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Mind Blowing Signs You Are A Salt Addict (And What To Do About It)
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2. Edema
The number one cause of swollen feet, ankles, and calves is excess salt consumption. As we mentioned, your body will retain water in an attempt to dilute the salt. This extra water builds up in the tissues, causing swelling. Swelling of the extremities is called edema. One of the best ways to reduce swelling is to cut back on your salt consumption.
3. Cravings
Do you often get cravings for salty foods? This is one of the most common signs of an addiction to salt and the overconsumption of it.
4. Excessive Thirst
Sometimes this is a sign of other problems, such as diabetes, but it could also be a sign that you are eating too much salt. As we mentioned, your body will try to fix the problem by diluting the salt in water. This will make you pee out more salt. If you find that you are drinking quite a bit more than you think you did before, or if you drink a glass of water or two and find that you are still thirsty, you should visit your doctor. You might simply be consuming too much salt but this is also one of the first signs of diabetes.
5. Hypertension
One of the things that salt does is make your body hold more water. This extra water raises your blood pressure. This higher pressure puts a great deal of strain on your kidneys, heart, arteries, and brain. To cope with this extra pressure, the very small muscles in the artery walls become thicker and stronger. This might sound like a good thing, but it really isn’t. This makes the space inside your arteries even smaller, which raises your blood pressure even more.
Many people never even realize that they have a problem with their blood pressure, or that they are salt addicts, until they have a blood test and have their blood pressure checked at their doctor’s office.
The short term pleasure of eating too much salt is not worth the long term health effects. We touched on the health effects, but let’s take a real look at what those are.
- Kidney Stones – A high consumption of salt makes the kidneys work harder. Your kidneys are unable to remove all the salt in the body and begins to form stones made form calcium and salt. Excessive salt consumption is known to be one of the most damaging things you can eat, as far as your kidneys are concerned.
- Osteoporosis – For most people, your diet plays a vital role in whether or not you will develop osteoporosis or in your ability to reverse osteoporosis. When you eat a lot of salt, it increases the amount of calcium in the urine. If you are not consuming sufficient amounts of calcium, your body will release it from your bones and teeth.
- Cancer of the Stomach – We mentioned high blood pressure, but did you know that eating too much salt is one of the leading causes of stomach cancer? There is a very high rate of stomach cancer in Japan, mostly due to their salty diet, which is made up of a great deal of pickled foods and other types of salted meats and fish. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study in 2010 which found that a diet high in salt increases a person’s risk of developing stomach cancer by 10 percent.
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