The Story on Salt, Part V

Have You Made the Connection?
By now I hope you are coming to the conclusion that many of our problems result from the lack of organic sodium in our diets.

It’s All about the Benjamins–Cha Ching!
Given all of the hazards of table salt, why is it on the market? Now that is a loaded question. Think about the almighty dollar. Just about every chemical process requires table salt – from PVC pipes to soda to detergent. Also, table salt is extremely inexpensive and has been a “blessing” to the fast food industry because it cheaply extends the shelf life of food, much to our detriment.

So How Many Different Kinds of Unrefined Salts Are
Out There?
There are many types out there, but to keep things simple, let’s stick to the types of salt that you can easily find at your health or ethnic food store.

• Crystal Salt: the best crystal salt comes from the Himalayan Mountains. It is generally pink-ish in color and you can find it at most health food stores. Try to purchase fair trade crystal salt.


• Celtic Salt: this is a sea salt that contains all of the trace minerals and more and it is grey and clumpy. You can certainly find it at most health food stores.


• Black Salt: this is an example of an unrefined salt that is not tasty. It smells like sulfur and is pink. You can usually find it at an Asian or Indian supermarket. It is beneficial because it is very cleansing in nature. It tastes terrible in water, but disappears in food, so if you are trying to cleanse your body of toxins, this is a good one to use.

Note: please store your salt in glass not metal as metal changes the chemical composition of salt. It is best to use a ceramic grinder because most unrefined salts are clumpy or in larger chunks.

My 4 Favorite Ways to Use Salt

• Internally as sole: for electrolytes and to liquefy plaque (which is dried mucous) in your intestines.


• Externally as sole: in a neti pot to cleanse the nasal passages which helps with everything from allergies to sleep apnea.


• Externally for bathing: (unrefined sea salt, not crystal salt—too expensive) to pull toxins from the tissues, especially when mixed with baking soda.


• Externally in scrubs: (unrefined sea salt, not crystal salt—too expensive) to stimulate the lymphatic system and reduce edema.

The Story on Salt, Part IV

A Prelude to a... Bone?
Let’s revisit the idea that your body does what it needs to do in this moment, on this day to keep you alive. So today you took in more salt than your body could eliminate, and it robbed some of your healthy cells of moisture, killing them, and diluting the inorganic sodium. In the meantime, you really need organic sodium to neutralize the acid. Your body is now in a dilemma. What can it do today to keep you alive, well and functioning if there are no alkaline reserves (organic sodium) available in your body?

Calcium: The Back-up System You Don't Want Your Body to Use
Your bones regulate the level of calcium in your blood. If your body does not have enough alkaline reserves to neutralize excess acid, your bones come to your rescue! Your bones have a healthy supply of organic calcium and, because your body is not concerned with tomorrow—it has to keep you alive today—it takes calcium from your bones to neutralize the acid. What do you think will happen if your body is forced to rob your bones of calcium for years and years? You got it, you will develop porous bones.

It Doesn’t Run in You Just Because It Runs in Your Family
Think about it. We think that bone related health issues such as osteoporosis is just based on family history or comes with old age. I’m going to argue that it is not. How you age is in your hands—dependent on the lifestyle you choose. At this point I’d also like to say that passing on this information is not about judgment. Don’t feel bad about what you may have done or are doing. This is a learning process and healing comes in layers. Take in this information and begin to make gradual changes to your daily routine.

Salty Fun Facts
These fun facts come from one of my favorite books on salt by Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira, Water and Salt…The Essence of Life.

1. Roman soldiers were paid with salt—it’s where we get the word salary.
2. Even allopathic medicine recognizes the healing power of salt, particularly with skin diseases and respiratory problems.
3. Table salt is considered to be poison by your body and requires a great deal of energy and effort for your body to eliminate, neutralize or store.

The Story on Salt, Part III

The Bloody Truth
Our blood must always be slightly alkaline. For optimal health you need for 25% of the foods you eat to digest acidic and 75% of the foods that you eat to digest alkaline.

Let’s break this down. We are talking about the process that occurs after food leaves your stomach. And you can’t go by taste. A lemon tastes acidic but has an alkalizing effect on your blood. Meat doesn’t taste acidic but has a very acidic effect on your blood. If the food you eat is overly acidic, it cannot leave your body without being neutralized. Unfortunately, the typical American diet is highly acidic. When you eat a meal that is overly acidic, your body must neutralize the acid and regulate the alkalinity of the blood. Your body neutralizes acids with organic sodium from its alkaline reserves.

Acidic Foods vs Alkaline Foods: What’s the Difference?
Well that is another blog entry…for now, to keep it simple let’s just say that all vegetables and most fruits digest alkaline. Most grains, all meats, cheeses, beans and nuts digest acidic.

So we need unrefined salt to help our body maintain alkaline blood right?
Not exactly. Your body needs organic sodium to neutralize acid in the blood, but the best source of organic sodium is fruits and vegetables. The average adult needs to eat about 10 pounds or so of fruits & vegetables a week. This is crucially important. Some of us will not eat one piece of fruit in a week! Unrefined sea salt is a wonderful addition to our diets…it requires no effort to digest, gives our food flavor and neutralizes acids. And unrefined salt is so potent, that you only need a very small amount of it. It will not cause edema or make you thirsty when used properly. Let it be your back up to fruits and vegetables.

Salty Fun Facts
These fun facts come from one of my favorite books on salt by Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira, Water and Salt…The Essence of Life.

1. Salt has a crystalline structure that is electric not molecular.
2. Salt can neutralize acids in our bodies, but it can also cancel out harmful electromagnetic vibrations in our environment.
3. Without potassium (which is stripped from table salt) and sodium, we could not think or act.

The Story on Salt, Part II

Table salt: the Poison Pill
When table salt is chemically cleaned and processed, the trace minerals and electrolytes that naturally occur in unrefined salt are removed as if they were impurities. Chemically processed table salt is inorganic which means that the chemical bonds are so strong that it can’t be easily broken down or metabolized by our bodies. When you take in an inorganic mineral, your body will either store them or eliminate them. In this case, when you take in table salt your body sees it as a poison and tries to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, most of us take in way more table salt than our bodies can eliminate. When this happens, your body has to do something with the excess salt.

Have You Ever Wondered Why You Feel So Thirsty and Bloated after Eating That Pepperoni Pizza?
Well, that’s because your body has been put into a tough position. It can’t get rid of the table salt fast enough so it must neutralize it. How does it do that? It is forced to take water from our healthy cells to surround it and as a result, you retain water, and kill off healthy cells.

Consumption of table salt increases blood pressure, and leads to a number of disorders such as edema (water retention), and excess fluid in the tissues (i.e. cellulite) so of course your allopathic doctor will tell you to reduce your salt intake. Unfortunately most allopathic doctors are not trained to and do not educate their clients about the benefits of unrefined salt.

How Is Unrefined Salt Different?
Think of a diamond. A diamond started as coal, but this coal was subjected to intense pressure over millions of years and as a result the diamond was formed. Salt that has been subjected to this same pressure eventually becomes crystal salt. Our bodies can easily absorb the crystalline structure of salt because our blood has a crystalline structure. As an added benefit, the trace elements trapped within crystal salt are in particles small enough to penetrate human cells for optimal metabolism. So while there are many types of unrefined salts to choose from, crystal salt is my favorite. Many types of sea salts are also beneficial, but due to the pollution of our oceans, and for a variety of other reasons, many sea salt producers are starting to refine their salt. If you purchase sea salt, you have to check the label carefully to make sure that it does not have additives. Chances are, if your sea salt looks too much like table salt you probably want to avoid it.

It's Not Your Body's Fault
Contrary to popular belief, our bodies function perfectly. Your body does exactly what it is supposed to do each moment to keep you alive TODAY. When our body throws up a signal, such as acid reflux or intestinal gas, it is telling you that it is reacting perfectly to something we experienced or ate that does not agree with it.

Salty Fun Facts
These fun facts come from one of my favorite books on salt by Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira, Water and Salt…The Essence of Life.

1. Salt in its pure form does not need to be metabolized by our bodies in order for us to absorb it.
2. Natural crystal salt normalizes your blood pressure—so if you have high blood pressure, it lowers it. If you have low blood pressure, it raises it.
3. Osmosis which is the foundation of cellular metabolism is managed by salt.

The Story on Salt, Part I

Did You Know?
Symptoms such as digestive issues/constipation, low energy/fatigue, too much or dried mucous (congestion), and over time osteoporosis and other issues could be connected to a lack of good usable organic sodium. Shocking, isn’t it? Society has been so conditioned to lower salt intake that the message of good salt and how much we need it for good health has been totally lost. In fact, many people are suffering because they lack proper assessment and treatment. Most health care practitioners aren’t trained to look for it, and it’s so easy to reverse!

Our body is always striving to maintain its natural balance.

Salt is NOT Bad for Us?!
There is a real misunderstanding about salt. On one hand, our consumption of salt seems to be killing us. On the other hand, we cannot live without salt. So, in order to answer this loaded question we must first explore the differences between table salt and unrefined salt.

Table salt has been fired at 1500 degrees so that it is stable in most climates. Once this salt has been chemically cleaned and processed, it becomes inorganic and impossible for our bodies to digest.

Unrefined salt is unprocessed and is just like the sodium that occurs naturally in our bodies—it is essential to our daily lives and is most certainly good for us.

So to your body, table salt is like poison and unrefined salt is like nectar.

Salty Fun Facts
These fun facts come from one of my favorite books on salt by Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira, Water and Salt…The Essence of Life. I highly recommend this book! It takes more of a biophysics approach to the make up of salt than a chemical approach. I love that because biophysics studies how our bodies react to substances that we take in and the “reciprocal nature of living matter." Until recently, we’ve only been exposed to the chemical perspective which views salt simply as the chemical sodium chloride (which it is…chemically), assuming it to have the same effect in your body whether it is unrefined or not. So check this out!

1. The human body consists of two primarily elements…water and salt.
2. Water and salt, when combined with light can build proteins.
3. Our blood is a 1% sole (water & salt) solution which is the same concentration as the salt of the ocean. Now you know why you love to be in the ocean!