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Salt

You'll die if you eat too much of anything.
Just one brick can be one too many, for example.
 
mummymonkey said:
Will we all die if we eat too much salt?
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Huh? Are you serious?

Yes, we will all die if we eat too much salt. We'll all die if we don't eat too much salt, too.... but probably not as quickly. Salt -- or more specifically, sodium -- in the diet is a leading causal factor in a lot of heart-related problems, which is one of the reasons that as soon as you go into hospital for any sort of cardio trouble, the first thing the doctor will do is put you on a low-sodium diet.

With the amount of research supporting the links between sodium, high blood pressure, and heart disease and stroke, your question almost sounds like someone asking "will we all die if we smoke too many cigarettes?"
 
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mummymonkey said:
Will we all die if we eat too much salt?

http://www.salt.gov.uk/index.shtml

I thought the body was pretty effective at regulating that sort of thing? Chips are rubbish without loads of salt.
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Well yes, that is why drinking seawater will kill you very very quickly, if you want renal failure and such.

As for the how much increased amounts of salt effect things like blood pressure, that seems to be under contention between various authorities. It certainly effect some people strongly, but for most of the population I have heard it argued both ways.
 
Yes.
That's why it's called "too much"

Edit, Ok I was being flippant while I googled "Salt poisining" There's a bunch of links but I couldn't quickly find out what would be a toxic amount for an adult human.

I'm not sure who said it but there's a quote that a poison is not in the thing but in the amount. Which basically means too much of anything can kill you. I think the opposite of too much salt is too much water which can also kill you.
 
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Also, look up 'hyponatremia'. Happens mostly to folks who take the pills to lower their sodium level.
 
[insane version of reality=on]

Of course it's bad to have too much salt. You raise the denisty of your blood and make all of your blood cells float to the top of your head. This causes a condition known as blood head, which is fatal because it makes all of the blood cells pop out of your eyes.

You don't want that to happen, do you?

[/insane version of reality]
 
Well now that you've all got that out of your system.

The linked web site says more than 6g a day is too much. How firm is the science behind that? I've got two kids and they must be getting way more than that. Not to mention me with my salty chips.
 
mummymonkey said:
Well now that you've all got that out of your system.

The linked web site says more than 6g a day is too much. How firm is the science behind that? I've got two kids and they must be getting way more than that. Not to mention me with my salty chips.
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I don't know if 6g a day is too much or not. I do know there is guy here in the Netherlands who is trying to convince cancer patients to take 8g of salt per day, which he says is not too much. According to him, this will help shrink tumors. He claims they'd need less than half the usual dose of chemo with his 'salt therapy'. And he should know, he's a massage therapist.

Oh, and he's got the research to back it up too. In vitro that is. It has been explained to him, several times and veeeery slowly, that almost anything kills cancer cells in vitro, but hey, where would woo be without ignoring facts.
 
mummymonkey said:
Well now that you've all got that out of your system.

The linked web site says more than 6g a day is too much. How firm is the science behind that? I've got two kids and they must be getting way more than that. Not to mention me with my salty chips.
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just lay off the deep fried mars bars and you'll be fine :)
 
Drummer said:
I don't know if 6g a day is too much or not. I do know there is guy here in the Netherlands who is trying to convince cancer patients to take 8g of salt per day, which he says is not too much. According to him, this will help shrink tumors. He claims they'd need less than half the usual dose of chemo with his 'salt therapy'. And he should know, he's a massage therapist.

Oh, and he's got the research to back it up too. In vitro that is. It has been explained to him, several times and veeeery slowly, that almost anything kills cancer cells in vitro, but hey, where would woo be without ignoring facts.
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yeah, killing cells in vitro isn't that hard. Keeping primary cells viable without differentiating. Now THAT'S some impressive work.
 
andyandy said:
just lay off the deep fried mars bars and you'll be fine :)
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Someone should start a thread on the strangest deep fried food they've ever tried. Now I'm curious to know what a Deep fried Mars Bar tastes like.

On another side note, if I lived on Planet M113 I'd seriously be considering increasing my salt intake.

Btw, Drummer, I heard if you pack tumors in salt they shrink, too. :)
 
Serenity said:
Someone should start a thread on the strangest deep fried food they've ever tried. Now I'm curious to know what a Deep fried Mars Bar tastes like.
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Like a Mars Bar with just a hint of beef dripping (so long as it's been fried in lard)
 
Serenity said:
Someone should start a thread on the strangest deep fried food they've ever tried. Now I'm curious to know what a Deep fried Mars Bar tastes like.
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Just last week, whilst flipping through channels, I came upon a show where they were deep frying everything. I forget if it was the Travel channel or the Food channel. The host was some wacky guy and he was in a kitchen with a chef who apparently is some expert on deep frying. The host had him batter and fry up all kinds of stuff while he sampled the results. The strangest was a pink ballerina slipper. The chef stuffed the slipper with something--bread crumbs and ham or something.

Mars bars or dancing shoes--it's all the same when battered and fried. :D
 
Hmm...RDA for sodium is 2.5g. At 40% sodium in salt, that gives 6g salt per day in a healthy diet. So I doubt that an extra gram or two would be lethal. Urine and feces both pass extra salt, so I'd guess it would take a lot to have any immediate effect, other than thirst.
 
Here's a link for a llook at the other side f the coin:http://www.saltinstitute.org/28.html

Note, it is by the "Salt Institute", but it has links to lots of studies.

My own knowledge, based on net stuff, is that only about 20% of hypertension sufferers are salt sensitive, and Blacks are the worst group.
 
Too much salt? Drink more water. Up it to 10 8oz. glasses a day. Or 12.

Too much water'll kill ya too. I forget the amount, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple of gallons in a sitting.

That's the real question, is what ratio is lethal? Yeah, you can eat 6g of salt, and if you wash that salt down with a gallon of water, it won't do much (except make ya pee). If you took it dry...you'd wish you had a gallon of water.
 
mummymonkey said:
Will we all die if we eat too much salt?

http://www.salt.gov.uk/index.shtml

I thought the body was pretty effective at regulating that sort of thing? Chips are rubbish without loads of salt.
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There's a difference between the pretty demonstrable acute risk of dehydration versus the correlation-based chronic risk of increased salt intake over long periods of time.

The values produced in RDAs are not 'lethality thresholds' beyond which you're guaranteed to die: they're a level above minimum requirements, but below detectable risk.
 
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