea salt and table salt bad for your health.

You should aim to salt less as often as possible, which will be reflected in your sodium content. Most sea salt and table salt contain around two grams of sodium per one teaspoon. However, many brine pools contain between three and nine grams of sodium per one teaspoon. In fact, if you’re consuming a lot of sea salt, you could probably expect to consume a bit more salt than you normally would.

This is because brine tanks contain large amounts of saltwater. Therefore, when treating patients, doctors generally recommend that sufferers only take a small amount at a time. Also, taking a salt supplement containing fine sea salt or pickling salt will further raise the concentration of sodium in your system.

If you want to consume pickling salt, which is made from the shells of crabs, you’ll need to reduce your consumption of sea salt. For example, a half a teaspoon of sea salt for every one teaspoon of table salt will lower your blood pressure. So, eat less salty food and drink plenty of water! Your health will thank you!