#hydrate or diedrate
WHY DID I ONLY RECENTLY LEARN ABOUT THE SALT LICK TEST?!?!
I swear, learning how to easily tell if you are deficient in salt has been Groundbreaking in learning how to care for my body.
For the uninitiated, if you feel dizzy or weirdly tired, or you cant seem to hydrate properly, no matter how much water you drink, you may easily be lacking salt.
Yes salt! The thing everyone tells you to try and minimize as much as possible. You are likely not getting enough, and there is an easy way to test it:
Go into you kitchen and grab some plain salt, flaky or fine preferably, since rough salt has less surface area, but it still works, just slower.
Grab a pinch of it and just drop it on your tongue, and let it dissolve on it. What does it taste like? This is just salt. Does it taste kinda mild? Slightly savoury even and actually quite good? Could you easily go for another pinch, just for the taste? You probably should, cause that’s your body telling you i Wants More Salt, it Neeeds it!
Do that a couple times over the next few hours, letting your body adjust in the meantime, until it suddenly tastes Too Salty. The same amount of salt, suddenlt tasting quite different, too salty, unpleasant, bad. Thats a sign that you no longer need more salt.
For me it took like two days from barely tasting the salt, to feeling much better and suddenly not wanting more salt.
This has recently helped me so much, why was i not taught this super simple but useful way to check in with my bodily needs?
Signs of low salt can also include nausea, headache, and muscle weakness. Seizures can also happen, but being aware these other symptoms can be signs of low salt and taking corrective action makes that less likely to happen. Also, over-hydrating yourself can cause low salt, but were going into summer so stay hydrated, but eat salt!
Reduced salt levels was the first side-effect they warned me off with my new meds. Its not something you want to fuck around and find out about.
Fucking THIS!!!!!!
also if you suddenly drink a load in order to stay better hydrated you can often mess with your electrolyte balance, and you’ll need more salt to compensate
I was drinking mostly seltzer and homemade lemonade or limeade with stevia because plain water left my mouth too dry, and I realized that since I stopped drinking coconut water and I don’t eat bananas that potassium might be an issue, and I’m always a little low on salt, so I started doing this:
In a quart mason jar:
¼ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon potassium chloride, stevia to taste (I use the highly concentrated stuff from Trader Joes in the little cylinder, it works in certain beverages fine, but not anything carbonated).
Then a couple ounces of lemon or lime juice, swish it around in the jar, then fill the jar with water.With the potassium and sodium in it, it tastes wetter. I drank like a quart of this one morning and was suddenly able to be up and around for a while without getting dizzy.
Now, I don’t put sugar in it because I’m diabetic, but it’s a spoonful of sugar away from basic rehydration beverage.
It’s like this: Salt has a VIP + Guest pass through your cell membranes, while water has regular admission; salt is 100% on board to help water skip the line, but it can only do that if it makes it to the venue (your cells) in the first place.
