Sodium

Sodium is usually present in very big amounts in sea and ocean water as sodium chloride. It is an essential nutrient for all human and animal life and is one of the major minerals. Sodium is necessary for the regulation of blood and other bodily fluids, the transmission of nerve impulses, heart activity and helps with metabolism in the body. Plants do not depend on sodium and therefore a plant only based diet would result in low sodium.

The most common form of sodium is sodium chloride. Sodium chloride is actually known as table salt.

The human body only requires 500mg of salt per day. But most people's daily sodium intake is 10 times higher than needed, which in some cases can lead to high blood pressure.

Sodium is often used for pickling or preserving because of its ability to inhibit bacterial growth.

Currently salt is produced by evaporating seawater or brine from salt lakes and by mining rock salt. Salt from rock mining is also called halite.

For most people in our society sodium intake is way to high and low sodium diets would be recommended. If you are one of the cases where a low sodium diet is absolutely necessary you will realize how hard it is to find low sodium foods and to keep low sodium levels in your body. Natural and added salts are found everywhere and it is especially necessary to watch when buying prepared foods. While reading labels it is important to look out for sodium and salt levels, soda and NA, which are all referring to some sodium compound in the product. New technologies enable manufacturers to offer a wide variety of low sodium foods to help out with this problem and even low sodium cheese is available to the consumer. If you are having problems with high sodium levels you can always ask your doctor or pharmacist for low sodium recipes or recipe sources as well as for a low sodium food list. Often underestimated is the amount of sodium in water.

Some drugs have high amounts of sodium. So it is essential to carefully read the labels on all over-the-counter drugs and to look at the ingredient list as well as warning statements.

Spices usually are not a problem and can still be used to make a meal tasteful, since most spices naturally contain very small amounts of sodium.

The opposite problem of sodium deficiency also exists. This conditions means that very low levels of sodium are in the body. Symptoms of sodium deficiency inlclude appetite loss, vomiting, muscle weakness and cramps, swollen legs and ankles, confusion, seizure and can in severe cases lead to death.