If you check the salt/sodium levels in the packets and cans in your food cupboards you may be surprised at how high they are

If you check the salt/sodium levels in the packets and cans in your food cupboards you may be surprised at how high they are. On labels, more than 0.5g of sodium (1.25g salt) per 100g is high, less than 0.2g sodium (0.5g salt) is low. To convert sodium content to salt content, multiply the sodium by 2.5
Find out more about Sodium in Food.

In general, if you are overweight, then to improve health and lose weight you need to be eating and drinking food that is as natural as possible - cooking fresh meat and fish and vegetables, drinking plain water and tea, rather than choosing highly processed food containing high salt levels.

Minerals associated with lowering your blood pressure include potassium, magnesium and calcium

Minerals associated with lowering your blood pressure include potassium, magnesium and calcium. Sodium is the mineral associated with raised blood pressure and so intake of salt and salty food should be lowered if you suffer from hypertension/high blood pressure. - Helpful pages include Obesity and the Salt Connection and Minerals, Weight and Fluid/Fat Retention.

Get rid of Water Weight by becoming a Salt Shunner!

Yes, that's right: shun the salt! If you are carrying a lot of excess water in your body - feeling heavy, fat, bloated, clumsy and uncomfortable because of fluid retention, you can reduce this problem dramatically by avoiding salt and salty food. You are sensitive to salt/sodium. - It's the sodium that is holding the extra water in your body.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Why do nutrition labels include sodium levels, do you reckon? - You CAN'T believe it's because sodium is good for you!

Why do nutrition labels include sodium levels, do you reckon? - You CAN'T believe it's because sodium is good for you! - You can check which foods are high in sodium/salt here.

There's a little rhyming mnemonic about the famous scientist who discovered sodium:

Sir Humphry Davy,
Who abominated gravy,
Lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

I find it curious that although the noun 'odium' gives us the adjective 'odious', there is no parallel adjective 'sodious'. Maybe if Sir Humphry Davy were alive today, having coined sodium he would relish the chance of coining sodious too. It would be a useful word and might assist in warning unfortunate salt-sensitive individuals of the foods they need to avoid. In the meantime, we must be content with sodium-rich and high in sodium and such composites, and I offer sodious as a suggestion for a new word...(o:

Sodium foods increase fluid retention; potassium foods decrease fluid retention

So if you are overweight or obese you need to avoid salt/sodium and salty food, and eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables because these are naturally rich in potassium. You will then safely and easily lose excess water weight and you will have much more energy because of not having to carry that extra fluid around with you all the time.

Sodium and Potassium in foods

Premarin causes weight gain unless you seriously cut down on salt/sodium

Premarin causes weight gain unless you seriously cut down on salt/sodium. Read about the prescribed steroids and HRT and amitriptyline and other prescribed drugs that cause fluid retention/weight gain. Read how to prevent/reduce this water weight.

And see Sodium in foods

Want to know about the Elements? There are some excellent free podcasts available.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s series of free podcasts can be accessed HERE.

If you are overweight or obese and want to lose some of that excess weight, then you need to cut down on the element SODIUM, chemical symbol, Na.

Read how to Lose weight here.

Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

The Telegraph reports on study indicating that breastfeeding lowers risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

The Telegraph reports that breastfeeding lowers the risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

Also nursing mothers who breastfeed for longer are helping to prevent their baby from becoming obese. See Breastfeeding for longer helps to protect your baby from obesity

The main reason for this is that human breast milk is low in salt/sodium. Sodium is more harmful to children than to adults because of their small size, and it is particularly harmful to babies.

See Children and Obesity

and advice for pregnant mothers

Suffering from constipation? painful defecation? haemorrhoids? overweight?- maybe also varicose veins? phlebitis? obesity?

You'd find it very helpful to eat less salt/sodium. This would reduce the problems themselves and also the pain and other difficulties they cause. Also try to eat plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables and to drink plenty of water.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

See also FAT RETENTION

Vulnerable groups

Sodium in foods

Hypertension may be lowered by a protein in yellow peas.

The Telegraph has an article about the discovery of a protein in peas - a protein that lowers high blood pressure and is of especial benefit when high blood pressure accompanies kidney disease.

In fact all vegetables and fruits, because of their high potassium content, help to lower high blood pressure, though this report about a protein in peas must mean that there is an additional benefit conferred by peas. The reason potassium lowers high blood pressure is that potassium displaces sodium in the body. The fastest way to reduce high blood pressure is to eat less salt/sodium and salty food, so make sure your peas and your other vegetables are not salted.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

Fat people are vulnerable to salt. For them, salt is harmful and so is dieting. THEY NEED TO CUT OUT SALT.

The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake.

Salt Can Cause Obesity

If you fall into one of the vulnerable groups I have listed or if you ate a high salt diet as a child you will be sensitive to salt. People without this problem can eat salty foods without doing a lot of harm to themselves, because their kidneys will excrete the sodium which is excess to their requirements. But for people sensitive to salt, some of the excess sodium, along with the water it attracts, will enter their blood stream and not be excreted. So they carry extra weight - as water - around with them all the time. They also lose more heat from their bodies because the surface area of their body has increased with the added water, and the rate at which a body loses heat is proportional to its surface area. - They therefore need extra calories to do the extra work and to provide the extra heat. - So their appetite increases in order to obtain these extra calories. - So they may very well eat more to satisfy their genuine need for calories. - If what they eat is salty, then the cycle will repeat itself and they are likely to become obese.

To break the cycle and put the process into reverse, all that is necessary for them to do is to eat less salt. And eating extra potassium by way of fresh fruit and vegetables will accelerate the excretion of the sodium and water and speed up the weight loss.

In my opinion, people who remain slim are slim not because they have strong will-power to resist extra calories, but because they have strong-walled healthy veins which can resist the incursion of extra salt water.

See also my Fat Retention page.

If you want to lose weight, eat less salt!

Does your face go red when you eat curry or other highly seasoned food? - You've got a salt problem and would benefit from this information:

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

vulnerable groups

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

If you want to reduce water/fluid retention, it's no good cutting down on fluids. - You need to cut down on salt and salty food.

If you cut down on fluids - i.e. if you don't drink enough, you will get thirsty and headachey. - It is salt/sodium that is holding excess liquid in your body, so it is your intake of salt and salty food that needs to be lowered.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

vulnerable groups

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

advice for pregnant mothers

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I watched the first part of tonight's "The Diets That Time Forgot". - What nonsense the programme is!

I couldn't bear to watch more than the first part of the programme - about a quarter of an hour, I suppose. - What nonsense! - What a lousy programme!

Some of the 9 volunteers are trying to lose weight by eating mostly meat. Some are eating what they like but chewing each mouthful 32 times. And some are eating a calorie-controlled diet.

Well a diet that is mostly meat is clearly not a healthy diet. Our bodies do best on a varied food intake, not just animal protein, and including plenty of fruit and vegetables.

And chewing each mouthful 32 times is plain silly.

And there is a wealth of evidence that reducing/restricting/counting calories does not in itself produce weight loss in overweight people. - In fact, weight gain is far more common than weight loss on a calorie reduction diet. Hunger does not make fat people slimmer; it makes them tired, cold and miserable.

The only way that fat people can safely reduce their weight by what they eat, is by eating less salt/sodium and/or more potassium. This reduces fluid retention, the cause of obesity, and to some extent reduces fat retention. - That means in practice, avoiding salt and salty food and making sure you eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. Additionally, if fat retention still is a problem, then extra dairy calcium will help to remove this in the faeces and so further weight is lost.

If the volunteers on this silly programme do lose any weight then it will be because they have eaten less salt and/or more fruit and vegetables and/or more dairy calcium.

It's a shame and a pity that neither ITV nor the BBC ever have a programme with TYPICAL overweight subjects trying to lose weight. - These will be people who keep their appetite in check, keep their calories down, often go hungry and try to take exercise even though they are tired.

Ideally, they would be instructed NOT to go hungry and encouraged to eat far more calories than they have been eating - even TWICE AS MANY - BUT NOT TO EAT ANY SALT OR ANY FOOD THAT HAS HAD SALT ADDED TO IT. AND TO EAT PLENTY OF FRUIT AND UNSALTED VEGETABLES AND PLENTY OF FULL CREAM MILK AND DAIRY YOGURT.

And no diet junk AT ALL, and as far as possible, no weird food additives - just fresh food, not processed stuff.

THEY WOULD LOSE WEIGHT FAST AND SAFELY.

DIETING IS NOT THE WAY TO SLIMNESS OR TO HEALTH.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention, not by gluttony, and is reduced not by dieting and exercise, but by eating less salt.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

vulnerable groups

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

See FAT RETENTION

Children and Obesity

High blood pressure? - Salt/Sodium raises your blood pressure. Potassium lowers your blood pressure.

So it's best to avoid salt and salty food. And eat plenty of fruit and (unsalted) vegetables because these are high in potassium.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

There are no calories in salt - but if you cut down on salt you will easily lose weight. If you cut down on calories you will not lose weight.

There are no calories in salt - but if you are overweight/obese and you cut down on salt you will easily lose weight. If you cut down on calories you will not lose weight.

This is because obesity is caused by salt sensitivity/fluid retention and not by eating too many calories. This is why diets and calorie-counting do not work.

You do not need to eat less food to lose excess weight, because eating less food does not reduce fluid retention. Eating less salt reduces fluid retention and that is how it reduces obesity.

How to Lose weight!

See Vulnerable groups

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

See FAT RETENTION

Eating salt can weaken your bones. - Lay off salt and salty food to reduce your risk of brittle bones/osteoporosis/osteopenia.

There are many health problems caused by or associated with salt intake.

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

Don't get hoodwinked by Hoodia! - You do NOT need to suppress your appetite or eat less to lose excess weight! - Just eat less salt/sodium.

Dieting does not work.

Dieting is harmful.

Dieting results in weight gain.

Read the evidence. - See Scientists Say Dieting Does Not Work or any of the other reports about what actually happens to people's weight when they diet in order to lose excess weight.

You are not overweight because of overeating; you are overweight because of fluid retention.

Just eat less salt! - You will lose excess water and thus lose weight safely and surely.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and heart, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Supermarkets may be misleading their customers with omega 3 claims

Supermarkets 'mislead with omega 3 claims'

Extract from report in the Telegraph:

"Supermarkets and food companies are misleading customers by making baffling health claims about omega 3, an organisation has claimed.

The fatty acid has become increasingly popular in recent years after some studies suggested that it can help reduce the risk of heart disease.

However, parts of the food industry have been accused by the consumer group Which? of "riding the money-making omega 3 wave".

A survey of 2,405 of their members found that 45 per cent were more likely to buy a product that claimed to be high in omega 3 than the same food without such a claim.

However, it found that more than half the products on supermarket shelves which claimed to include omega 3 had negligible health benefits, because they either contained so little or the wrong sort of the acid.

Sliced bread, yoghurts, fruit juices and milk were all found to exaggerate the amount or type of omega 3 that was included in the food. Omega 3 is found naturally in oily fish, such as salmon or mackerel.

It can also be found in plant extracts. However, this vegetarian type – ALA – is not nearly as beneficial, health experts claim."

Undoubtedly the best, the safest, the most effective and reliable way to reduce risk of heart disease is to avoid eating salt and food containing salt/sodium. This brings a host of other health benefits too...(o:

Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

If you are overweight and disabled, or a wheelchair user, it is easy to lose weight without exercise. - Just try to avoid salty food. - It works!

This is because people who are overweight are sensitive to salt and are carrying excess weight in the form of fluid retention. Cutting down on salt/sodium reduces this fluid retention so weight is lost and you have more energy and feel much better. It benefits your health in so many ways - not just the benefits of lowering blood pressure and lowering the risk of having a stroke or developing diabetes or heart disease/heart attack, but dozens more benefits, including better sleep, fewer headaches, reduced cholesterol problems, easier breathing... - Go on! - Try it! - It could transform your life!

Lose weight and improve your health by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.