Salt Cravings at Night

If you crave salty foods like popcorn, peanuts, or chips, especially at night, this video is for you. I believe it’s because you’re deficient in sodium. But why would you crave those junk foods and not just regular salt? It’s like when a pregnant woman craves ice cream, or how some people crave dirt. They may be deficient in calcium, or iron. Apparently when you’re deficient your body will initiate a craving for that particular mineral or nutrient you’re missing.

The World Health Organization (WHO) advises people to lower their salt intake to the equivalent of about one teaspoon per day. Most Americans consume one thousand times more than that! It’s coming from foods with hidden salts like refined carbs, bread, and deli meats, and not from the salt shaker.

But maybe it’s not the salt but the other ingredients in these foods. Before refrigeration, we salted foods to preserve them and the risk of heart attacks and high blood pressure was lower than now.

If you look at it logically, you add more salt, have more fluid, have higher blood pressure, have more heart attacks, right? But check out the links below to some studies I recommend you read. If you go on a low salt diet your risk of stroke, heart problems, and insulin resistance actually increases. Another study shows that when you increase sodium in your diet your risk of these conditions plummets. Why? Because people increasing their sodium were also increasing their potassium. Potassium protects your heart.

The focus is on a low salt diet but hardly any emphasis on increasing potassium or, more importantly, removing refined carbs from the diet. In other words, to consume salt-free refined carbohydrates. Your body has a hormone called aldosterone, which has one purpose: to hold sodium. Without sodium your nerves can’t conduct nerve impulses, your muscles can’t contract, and your fluids would be out of balance. You wouldn’t be able to transport calcium and other nutrients. A low salt diet triggers aldosterone, which has a cascade effect on your body. The side effects of not enough sodium are worse than having too much.

The combination of a salt-free diet, diuretics, and drinking a lot of water is dangerous for your heart. When you’re on a ketogenic diet you need more salt. Add it back in. Consume one to one and one/half teaspoons per day of sea salt. Increase your vegetable intake. This should banish your salt cravings.