Salt is an essential mineral in our diets, but almost all of us consume way more salt than we need, because we are programmed to crave it. The conventional wisdom is that too much salt raises our blood pressure, which raises the danger of heart attacks and stroke, because that's what we've always been told. However, there are other dangers in consuming too much salt.
Early civilizations discovered that salt is a natural food preservative, because it kills the microbes that spoil food. It was thousands of years later that we discovered our own digestive systems depend on a variety of microbes to function. This is what we call our gut biome. Now imagine the effect of too much salt in our food killing off the natural bacteria living inside us. Some of these bacteria interact with fiber to produce metabolites, which keep our blood vessels relaxed and reduce inflammation. And besides their effect on blood pressure, our microbiome helps to regulate other systems, like sugar processing and fat absorption.
So what can we do? Sure, we can put away the salt shaker, but it would help a lot to limit our intake of processed foods, which are loaded with salt, sugar, and fat to appeal to our tastes. Read about about the effect of salt on our gut biomes at the Conversation. -via Geeks are Sexy
(Image credit: Joseph Barillari)
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Yea, I'm dunkin too. Lets all celem celeb celibate the holiday. yay
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The simplest way to reduce the effects of too much salt is to drink a lot. As far as salt expulsion is concerned, it does not much matter what is being drunken. Given that this is St. Patrick's Day, I expect that many of us will be drunken.
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