Heart Health Hangs A Left: About That Salt

All week, we’re going off-road to explore heart health along paths you knew were there, but are definitely the road less traveled by conventional sources.

Okay, so. The whole salt thing. It’s true that too much sodium is bad … but butting in with a huge BUT is the fact that sodium cannot act alone. It needs Potassium.

AND, in order to increase your blood pressure, you need to have a high Sodium:Potassium ratio. So if you eat more sodium, without having more potassium, the ratio increases and therefore so does your blood pressure.

How do you do that? ~85% of all the sodium consumed comes from fast food, and processed food products. If you just ate clean, you would lose all that sodium, which lowers the Sodium:Potassium ratio. Even better, real foods have lots of potassium right on board, increasing the potassium consumed and therefore LOWERING the sodium:potassium ratio even more!

So don’t freak out about the salt in your shaker or needing to season your foods. Just eat clean and the foods we are given on this earth to eat will take care of it for you. Foods especially high in potassium: White beans, avocados, dark leafy greens, potatoes, and bananas.