Why do You Have Salt Cravings at Night? – Dr.Berg

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if you had cravings for salty foods at night especially this video is for you and I’m talking about in the form of popcorn peanuts pretzels chips I believe the reason why you crave that is because you actually are deficient in sodium okay now why would you crave those foods those junk foods and not just regular salt well it’s similar to if a woman is pregnant and she craves ice cream for example she’s usually deficient in calcium and there’s other people that have some pretty strange cravings too like for example dirt they might need iron so apparently when you’re deficient in something your body will cause the craving to something that maybe resembles that that mineral or nutrient and this topic of salt is very fascinating now realize that salt is sodium chloride sodium is one of the minerals so I’ll try to differentiate between sodium and salt as we go through this presentation but the World Health Organization is advising that people start lowering their salt intake to about 2000 milligrams or less per day and it would take about 1 teaspoon of salt to achieve 2300 milligrams of sodium so realize that the soul has the chloride and there’s also requirements for that but we’re gonna focus on sodium right now and also salt now it is true that Americans consume more than this amount by a factor of a thousand so they’re usually doing about 3,300 milligrams of salt per day but that’s salt that they’re consuming is not coming from the salt shaker it is coming from the other foods with the hidden salt in it the refined carbohydrates the bread the cold cut deli meats so of course someone along the line had this idea that wow people are consuming too much salt so it must be the salt that’s the culprit is there a possibility that could be the other ingredients that come with the salt I mean before refrigeration we salted our foods successfully we consumed a lot more salt in meats and other foods and our risk of heart attacks back then even blood pressure was a lot less than it is right now but of course if you look at this logically if you add more salt you have more fluid have more blood pressure have more heart attacks right that makes sense logically but there’s some fascinating studies that I’m gonna put down below that I highly recommend you read if you’re on a low sodium or low salt diet because what these studies show in their very credible studies that your risk for heart problems stroke insulin resistance go up when you go on a low salt diet and there’s another study that I’m going to show down the description that when you increase the sodium in the diet the risk factors for heart attack and stroke plummet why is that well if you read the study you’re gonna also find those people that were increasing the sodium also we’re increasing their potassium okay and it’s the potassium that protects the heart I mean it’s an incredible push to put everyone that has high blood pressure or heart problems on a low salt diet but there’s hardly any emphasis on raising the potassium levels or even more importantly is removing the refined carbs that are attached to the salt their focus is to lower the salt as insult free refined carbohydrate type foods which leads to more consumption of the refined carbohydrates that are now salt free now this next part is very very interesting if you’ve checked out check back in right now because this part is very very important your body has a hormone called aldosterone that has one vital purpose to retain and hold sodium your body wouldn’t have this hormone unless there was a very important purpose of having sodium without sodium your nerves cannot conduct nerve impulses without sodium your muscles can’t contract your fluids would not be in balance okay you wouldn’t be able to transport calcium and other nutrients as well without sodium there’s this thing called a sodium potassium pump in nearly all of your cells of your body that help transport things through the cell membrane very very important so this is why the body has this hormone aldosterone and take it well guess what triggers aldosterone a low sodium or low salt diet okay so your body will make three times as much aldosterone when you’re on a low-sodium diet if you think about blood pressure medication there’s several medications that work by blocking aldosterone okay or a diuretic which will cause an excess release of sodium and water through the urine and as a side note older people lose this function in other words they don’t have the amount of aldosterone to hold the sodium so usually they’re a very very deficient in sodium I mean the side effects from not having enough sodium are way worse than having too much sodium so if you combine someone on a salt-free diet okay on diuretics then we have the excessive amount of water and I’m talking about people that are drinking massive amounts of water not eight or ten glasses I’m talking about like a gallon in a day and they’re not working out and they’re on a salt-free diet that can be very very dangerous to the heart you need sodium for the heart to work for your muscles to work when you’re on a ketogenic diet you need more salt as well because when you’re on the typical diet which is high carbohydrate you’re retaining a lot of fluid you’re holding more salt okay when you’re on keto you get rid of the excess fluid and you also get rid of some of these minerals so you need to put them back in exercise produces sweat and you’re gonna lose sodium through exercise and of course being out in the heat will do it as well a pro football player could potentially lose up to six thousand milligrams of sodium in ninety minutes if you have liver damage as in cirrhosis you could actually be deficient in sodium with adrenal fatigue you’re gonna have low sodium this is why like for example in conditions like Addison’s disease where they don’t have enough adrenal hormones you always see a severe deficiency of sodium and these people have to consume a ton of salt and you’re also going to see a sodium deficiency in hypothyroidism I would recommend consuming at a minimum between 1 and 1. 5 teaspoons of sea salt per day if you increase your salt you should get rid of the cravings for salty junk foods at night and it would be very very beneficial for you to take one average day of eating and analyze how much salt you’re actually consuming or how much sodium you’re consuming and just compare it to this to see if you’re really under or you’re over and and also to see if you actually crave salty foods at night and then you can make adjustments on that as well because there is a lot of salt in the food that you’re eating already we just want to know how much you need to add to that to meet your requirements you’re also going to notice that your energy is gonna go up you have more endurance because the cardiovascular system will function better the other important thing to realize is that the sodium works with potassium okay in the body so we always have this ratio if you’re increasing more sodium you need to increase more potassium we need 4700 milligrams very few people consume in this amount if you’re consuming this amount you absolutely positively do not need to worry how much salt that you’re consuming because it you’re gonna have enough to act as a buffer and one way to achieve that is to increase your vegetable amounts okay 7 to 10 cups of vegetables per day it’s not that hard you have two salads I do all my sell in one sitting I have one large bowl and it’s roughly between 7 and 10 cups some people can’t do that there are vegetable substitutes you can do to enhance your vegetables I’ll put some links down below but you do need to start increasing this in the diet because this will also give you the magnesium and a lot of people put sea salt on their salad which I highly recommend or they might put salty olives or Parmesan cheese