Ray Peat on salt and sodium

"If you suddenly increase your sodium intake, your body will take a day or two to adjust, and during that time you will retain a little extra water, but after the short adjustment time, you lose sodium at the same rate that you take it in."

- Nutrition For Women

"Under the influence of excess estrogen, your body retains extra water, and it is your appetite center which should balance that water by making you crave extra salt. If you learn to avoid salty foods at those times (or if you take a diuretic), your blood cant carry as much water as when it has enough salt, and so the salt stays in the tissues, rather than being carried to the kidneys."

- Nutrition For Women

"Tom Brewer demonstrated the importance of eating enough salt during pregnancy, to maintain adequate blood volume. When salt is restricted during pregnancy, the inadequate blood volume doesnt carry enough oxygen and food to the uterus to allow full development of the baby, and the kidneys secrete a hormone to increase the circulation, creating a tendency toward high blood pressure."

- Nutrition For Women

"Following Brewers research, I saw that extra sodium should help in other situations involving circulatory inefficiency. Premenstrual edema, insomnia, and even high blood pressure often respond very well"

- Nutrition For Women

"One of the most important effects of sodium is that it tends to spare magnesium, which is likely to be lost during stress and hypothyroidism. If we eat salty foods when we crave them, we are able to retain our magnesium more easily."

- Nutrition For Women

"There is even evidence that sodium can spare protein, since, if there isnt enough sodium to excrete into the urine to balance acids, the kidneys will waste protein to produce ammonium as an ionic substitute for sodium."

- Nutrition For Women

"the most important point to remember is that it is essential for maintaining adequate blood volume, and that it is almost always unphysiological and irrational to restrict sodium intake, because reduced blood volume tends to reduce the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to all tissues, leading to many problems."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress apparently increases a persons need for all nutrients including calories and protein. The vitamins most commonly used for resisting stress are A, C, E, and pantothenic acid. The minerals magnesium, calcium, potassium and zinc can help in the first stages of stress, and sodium supplements may be needed in the last extreme stage of stress when the adrenals have been exhausted."

- Nutrition For Women

"A current study (1975) is investigating the possibility that a balanced salt solution will prevent the destruction of muscle and other protein-rich tissues during fasting. I have noticed that such a solution relieves feelings of stress, so I think it will prove to prevent protein-wastage."

- Nutrition For Women

"Probably because of aspirin’s anti-fever effect, the medical culture tends to think of it as antithermogenic, despite its known stimulation of mitochondrial oxygen consumption. Like thyroid hormone, aspirin prevents stress-induced loss of sodium, which is an important part of our temperature and energy regulating system."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Nutritional thermogenic factors include sodium, calcium, vitamin D, carbohydrates, especially sugar, and protein, which interact with our endogenous energy regulating factors, especially thyroid and progesterone."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the activated state, nerve cells admit extracellular ions, such as sodium, but recovery of the exclusive state occurs instantaneously. The state of proteins momentarily resembles denatured proteins. With excessive stimulation, recovery is incomplete and, with the proteins and gel structure in a partly denatured state, foreign molecules (dyes) introduced experimentally can be observed inside the cells."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"The importance of salt and calcium in pregnancy relates to their effects on the respiratory energy system, and the fact that these effects aren’t widely known has led most doctors to believe that a diet that supplies all the required nutrients is adequate for pregnancy and lactation. Despite the presence of all the required nutrients, that would be adequate for someone with a generally supportive environment, a good diet won’t necessarily be adequate for someone with a problematic environment, or a history of stressful experiences."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Increasing the amount of sodium and calcium (and vitamin D, which also helps to lower parathyroid hormone and aldosterone) in the diet can lower the secretion of aldosterone and parathyroid hormone, with a resulting increasing in oxidative energy production."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While biologists claimed to be defending mechanistic materialist science against vitalism, in fact they were rarely able to think in the physical chemical ways that were the essence of Ling’s work. His criticism of the membrane sodium pump made it clear that the pump was just the ghost in the machine that was needed to animate the conventional theory of the living cell."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The membrane theory says that the process of concentrating a substance against its gradient is active transport, and requires the use of ATP. Experiments by Ling and others showed that the energy metabolism of cells could be poisoned so that no ATP was being produced, but that cells were able to maintain their ionic gradient, although sodium was free to diffuse into the cell, through the membrane. All the ATP has to do is to be present, passively occupying its place in the cell."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since Ling didn’t imagine that ATP bond energy was being consumed constantly to run membrane sodium pumps, he wasn’t concerned with any energy that might be released by hydrolyzing that bond. He, like Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, was aware that the ATP molecule adsorbs with considerable energy to protein molecules, and that its presence governs the shape of the protein molecule."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Loeb demonstrated that the specific biological stimulus of a sperm cell, interacting with a receptor in the egg, wasn’t needed to fertilize an egg; sea water, with added salt or sugar or urea, or acid or alkali, was enough"

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Too much carotene, too little vitamin A, not enough magnesium or sodium, and too much cortisol are commonly overlooked factors in infertility."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Adequate protein, glucose, and sodium to maintain blood volume will prevent most of these problems of later pregnancy, unless the hormonal imbalance is very bad"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"ntiendorphin, antiexcitotoxic, anticholinergic, antiserotonergic, antiprostaglandin, and antiglucocorticoid drugs have been used with good effect in various degenerative nervous diseases, but all the so-called anti drugs are imprecise antagonists, and have many side effects. The natural antagonists and nutrients are usually helpful. Protein, sodium, magnesium, carbon dioxide/bicarbonate, progesterone, thyroid, vitamins, etc., can be curative in many brain diseases,"

- 2001 - February

"estrogen’s immediate effect on a responsive tissue is to cause it to take up water, and to increase its ratio of sodium to potassium; these changes lead to depolarization-activation of nerve, muscle, and some glandular cells, and of initiation of growth and cell division in other cell types. If the stimulation to growth process continued unchecked, or even accelerated, it’s obvious that form and proportion and organization would quickly be lost."

- 2000 - March

"Although no one could explain how a molecule could fling an atom of sodium out of a cell or across membranes such as the kidney tubules, sodium pumps were said to explain the different concentrations of sodium in different compartments, and water was said to passively follow the sodium. This theory failed to explain how water could be retained while sodium was lost, or why osmotic pressure varied under certain conditions.."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Physical chemists understood how water could he moved from one compartment to another, by the process of electro-osmosis, but cell physiologists still generally believe in their sodium pumps and give them responsibility for the distribution of water. Medical textbook discussions of edema have a pitiful-comical quality, because their elaborate Rube Goldberg machines* don’t do what they are supposed to do, despite all their embarrassing ad hoc devices and convolutions."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The adsorptive effects of carbon dioxide, and a great variety of other chemical effects, modulate the cell’s structure_and function so that it retains far more potassium than sodium, and is able to excrete calcium while binding magnesium."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen excess suppresses the liver’s ability to synthesize albumin, and when this is combined with the leakage of albumin into the tissues (where it is slowly destroyed) and into the urine, the blood loses its ability to retain sodium, much of which is associated with albumin."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"After I was convinced of the manner in which salt restriction could cause edema, and knowing that women are told to restrict salt to prevent premenstrual edema, I began suggesting that women Salt their food to taste, increasing their salt consumption premenstrually if they craved it. | had never known of salt restriction to prevent premenstrual edema, but I immediately began hearing that the women who ate all the salt they wanted no longer experienced premenstrual edema."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since elevated adrenalin tends to raise blood pressure, I began explaining the effects of salt and thyroid to friends who were over 80. They found that they slept better, had more regular heartbeats, and didn’t suffer from swollen feet when they ate a normal amount of salt. Jt didn’t cause their blood pressure to rise."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In my experiments, it has taken the body only two or three days to adjust completely to a massive change in salt consumption. Many hormones adjust quickly to retain or release sodium, according to the amount consumed, if the person is otherwise well nourished."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid, protein, sodium, and magnesium will correct most edemas. Progesterone, acting on mitochondria to increase respiratory efficiency, and on structural proteins to change their ionic affinities, synergizes with the other natural factors to correct permeability and water regulation."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"About 88 years ago, W. K. Koch (who is known for his cancer therapy) studied the parathyroid hormone and its relation to tetany (prolonged muscle contraction) and convulsions, and was able to demonstrate that the major minerals, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are to some extent interchangeable in alleviating the tetany and convulsions produced by removal of the parathyroid gland, though magnesium was the most effective."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I have written previously about several dramatically effective treatments for shock that were developed in the last fifty years--for example, intravenous ATP, concentrated solutions of sodium chloride or glucose, and the morphine/endorphinblocker, naloxone."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Liver ATP is increased as a result of inreasing blood sodium. An increase of only about 15% in the blood sodium, for example, caused the cells ATP to nearly double."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Sodium is an extracellular ion, one that binds waier to itseif so strongly that it is excluded from the cell under normal conditions, in which the water is dominated by the cells structural molecules. It is only when the cell is stimulated or fatigued that it absorbs larger amounts of sodium, and the fatigued cell also absorbs an excess of water. The textbooks say water follows sodium, but the physical reality is that sodium also follows (free)  water, and that it tends to be excluded from the water of cells. Increasing the sodium in the environment of a water-logged cell will tend to dehydrate the cell."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"The membrane-pump theory says that the cell consumes ATP to expel the sodium which enters, and increased external sodium increases its likelihood of entering the cell, but in reality increased external sodium causes more ATP to be produced. The precise balance of ions seems to make the difference between consumption or production of ATP."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"In the fetus and the newborn baby, sodium promotes growth. . Progesterone, sodium and glucose are often limiting factors in the growth of the babys brain; when they are deficient, cells die instead of growing."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"The fact is that sodium energizes. It helps to remove calcium from the cell, to produce ATP, and to promote absorption of glucose and amino acids."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Carbon dioxide is powerfully involved in the regulation of both sodium and calcium, as well as in respiration and energy production. It tends to relax both nerves and muscles. It is apparently one of the essential factors in preventing edema."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Sodium binds water to itself, and it is this feature that leads to its exclusion from the normal cell. CO2, when it is in water, especially with the carbonic anhydrase enzymes, combines with water. As it is formed in the mitochondria, this means that it will carry water (as well as calcium and sodium) out into the cytoplasm, and out of the cell."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Low thyroid function involves reduced formation of carbon dioxide, and the body fluids dont retain as much sodium as in normal individuals. Both urine and sweat tend to contain abnormally high sodium concentration in hypothyroidism. Because CQ2 is central to the regulation of pH, and hydrogen ion excretion (acid urine) is one mechanism involved in sodium retention, the CO2 deficiency of hypothyroidism is probably closely connected with the inability to retain adequate sodium."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"If hypertonic sodium energizes, then the lowsodium hypoosmotic fluids of hypothyroidism de-energize."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Low-thyroid cells are also unable to retain magnesium efficiently, and a magnesium deficiency prevents muscle relaxation, wasting energy. Adequate sodium prevents urinary magnesium loss."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Sodium and carbon dioxide are essential for maintaining the normal fields, and these substances interact in ways that cause both of them to be lost during stress. In hypothyroidism, © sodium is persistently lost, as carbon dioxide is chronically replaced by lactic acid, Both sodium (Veech, et al.; Garrahan and Glynn) and carbon dtoxide--by stimulating the Krebs cycle, and keeping the respiratory enzymes active--help to maintain the normal level of ATP, protecting against stress and shock."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"he interlocking fundamental features of cell excitation/relaxation, electrical potential, lactic acid/carbon dioxide, water retention/water loss, salt regulation, pH and energy level, allow us to visualize in a coherent way the biological meaning of stress and adaptation. Interacting with these physical-chemical events, there are many layers of biochemical and physiological processes that reinforce or modify them, imcluding regulatory systems such as hormones and other biological signaling substances, nutritional adequacy, and the type of fuel used."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"The brain is just like muscle, in having to restore its energy to relax. Many people have noticed that eating a lot of carbohydrate and/or salt makes them sleepy. Both salt and carbohydrate tend to lower adrenalin, and carbohydrate can also increase the activity of thyroid hormone, while restoring energy to the tissues."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Two research projects showed that very large supplements of salt reliably normalized the high blood pressure in women with toxemia of pregnancy."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Meerson’s laboratory has studied the anti-stress and anti-adrenalin effects of GABA and its metabolite, gamma-hydroxy butyrate, especially in the form of the lithium salt. (Lithium seems to have its own antj-stress effect, probably partly as a sodium agonist, and partly through its ability to complex with the ammonium which is produced in the brain in fatigue, which is exactly when the GABA system becomes active.) GHB is protective against stress damage to many tissues. It prevents stress-induced enzyme leakage from tissues, ulceration of the gastric mucosa, lipid peroxidation, epileptic seizure, damaged contractile function of the heart, and cardiac arrhythmias produced by stress or ischemia."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A complete list of protective nutritional chemicals and natural drugs or analogs to our endogenous protective factors would be very long, but we should give special thought to certain ones, including succinic acid, which stimulates respiration and protective steroid synthesis; thyroid and vitamin E, which promote normal oxidation while preventing abnormal oxidation; magnesium; sodium and lithium, which help us to retain magnesium; tropical fruits, which contain GHB; coconut oil, which protects against cardiac necrosis, lipid peroxidation, hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, and histamine damage; valium agonists, natural anti-histamines; adenosine and uridine. Visits to higher elevations, and exposure to bright, long-wave light, can cause the body to optimize its own antistress chemistry. Avoiding the sense of being trapped is a high-level adaptive factor."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aging, stress, and heavy consumption of alcohol increase the permeability of the intestine, causing increased absorption of microbial toxins. Laxatives, carrot fiber (not carrot juice), activated charcoal, and a small amount of sodium thiosulfate decrease the formation and absorption of toxins, increasing the organism’s adaptive capacity. Belladonna can improve the bowel’s function if there ave spasms during drug withdrawal."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hypertonic sodium chloride (Clifford White, Lancet, October 80, 1915) was also used to trest infected wounds, and its success in treating war wounds led to its use as a vaginal douche in treating various inflammations and infections, including infections associated with child-birth, salpingitis, cellulitis, gonorrhes, vaginitis, anderosions of the cervix, and in preparing a cancerous cervix for surgery."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In PMS, edema is a common problem, and it used to be thought that edema of the brain was responsible for the irritability or depression or other nervous symptoms, and diuretics such es ammonium compounds and urea were commonly used. (Premenstrual salt cravings are the result of the estrogen-disturbed water balance, and salt-restriction for PMS is as inappropriate as it is for pre-eclampsia or toxemia of pregnancy.)"

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Sodium chloride, giucose, and other substances can be used at high concentrations for their osmotie effects, but they also have chemijcal and metabolic effects that arent pecessarily desirable. Both osmotic and biochemical effects should be taken into account in a given therapy."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter