#i couldnt stay awake through the day
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?
I accompanied a friend to a neurologist appt where the neurologist told her she needed to eat more salt and she asked “How will I know if I’m eating too much salt?” and the neurologist just said “You will stop wanting to eat salty foods.”
Which elicited in her the same reaction that being told “most people aren’t in pain” elicits in people with chronic pain. She had just at some point assumed that “constantly craving salt” was a normal physical experience.
and i’m like “No, salty food tastes kinda bad to me” (because I eat lots of salt.)
This! Also a common lingering side effect of long covid is PoTS, which also fucks with your salt needs, so that could be an extra reason to make sure you are getting enough salt, since its different for everyone.
I also think the way we are taught to think about food makes it seem like you should avoid the things that taste good, or that they are somehow less healthy by virtue of you wanting to eat them, but often there is a very good reason for why your body wants you to eat certain foods.
This is pretty much how my cardiologist figured out I have POTS! I turned out to also have salt wasting syndrome and as-yet-unspecified adrenal issues that also affect how I process salt, so I’m kind of sodium georg over here, but yeah if you pour salt directly into your mouth and it doesn’t really taste salty you probably need more salt. If you have high blood pressure or any other reason to talk to a doctor before upping your salt intake though, please do, I’m not a doctor
I have electrolyte supplements I need to take sometimes that are sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, and I can always tell when I’ve waited too late to take them because they taste very mild and sweet. Normally they taste like very sour lemon lime? It’s kind of amazing how effective this test is
