Vitamins, Minerals
& Weight Loss

Below is an excerpt from Part Two of

The 2004 Multi-Diet

by Anderson A. Anonymous, M.D., Ph.D.

Sodium

Recommended Dietary Intake

2400-mg is the Daily Value for sodium set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As with potassium, The Food and Nutrition Board did not set an official scientific US RDA but did estimate the “Safe and Adequate Intake” range at between 500-mg and 2400-mg per day. The healthy adult human body contains about 85,000-mg (85-g) of sodium. The chemical symbol for sodium is “Na”.

Usual Sodium Intakes

Surveys show that the sodium intake range is typically from 1800-mg to 5000-mg of sodium per day with 3900-mg per day being the average. This represents between about ¾ teaspoon and 2 teaspoons of salt (sodium chloride) per day. (Sodium chloride is 39% sodium by weight.) Most of this sodium is added to food in processing and at serving time.

Many of the surveys on which these estimates are based are believed to underestimate the total amount of sodium eaten because of various difficulties in study design.

Absorption, Metabolism, Excretion of Sodium

Virtually all sodium is readily absorbed from the intestinal tract. Internal sodium balance is efficiently maintained over a wide range of dietary intakes by the kidneys as long as they have sufficient water to excrete any excess. This means that sodium deficiency does not normally occur.

Sodium Deficiency/Toxicity Symptoms

Sodium deficiency symptoms include muscle weakness, muscle cramps, abdominal cramps, headache, sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, apprehension, and confusion. Deficiencies can and do happen on strict diets.

Sodium toxicity symptoms include firm rubbery tissue-swelling, dry, sticky mucous membranes, agitation, and hypertension.

Food Sources of Sodium

Protein foods have more (natural) sodium than vegetables and grains. Fresh fruit has almost no natural sodium. Foods that contain added salt (sodium chloride, which is about 40% sodium) provide the primary source of sodium for most people. Most is added during commercial processing.

Supplemental Sources of Sodium

Table salt is the main supplemental source of sodium. A teaspoon (6-g) of table salt contains 2360-mg of sodium. You should make sure you get at least this amount per day. (Table salt is so common it seems strange to call it a “supplement” at all, but we can hardly call it a “natural” form.) A single bouillon cube contains about 1000-mg of sodium—and this is often a more pleasant way to ensure you get sodium without calories.

Deductive Advice about Sodium

The best way to get your RDI of sodium is to spread a teaspoon of salt (2400-mg sodium) through your day’s meals. (See also the discussions of “lite” salt above.) A very simple and convenient way is to dissolve half a teaspoon of salt (1200-mg sodium) in a large glass of water and drink it. It is important not to ignore sodium or to take it for granted. You do need it and when dieting it is very easy to get too little. Note that both calcium and potassium supplements can cause a relative deficiency of sodium so it is worthwhile to keep in mind that 2400-mg (the RDI) may not be enough sodium if you are somehow getting large total amounts of these other minerals.

Sodium and Blood Pressure:

Since this is primarily a diet book, I try not to discuss other health effects of the various nutrients. Such discussions would easily add another thousand pages to the manuscript (and my evil-cyborg editors would squirt green hydraulic fluid out of their ears).

However, for years sodium has gotten such extreme “bad press” as a presumed cause of high blood pressure that dieters often unconsciously avoid it when they are dieting.

This is a serious mistake! Doing this can destroy a diet for all the reasons I’ve already stated. Therefore I will hammer the point by restating: avoiding sodium while you are dieting is a serious mistake. Sodium is a vital nutrient and too little of it causes even worse problems than too much. Keep in mind that in ordinary eating most people get far more than the RDI (2400-mg) of sodium every day—and it does them no harm.

Additionally, the science behind the “sodium/blood-pressure” relationship is nowhere near as “settled” as you may assume. (In fact there is a ferocious scientific controversy going on over it.) Some of the most interesting recent research suggests that excess sodium causes high blood pressure only when there is also an existing deficiency of other macrominerals, (particularly calcium, but possibly also magnesium, phosphorus, or potassium.) When there is no such deficiency, sodium may even help to lower blood pressure. I take no position on this, but those who wish to investigate the issue further should start with McCarron 1997and Taubes 1998 which explain the situation and provide further references.

In any case, you should know that the statistical correlation between obesity and high blood pressure is much stronger than the correlation between sodium and high blood pressure. This means that losing weight will probably lower your blood pressure far more effectively than lowering your sodium intake.

I have also been told by several Multi-Dieters that they seemed to get better control of weight loss with more than 2400-mg RDI of sodium per day, so I suggest that you keep an open mind and be prepared to experiment to see what works for you.

Taken together, the above points mean that using Multi-Diet techniques to ensure that you get proper amounts of all of the macrominerals (including sodium) while also restricting Calories is likely to have a much more positive effect on your blood pressure than simply “limiting sodium”. Obviously, gobbling huge amounts of sodium (or anything else) is a bad idea, but do not make the mistake of ignoring the need to get enough sodium while you are trying to lose weight.