CompleteIssueSLOLifeDecJan18LR

| HEALTH
Rethinking Salt
We are big fans of podcasts at SLO LIFE Magazine, and you can pretty much count on one playing in the
background at the office most of the time. When we heard an interview recently with an enthusiastic and earnest
young pharmacist-turned-researcher named James DiNicolantonio, our minds were blown, and we ran out to buy
his book, “The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got It All Wrong—and How Eating More Might Save Your Life.”
Now, let us begin this
conversation by
reminding everyone
that we are not doctors.
We are just passing
along interesting information that happens to
run directly against current conventional thinking
on the subject. The important thing is that these
revelations be evaluated on an individual basis, and
there are, according to the book, some rare diseases
that can make overconsumption of salt a dangerous
thing. But, for the vast majority of us, it may be
time to give salt a fair shake.
The book comes with 46 pages of footnotes, and it is
not light reading. But, lucky for you, we summarized a
few of the key concepts in the pages that follow.
DiNicolantonio stumbled upon his salt obsession
as a retail pharmacist, who once consulted a patient
who came by the pharmacy to fill a prescription.
She complained of fatigue, dizziness, and lethargy.
When he took a closer look at her medication, an
antidepressant called sertraline, he learned that it
was a diuretic (which depletes salt) and encouraged
her to have her blood sodium levels checked. Sure
enough, they were low, so he advised her to talk to
her doctor about lowering her dosage and moving
her off of her low-salt diet. A few days after the
change and increasing her salt intake, she was back
to normal. The author became so excited by this
news that he quit pharmacy so that he could focus
all of his efforts on nothing but salt, which he did
for the next ten years while publishing over 200
medical papers—and counting—on the subject.
Imagine that, nothing but salt for a decade! If there
is such a thing as a salt expert, this is the guy. >>
74 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | DEC/JAN 2018