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Ep. 148 How Much Difference Does Salt Intake Make? Real Salt Nutrition & Fasting with Darryl Bosshardt

  • Team Cynthia
  • May 8, 2021
  • 37 min read

I am excited to connect with Darryl Bosshardt today! Darryl is passionate about healthily living, healthy eating, and life-long learning. He grew up working for the family mineral business in Redmond, Utah. Then he earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Southern Utah University, followed by an MBA at Western Governors University. Darryl oversees the salt company, Redmond.


Salt is one of the most misunderstood minerals on Earth. For thousands of years, it has sustained life and provided a source of trade. It even got used as currency. However, over the last century, salt has become known to many as a dangerous chemical that should be avoided at all costs. Things are changing, though. Currently, research is returning salt to its place of necessity for human health because without salt, everything dies. Be sure to join us today, to hear Darryl’s story, discover the misconceptions around sea salt, and find out about the vital role that salt plays in our lives.


IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN

  • Darryl explains where salt comes from.

  • How Darryl and his family got into the salt business.

  • Darryl explains why salt is not bad for us and unpacks its benefits.

  • How sea salt differs chemically from the iodized salt used in processed foods.

  • Darryl discusses the unique flavors of various natural salts and explains how to know if you’re buying a high-quality product.

  • The truth about salt substitutes.

  • Darryl shares his thoughts on magnesium supplementation.

  • We need to remain connected to how we respond to dehydration.

  • Adding electrolytes to your water can make a big difference to how you feel.

  • The importance of getting enough salt when fasting intermittently.

  • The role salt plays in our bodies.

  • Redmond Salt is now producing Relyte, a flavored electrolyte product.


“Salt for food today can come from a current ocean, a dead sea, or an ancient sea-bed."

-   Darryl Bosshardt

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  


Connect with Darryl Bosshardt


Transcript:

Presenter: This is Everyday Wellness, a podcast dedicated to helping you achieve your health and wellness goals and provide practical strategies that you can use in your real life. Now here's your host, nurse practitioner, Cynthia Thurlow.


[intro]


Cynthia: So excited today to connect with Darryl Bosshardt, who is passionate about healthy living, healthy eating and lifelong learning. He grew up working for the family mineral business in Redmond, Utah, and then earned a bachelor of science degree at the Southern Utah University, followed by an MBA at Western Governors University. And you oversee one of my favorite salt companies, Redmond’s, welcome. It's so nice to have you today. 


Darryl: Cynthia, thanks for having me on. I'm excited. I saw you do a TED talk a while ago, and I just kind of fell in love with the message. I've been looking forward to connecting.


Cynthia: Awesome. Well, you reside in one of my favorite states in the United States. I was actually telling my kids, as soon as we can kind of get beyond the pandemic-- they enjoy skiing and snowboarding. I said there's no more beautiful place than Utah, which I kind of fell in love with. I was out there twice on business pre-COVID. I haven't been back, but definitely intend to return. Let's talk a little bit, you mentioned this family mineral business, but it's so much more than that. Can you share with the listeners how you became interested? Obviously, it's something that you were exposed to, growing up, but how your family became so interested in salt? 


Darryl: Yeah. When people think of Utah and salt, a lot of people think of the Great Salt Lake, that's kind of what comes to mind. There is a great big salt lake here in Utah called the Great Salt Lake. That's the remnants of an ancient sea bed-- an old seabed called the Bonneville Sea. There's these Bonneville Salt Flats around Salt Lake. As you fly in, you see this big body of salt water and some saline ponds. They do a lot of salt extraction there. When people think of salt in Utah, that's what they think of, but most people don't realize that two hours south of there, there's an ancient seabed. 


Salt today, when I say salt in this podcast, we're talking about salt for food, which is sodium and chloride based can come from either a current ocean, like the San Francisco Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, the Sea of Japan and Mediterranean. It can come from a dead sea, like the Dead Sea in Israel, or the dead sea here in Utah called the Great Salt Lake. Or, it can come from an ancient seabed, a seabed that was laid down eons ago that was then trapped within the earth, and is then been pushed back up. The Himalayan salt deposit that people are familiar with, the kind of that crystally pink salt. There's a similar salt in Bolivia, it has that similar pink salt. Then here in Utah, we have another ancient sea salt, geologists say it's part of the Sundance Sea. This piece, if you can see it, it looks a lot more white than it actually is. It's actually more of a rosy pink color, but this is an ancient seabed that was laid down eons ago, and then was pushed back up. Geologists date that into the Jurassic Era. 


My family just happened to have a farm in Central Utah. In the 1950s, there was a bad drought, and my grandpa and his brother needed something to do to feed the kids because the farm wasn't doing too well. The alfalfa fields and the barley wasn't doing too well. They knew there was salt under their farm because there was an outcropping under the farm that the Native Americans had actually harvested before the early Western pioneers had come through the valley. They knew there was salt under their farm. When the farm wasn't doing that, well, they got a loan and a bulldozer and plowed the alfalfa and the corn out of the way and hit the salt deposit, started selling it to local farmers for cows and the cows seemed to love it. In fact, the cows would eat this ancient mineral salt and the dirt it was sitting on, before they would eat the processed white blocks that they were getting at the feed store. The locals in the family would use it for food salt.


But it wasn't until the 1970s when the health food movement here in the US really started to pick up. A nutritionist came through and got a tour of the salt mine because it was something neat to see as he was coming through the area. Then he went back and wrote an article about the tastiest healthiest salt was this ancient sea salt from Utah. We started getting calls from around the country wanting this salt for their health food stores. We sat around, said, “Well, we need a name for it.” It's salt from Redmond, so we call it Redmond salt, but it's not processed salt, it's not half salt, it's not baked salt. It's just real salt. As dumb as the name sounded at the time, that's what we called it. It was Redmond Real Salt and the name stuck. Now, you can find the Redmond Real Salt from this ancient seabed and most health food stores or online. That's kind of the Reader's Digest version of how we got into the salt business. 


Cynthia: Well, and I think salt has unfortunately gotten a bad rap. I know-- certainly I trained in the 1990s and it's all about-- we're getting cardiology, it's all about low salt, no salt, you're wondering why these poor patients don't like their food, and they're gravitating towards processed food, which is an entirely different kind of salts, highly processed type of salt that doesn't derive the same health benefits as the type of salt that you're talking about. Let's kind of unpack the benefits of salt because something that I've been very vocal about is that intermittent fasting and electrolytes go together like peanut butter and jelly. That's probably a bad analogy, but they really are synonymous. If you want to be successful with intermittent fasting, you really have to replace the electrolytes, salt being one of them. 


You have to be very dedicated about it. It isn't necessarily you have to drink electrolyte water, and I think people start thinking of Gatorade, and I have to remind them that's garbage. It's really properly salting our foods with real food sources of salt, and then having electrolytes as well. Let's unpack why salt is not bad for us, because this has been much like the fat bastardization, I feel like salt has really gotten a bad rap. In fact, I grew up with an Italian mom, she's a wonderful cook, and my mother would salt nothing, because she had been taught as a nurse that salt is bad. 


One of the things that I remind my children is that one thing that we're really diligent about in our house is salting our food, because everything tastes better. You can add salt to just about anything. I even do it when people are new to intermittent fasting, and they don't like black coffee, I'm like, “Put some salt in your coffee, it'll change the flavor profile, it won't be so bitter.” It's amazing that it has so much flexibility in terms of flavor profiles, but let's touch on the benefits of salt so that people understand the context with which we're coming from. 


Darryl: I love how you say it's become almost like a bastardized idea, because salt, historically, has been essential for life, and it still is. If we go back to ancient civilizations, every civilization started around access to the salt deposits, because our bodies are saline solution in motion. Without salt, we die. In fact, outside of a spiritual discussion, the only difference between you and I visiting one moment here, and then being dead the next moment, outside of a spiritual discussion, is the absence of an electric current. The electricity from our mind tells our hand to move. Electricity is such an essential part, and distilled water is a poor conductor of electricity. So, our bodies absolutely have to have salt for this conduction to take place. Which is why, if we went to the hospital and we're sick, or you have a surgery or anything, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to hook us up to an IV of saline solution, which is saltwater. It's not an IV of Coca-Cola, or an IV of distilled water, or an IV of coffee, which sounds good in theory, some mornings. 


Cynthia: [laughs] 


Darryl: Any of those things outside of simple saline, which is 0.9% of sodium chloride and water, or like a lactated Ringer’s, which is an IV for more surgery, things like that, that come with sodium chloride, but also contain calcium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, these other complex chlorides that are essential for the body to function. So, because it was so essential, all of the spice trading, all of the civilization started with access to the salt deposits. It was written about in every religious text. It was actually used as a payment system in the times of Rome, which was why it was called a salary, based on salt. The saying “Is a man of worth his salt?” was because if you were paid in salt, and you weren't working hard enough to earn your keep, therefore, you weren't worth your salt. So, salt has always been essential for life. But yet, as you pointed out, if you walked into a class in any university or dietitian school, or even a high school group, or even middle schoolers, and you say, “Who has heard that salt’s bad for you?” Almost everybody will raise their hand. We need to look at the type of salt, the ratios of salt, and what the food is that the salt is on. 


Now, there was a study years ago that kind of pointed this finger at salt being bad. But if we were to go back before the invention of the refrigerator, all of us would have eaten more salt, because we would have had kimchis and pickles and sauerkrauts, all preserved in salt, all of the meat that we might have consumed outside of season would have been preserved in salt, but around the turn of the century, the nature of salt changed. That's one of the key factors and we'll talk about that. 


Then, the other factor is because salt is a great preservative, it's used in a lot of foods that are terrible for us. If we're eating terrible, low-nutrient foods, high in refined carbohydrates and nitrates, and then we put a bunch of salt on it, we've got this is terrible one-two punch for health. We might think we're craving French fries or potato chips, but we're not, we're actually craving good clean salt. Sometimes, even sugar, we might think we're craving sugar, but if you take a salt crystal-- you mentioned your son taking with kosher salt before. If you take a little kosher crystal, and you suck on it, actually most of time you'll find it sweet because our bodies need it. When it does taste extra salty, then we might need to get more water or cut back. Generally speaking, our bodies crave and need salt.


Cynthia: I completely agree with you, and I have to laugh in my past life, I was an ER nurse, so I used a lot of those IV preparations, lactated Ringer’s, different concentrations of saltwater, essentially, depending on the patient, and then in cardiology. So, I got very, very savvy about recognizing how every single cell in our bodies has an action potential. Every single cell, if the balance between-- for example, sodium and potassium, magnesium and chloride, if those balances are off, it impacts us on kind of a catastrophic level, potentially. It goes from something as benign as dehydration, could go to organ system failure. 


What was interesting as I was recently reading that-- the conventional Western medicine, kind of allopathic medical model tells everyone the reason why you have high blood pressure is because you have a salt problem. Well, I was actually reading something recently that was suggesting that most people that have hypertension or high blood pressure, it's actually that they don't have enough high-quality salt in their diets. For people that are listening, and this is kind of blowing your mind, I want you to be open minded, because it's really, really critically important because the iodized salt that's in processed foods-- the processed food industry is proliferative. We're seeing escalating rates of obesity and diabetes, and other metabolic syndromes. Just be open minded to the fact that if we're eating more nutrient-dense foods, like a piece of meat and some vegetables, and you sprinkle salt on those, that is very, very different, than the salt that you get that is kind of a bastardized form of salt, very processed, that we're referring to that's in these processed foods. 


When we talk about different types of salt, let's also explain how sea salt is different chemically from the iodized salt that is in processed foods, because I think that's an important distinction for people to be able to be open minded and really hear what the message that you're trying to share. 


Darryl: Yeah, that's a great point. When we look at salt, one of the unique things about salt is its hygroscopic. Hygroscopic means it absorbs moisture. If I have a salt crystal like this one, and I sit it out on my kitchen table in Florida, for instance, at the end of the day, I'll have a pool of water under that salt crystal because it's literally sucking water out of the air. Now when it comes to the body, one of the key functions of electrolytes, sodium and potassium are the primary ones, but magnesium and calcium play a role, too, is balancing the intracellular and extracellular fluids because of the way the salt attracts moisture. That's its job. 


Well, around the turn of the century, not only did we start changing the way we produce salt, but we started adding some chemicals to salt that changed the way the salt functions. If we look at those two things, in seawater, salt occurs as a complex chloride. In the oceans, we have potassium chloride, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, trace amounts of iodine, and all kinds of minerals that are in the oceans. The way salt has been produced historically was either from an ancient seabed, like the Himalayan or the Bolivian, or the salt here in Utah, or you can get it from a current ocean. To do that, saltwater, that's the ocean, occurs between 2% and 3% sodium and chloride. Our bodies are about 0.9. When we swim in the ocean, it stings our eyes, because it's two to three times saltier than what our bodies are used to. If you get an IV of 0.9, or you rinse your eyes or your nasal cavity with 0.9, there's no sensation, it doesn't feel like anything, and you get an IV and there's no-- Now, if you get an IV of potassium chloride, it'll burn. If you rinse your eyes with distilled water, it will actually dry them out and burn because our bodies are saline solution. 


In salt production, you can take the seawater and it comes into a pond and you lie in that pond with either a membrane, a plastic liner, or you can lie in the pond with clay, which swells and doesn't let the water seep into the ground, the water comes in at about 3%, then the sun evaporates that off to 4 to 5-- at 26%, that salt is what we call max salinity, it can't hold any more water or salt. So, the salt starts to fall out of suspension onto the bottom of the pond, and eventually you're left with salt crystals. When you do that, you get not only all of the minerals that occur with this seawater, but then when you rake that up, you also get some of those mineral clays, which give like the Celtic or the French gray salt that lovely gray color. In Hawaii, they use the same process, but it's a red clay, so the Hawaiian red salt is pretty and it has all those minerals intact. Well, our salt companies realized that they could take a different membrane and line that part of that different membrane that forces the precipitation out of the other electrolytes. In the Great Salt Lake here, they can bring the salt water off, pull out the magnesium, refine that to metal magnesium, they can move it to the next pond, pull out the potassium, move it to the next pond, and then you've got the sodium chloride you can sell for salt. 


The challenge is our bodies because of the sodium-potassium pump and a lot of other biochemical processes, we need those other electrolytes. You can get it from other places, but it's always been part of the seawater. Well, one of the challenges with a lot of commercial salt today is they've pulled out some of those other complex chlorides. That's the first challenge. The second challenge, I think, is actually probably a bigger factor is, this hygroscopic nature of salt. Salt, it draws water out of air. So, if you have a saltshaker on a humid day, the salt and the shaker start to clump. Now, people have used rice or different things over the years to put with their salt to help displace the moisture, so the salt particles don't clump. 


Well, a salt company came up with a list of chemicals, they said what can we do to treat the salt to make the salt stop clumping? There were dozens of chemicals that you can add to salt, to coat the salt crystal to stop the salt crystal from absorbing moisture. Things like sodium silica aluminate, you've got things like yellow prussiate of soda, which is sodium ferrocyanide, you've got tricalcium phosphate. There's a whole slew of chemicals that we can add to the salt to stop the salt’s ability to retain moisture. That's a problem because salt’s job is to interact with moisture. If we take this salt crystal that's supposed to help our bodies balance moisture and actually stop water retention and help the cell’s intracellular fluid and extracellular fluid balance, and then we coat that with a bunch of chemicals, it's no wonder why salt can cause a challenge. You demineralize the salt, you chemicalize the salt and then you put it on cheap, poor, highly processed foods that we eat way too much of anyway, then, yeah, you have a problem.


If you go to a natural diet, and you're eating a lot of fresh greens or eating a lot of clean meats without a lot of these processed on, then most people actually have to go out of their way to add good healthy salt to their diet. In fact, once somebody switches to a low salt diet, one of the first things that goes, and you highlighted this earlier, was digestion. Their food doesn't taste good, but our bodies need hydrochloric acid to digest our food. You get the hydrochloric acid, HCl, hydrogen and chloride. The hydrogen comes from water, but the chloride comes from salt. If you quit eating sodium and chloride, not only does the sodium deficiency cause problems like hyponatremia, but then the low chloride content just makes digestion go to pot. So, those are the big three issues that I see with a lot of salt and a lot of food with crappy salt on it in our market today. 


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Cynthia: Well, it's absolutely fascinating and I love that you touched on the role of hydrochloric acid. It's not scary like chemistry class, we think back to high school, college, or graduate school. Hydrochloric acid is the first line of defense in the body. If you're not making enough hydrochloric acid, that can be problematic, not only for breaking down protein, but also again, it's the first line of defense, so if you ingest a parasite or you ingest a bacteria that doesn't belong in your body, you're missing out on an opportunity for your body to kill off a bacteria or a microorganism that doesn't belong. If anyone that believes that parasites aren't common, you obviously need to come, work with me for a while because I seem to see them every single week on some of the labs that I do with patients. 


Now, you kind of touched on this, that salt can look different depending on where it is harvested from. So, does that also-- is it because of the micronutrient profile or is it more related to you-- mentioned Hawaii can have this reddish hue and then you can have pinker hues and Himalayan salt. But do these differences, these visual differences have any difference in terms of benefits that are conferred? Is there a difference in terms of benefits from red salt, pink salt, black salts? Just so that we understand that's totally out of curiosity, but as you're saying this, I'm starting to wonder, is there benefit from purchasing salts that come from different parts of the world. 


Darryl: Great question. Salt in the US for food salt, it's got to be at least 97% sodium and chloride. You've only got about 3% of these other minerals you're talking about and these minerals are in trace amounts. You would never go to salt to give your magnesium for the day. You'd never go to sell to get your iodine for the day. Now, there is iodine in natural salts, and there's iodized salt, we can talk about that in a little bit here but mainly what you're looking at is the flavor profile in my opinion. You're looking for a natural clean salt and there's three questions I think everybody should ask and whether you end up with Real Salt or you end up with a Himalayan or you get a Hawaiian, I think there's good salt from around the world. And then we're talking about flavor and fun. You mentioned your son who is an aspiring chef. One of the things or one of my favorite salts besides the Redmond salt is a Bali salt and it's actually these beautiful little pyramid-shaped crystals. For a salt caramel, that is fun. Nutritionally, it's going to be about the same as the Redmond salt, but it's fun to have that little pyramid shape. If you're going to throw it in soup, it's just going to disappear. So, I wouldn't spend it for that but for a salt, caramel or for a treat, there's some salts from around the world. 


The Hawaiian red salt has a bit of a dusty flavor and so for some things, that really brings out some flavor. There's also a black salt that has a unique flavor and the [unintelligible [00:21:42] grey salt. So, it's fun to play with some of those subtle flavors but as far as the nutrition and the health aspect, as long as you're getting a salt that hasn't been processed, it hasn't been demineralized and they haven't added any other chemicals to it, other than the natural clays that come from the mineral process or the natural color, like, the Himalayan or the Bolivian, I think you're getting a good product. 


Cynthia: It's really exciting because you recognize-- that at least in our home, we have quite a collection now of different types of salts. I think once you differentiate between the typical iodized salt you buy in the grocery store, and then you start experimenting with some of these other types of salt, it really wakes up your flavor palate. For me, I put salt in almost everything including my water, my kids think it's hilarious. I'm like, “Well, if I don't have the opportunity to grab an electrolyte mix that I'm going to dump in something when I go to the gym, even knowing that you can put some kosher salt in your water can be hugely beneficial.” 


When we're talking about salt in terms of benefits and differences between processed versus unprocessed, what are your thoughts on salt substitutes? I'm embarrassed to admit that for many, many years in cardiology as a nurse practitioner, when I had patients with a history of high blood pressure, hypertension, we were always recommending salt substitutes, and I cringe now when I think about this, but I didn't know any better, whereas now I do. So, what are your thoughts on salt substitutes? Is there value in utilizing these products? Or-- Anyway, I'm going to let you answer it. I'm not going to answer for you. 


Darryl: Well, people that have heard salt’s bad, you might assume that a salt substitute therefore is good. But if anybody has a salt substitute in their home, and they grab the salt substitute and look on the back of it, it'll actually have a warning that says, “Warning: For normal healthy people and you should consult your general practitioner before use.” Now, you'd never see that warning on a normal salt product. That's only on the salt substitutes. The reason is because people have heard that sodium chloride is bad or salt’s bad, that look for a salt substitute, most of those are made by taking sodium chloride and cutting half of it with potassium chloride. 


Now, they do that because as we talked earlier, these other electrolytes are really important. We do need potassium and magnesium because it does offset sodium in the sodium-potassium pump. But a salt substitute is really poor way to get potassium chloride. And as you know, a potassium chloride IV is actually the final injection in a series of lethal injections. Because potassium chloride has to be used extremely carefully, there might be some cases maybe with an aneurysm or something that might use potassium chloride, very controlled, very short period as an IV, because potassium chloride will stop the heart. Again, because we showed that sodium and chloride are not bad, then there's no reason to go with a sodium or potassium chloride based salt. One, it tastes terrible and, two, that's not the best way to get potassium. 


Now, probably everybody listening, should go out of their way to eat foods that are rich in potassium, and especially magnesium, because they're super essential in food form. But a salt substitute is a poor way to get those potassium and magnesium that we should have in our diets. 


Cynthia: I have to agree and I cringe now when I think about how many of my patients I told, they needed to go take potassium chloride. For anyone that's listening, potassium chloride orally is very, very safe. We prescribed tons of it in cardiology, because we had patients who were either low in potassium, or they were on medications that forced them to use diuretics and some blood pressure medicines forced them to lose intrinsic potassium. What I think is a greater issue is not enough magnesium in our diets and I see this, almost without exception. Most of my patients are magnesium deficient and this can show up in many ways. They can have restless limbs, they can have trouble sleeping, they have trouble relaxing, sometimes they get constipated. A lot of that has to do with the way that farming has changed. I'm sure you could probably elaborate on this as well. Our farming practices, even organic farming, the soils are much more depleted than they were even 50 plus years ago.


Stress, we can lose electrolytes. Stress can put a strain on our adrenal glands, which are our kind of emergency backup system. But in our pandemic situation, I think most, if not all of us, have had more stress in the last year than we might normally. What are your thoughts on magnesium supplementation? Is that something that you yourself are a proponent of? I know, obviously, we're talking about different electrolytes for those that are listening, sodium, potassium, magnesium, all very critically important for us to utilize. What are your thoughts on magnesium? 


Darryl: I would-- exactly what you said. I think it's extremely important. If we look back historically, our ancient ancestors ate foods that were much higher in magnesium than we do today. There was a great article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that showed that you can have-- you could fall into the highest blood pressure group or the lowest blood pressure group, regardless of your sodium, if you were eating adequate amounts of calcium and magnesium and potassium. Rather than focusing on lowering the salt, which we've discussed we need and in the hospital, you really can't overdose on a bag of saline solution. You might need a catheter because they're pumping a lot of fluid through you, but you really can't overdose. 


In nature, animals don't overdose on sodium. If you watch cows, you can put a salt lick out there, and cows will eat the salt lick and they'll drink water, and they will balance their own sodium levels. I think as humans in our society, we've forgotten to listen to our body's natural cravings. We know when we get thirsty, we should drink water. Most of us are probably walking around dehydrated because either we enjoy a cup of coffee and not realize how dehydrating that can be, and we just don't drink enough anyway. Equally, so I think we've lost the ability, or we've fallen out of tune with our craving for salt. 


Sometimes, we associate that with man, “I'm craving potato chips, or I'm craving French fries, or I'm craving sugar.” When in reality, we're just craving water and salt. I think headache is a great example. And you probably speak to this, but oftentimes, the first sign of a headache doesn't mean you have a ibuprofen deficiency. You probably-- that first sign of a headache, if you put a quarter teaspoon of salt under your tongue in a big glass of water, or even suck on a solid crystal and big glass of water, or even just start with a glass of water, oftentimes, we're dehydrated, which really shows up in the brain really quickly, and we're not necessarily low on ibuprofen. 


Cynthia: Right. I think that's a good distinction that we've become largely disconnected from our bodies. I think we've been numbed out on highly processed foods, obviously, the proliferation of social media and electronics, a lot of people numb out on-- they're just on electronics all day long. They are numbed out with highly processed foods either because they're trying to stimulate neurotransmitters that make them feel good. We think about serotonin and a lot of people are just dealing within-- Well, none of us have lived through a pandemic before. So, I always look at it as I want to give everyone the benefit of understanding that we're living in unprecedented times, that a lot of our lifestyle choices really force us not to feel. We don't want to feel. One of the ways that we don't feel is we get disconnected or we don't acknowledge our own bodies are feeling.


I know when I was practicing as a nurse practitioner, headaches were so common, especially in wintertime, because the heat's on, it can be very dehydrating. I'm on the East Coast, we have four seasons. We don't have the benefit of having super warm weather year-round, although it's becoming more and more of interest to me to be in an area where I don't get snow for a couple months out of the year. 


Having said that, we know when we reflect back on the fact that we're really looking at these unprecedented times and people that are feeling-- on so many levels that they are trying so very, very hard not to feel anything. So, I think it's critically important that we're connected to how we respond to hydration, which can manifest in cramping, it can manifest in poor sleep, it can manifest in just being sleepy or dizzy, and how easily that can be remedied by proper hydration, some electrolytes, and how that can have such a profound impact on even cognition. The fact that people talk about mental clarity and one of the things that patients would oftentimes complain about, “Well, I don't want to be hydrated, because I have to run back and forth to the bathroom.”


This is a great intro again that touching on salt, that adding in some electrolytes to your water will allow you to hold on to some of it, so you're not feeling like you're constantly running to the bathroom to empty your bladder. I don't know, in your journeys talking about salt, if you find that some people are oftentimes surprised just by adding a little bit of electrolytes to their water can make a huge difference and how they feel. 


Darryl: How they feel and how they sleep and all kinds of. Water and salt are the essence of life. Outside of oxygen, those are probably the next two most important things that we need to manage in our bodies. Maybe this is a good segue into intermittent fasting and fasting in general. Our bodies, we humans have not always had this instant access to abundant calories at the drop of a hat. If you watch cows, they're ruminant animals and they eat all day long. Humans don't have that same system, so there's not really this need for humans to be eating and humans never really have just grazed from morning until night, but yet over the last-- I don’t know [unintelligible [00:31:18] started but at least the last 100 years, we've had this instant access to abundant, low-nutrient, high calorie foods that we just eat all day long. People are wondering why their insulin levels are out of whack and why their thyroid has got problems. I don't think and you're more qualified to talk to this degree than I am but I don't think humans ever have been supposed to eat nonstop from morning until night for decades. 


Cynthia: Well, I have to agree with you. I think the average statistic I read most recently was the average American consumes sugar sweetened beverages or some type of food-like substance 16 to 17 times a day. When I'm talking or teaching about intermittent fasting, or just remind people that up until fairly recently, the last 50, 100 years, food scarcity was a big issue. People didn't always know where their next meal was going to come from. Food scarcity or lack of consistent access to food was the way that our bodies functioned. If we didn't have the ability to use fat as a fuel source, digging into fat stores, we would not have survived as a society, and much to the point that you're making, this meal frequency or this food frequency, it impacts our bodies at a metabolic level and at a hormonal level that is forcing us to deal with unprecedented degrees of obesity and metabolic disease. 


There's nothing more sad than when I reflect back on my own childhood. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and there was the rare obese child and nowadays that is becoming the norm. If children are struggling with metabolic disease, it does not fare well for future generations. Even on the level of working with patients, I was starting to see younger and younger people dealing with diabetes and vascular disease and high blood pressure and autoimmune problems and so on. On so many levels, this meal frequency problem that is driving a lot of these issues, is something that we need to be talking about in greater detail.


What I found interesting was the other day on social media, someone tagged me in a post on Instagram shaming me, telling me that I was advocating that people have eating disorders. I thought to myself, “That's really sad that a lot of well-meaning healthcare providers have a tremendous misunderstanding of what intermittent fasting is,” because we know fasting is not new or novel although right now, it is really very popular in terms of a concept. I think so much of that has to do with the fact that people are tired of gimmicks. They don't want another pill or powder that is going to, “get them the results they want.” They actually want a sustainable strategy. That's certainly one that people if it's appropriate for them, can really be a strategy they can use throughout their lifetime. 


Darryl: I think it's a good distinction between intermittent fasting and just starving or dieting, because it is a very different approach. I think one is much more sustainable and it's a lifestyle, not a gimmick or a fad. One of the really nice things coming back to salt is that salt is actually an appetite suppressant, like coffee as you know. The coffee, the black coffee in the morning with a little bit of salt in it, not only does it give you the energy boost, but it's actually an appetite suppressant. There are times, I'll be sitting my desk at work or working and if I'm feeling I'm a little bit of hungry, again, just a piece of salt and a big glass of water and I'm not craving sugar, I'm not craving food, I'm not craving potato chips. I'm just a little bit low on salt. If you've ever tasted your tears, our tears are salty. If we taste our sweat, our sweat is salty. We taste our urine, which I don't recommend,- 


Cynthia: [laughs] 


Darryl: -but your urine is salty. Anytime we're losing fluid perspiration, respiration, urination, we are losing water and we're losing salt. If we're just replacing the water, then we're going to start feeling hungry or we're going to start feeling a craving for potato chips or French fries or even sugar. What the body is really saying is, “Hey, you've just lost water, you've just lost salt. Those are two things that I cannot create. I don't store those. I store fat. I store some carbs, and [unintelligible [00:35:28] of my glycogen stores and how that impacts with salt.” Our bodies don't hang on to water and salt like it does those other essential nutrients. We have to replace those all of the time because we're always perspiring, we're crying, we're sweating, we're urinating, and we have to get that water and salt back. 


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Cynthia: That's a really good point because I know when people are new to fasting and I talked to them about how critically important electrolytes and salt in particular really are, I remind them that can be the differentiator between easily dipping their toe in the pond, if you will, of intermittent fasting versus developing what is oftentimes referred to as keto flu, and keto flu is almost always a reflection of the need for electrolytes. For people that are coming from 200 to 300 grams of carbs a day, one of the strategies I always recommend is that people lower their carbohydrate intake so that we can get to fat burning a little bit faster. If someone goes from 300 grams of carbs to 100, that may be a massive jolt to their bodies. 


One of the things that happens is, as our body is tapping into these glycogen stored sugars that are stored in skeletal muscle and liver, as those are being released, it'll pull water. So, it pulls water, and it also pulls sodium and salt. So, this is one of those important contexts that I try to make sure it's very, very clear. This is why electrolytes are so important, this is why it's important to salt your food, and this is why it's important when you break your fast, add some salt to your food, because that can be the differentiator for people having success with intermittent fasting and people that hit a wall and are miserable. They've got headaches, and they might be nauseous. They're achy, and they don't sleep and they hate me because this all happens. But, yeah, they didn't listen to that little piece that I have to remind them about. 


One of the things that I think is so critically important about electrolyte replacement when you're fasting is the fact that it makes everything better. You're going to have less cravings as you touched on, your sleep is going to be better, you'll be more relaxed. I know for myself that I drink electrolytes all throughout the day in addition to salting my food. I know when I'm on target for that, I sleep better. Like I mentioned, I don't have a headache. This is the time of the year with the heaping on, people get much more easily dehydrated. I would be curious within your own daily practice, are you fasting on occasion or is that something that you do every day? 


Darryl: I'm one of those one meal a day kind of guys. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and I do sometimes add cream or fat to that. But then, I just find that on most days, I'm not really hungry or I forget that I am just so busy, I forget to eat until about 5 or 6 and so I'll have two or three meals between 5 o'clock and about 6 o'clock at night. My wife will see me eating and she'll laugh and she says-- this is may be 6 o'clock, and she'll say, “Is this breakfast or lunch?”


Cynthia: [laughs] 


Darryl: I just find that my body likes that. It's not because I'm trying to diet, I just feel better when I do that. You mentioned the keto flu. A lot of those symptoms of keto flu, the headache, nauseous, can't sleep, those are all signs of dehydration. In that first 24 hours of fasting, when we're losing the glycogen from the liver and some of those fat stores, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that there's about two to three grams of water that are attached to each gram of glycogen. As we're flushing that glycogen stores, we're flushing that water, which the water again, is all attached to salt. And so, by replacing and really going out of our way to get salt and water in that keto flu phase, most people find that makes a huge difference in how they feel and how they sleep and, and then they won't be quite as upset with you. 


Cynthia: [laughs] It's true and it's amazing to me every time I teach a master class, one of the comments that-- they're always a couple people who listen to what I'm saying, but they don't really take action. Then they'll say after the fact, “Oh my gosh, I don't know why I waited a couple days to start adding in salt and electrolytes. Now, I feel like a completely different person for sure.” So, let's talk a little bit about when you're purchasing salt obviously, Redmond's, you can purchase online but if people are looking for local purveyors of salt, or if they want to buy something locally, what are some of the things they should be looking for so that they are getting a high-quality product? 


Darryl: I love that question. I think we ought to ask the same question, if we're buying salt or kale or strip steak. Whatever it is that we're eating, I think we ought to ask ourselves the same questions. The first question I suggest people ask when looking for a high-quality salt is know the source. Today, that's getting a lot more difficult because our food oftentimes transfers many hands and many countries and many food miles before it actually hits the shaker, the grocery store, or the internet retailer, or whatever. I think if we can find out the source, so if there's a brand you like, you want to look into, whether it's at the farmers market, or at the grocery store, or you're buying online, find the source. Where is it coming from? In salt, it could be coming from a current ocean, an ancient seabed, or a dead sea and I think knowing that source will help us pick a salt or any food that's right for us. 


Know who’s producing it first, and then the source. Because if you don't who's producing it, then you can ask the questions. Then the third one is, what are they doing to it? Are they putting anything in? Are they taking anything out? Are they processing or treating it in any way? And if you can know who's producing it, you can know the source and you know the process, those three questions, I think you'll find great salt, you'll find great kale, you'll find great steak, you'll find great eggs, you'll find great fish, whatever it is that you're consuming, I think those are three really good questions. If you end up with Real Salt from Redmond, that's great. I think it is a great product. If you end up with a great quality salt from Bolivia, hey, that's great too. I think if you ask those three questions, knowing the source, knowing who's producing it, and what are they doing to it, you'll end up eating and feeling a whole lot better. 


Cynthia: That's incredibly valuable. I know that everyone will find that to be very, very helpful. Now, just to drive this point home one more time, let's talk about the differences between the processed salt that is in the processed foods that are sitting in a box a bag or can, how that is chemically not the same, it is very, very different. I always use the example of if you go out to eat, and maybe you're with family, and it's not during COVID and you can have a big gathering, if something is catered from a place where you don't have the ability to find out where was the meat purveyed from? Where did this come from? And you get this massive salt load, we're not talking about the good salt, we're talking about the processed salt. How is that chemically very different than the salt that you're talking about, these real salt sources that actually come from the earth, and then you don't have to do a lot to them to make them edible? 


Darryl: Those are great questions. To summarize, there's two factors. The first one is the demineralization that a lot of salts will go through. That's this series of evaporation ponds that eliminate or draw out the calcium, potassium, magnesium, and then they sell those off to other companies. We know that oranges are rich in vitamin C and ascorbic acid is a good part of the vitamin C complex, but it's not. Vitamin C in nature is not just pure ascorbic acid. We can take an orange, and we can suck out the beta carotene, and then we can sell the orange [unintelligible [00:44:56]. That's not the same as the orange with the natural vitamin C complex in nature and salt is the same way. Salt in its natural form has trace amounts of these other electrolytes and if you do it either in the salt crystal that was laid down eons ago or like the Hawaiian or the Celtic salt that's processed in one single batch, you get all of those minerals and electrolytes that occur in the seawater versus a company that's eliminated those other elements. That's the first difference. 


Then, the second difference is the anticaking agents. If you look at your salt label, and there's things like yellow prussiate of soda, sodium ferrocyanide, dextrose, things like that on the label, you know that you’ve probably got to use that for a craft project or maybe salting your sidewalk, but I probably wouldn't eat it. 


Cynthia: Well, especially if it says dextrose because dextrose is sugar. I can't think of two things that don't belong together more, thinking about dextrose, which is processed sugar along with a processed salt. What's next for you? What is Redmond's doing that's new and novel? I love all of your products and I hope that the listeners will check them out and certainly look into some of the tips that you provided for sourcing high-quality salts and salt products. What's next? 


Darryl: Oh, I occasionally give lectures. I'll talk to parent groups about the importance of salt or I talk to school groups. One of the things I've said for years and you touched on this very first in the conversation is when do we need electrolytes, unfortunately, a lot of people think of the blue or the hot pink or the purple sports drink. Unfortunately, the Florida Gators, the football team, they were struggling with electrolytes. If you struggle with electrolytes, your team gets cramps, they pass out, they get nauseous, all the things we talked about earlier. And so, they said, “Hey, we need a drink that we can drink during the game that replaces electrolytes.” They created a drink to aid the Florida Gators and so they call it Gatorade. Just the electrolytes and just water’s a great place but unfortunately, to market to us consumers, they put a bunch of food coloring in and they put a bunch of sugars in, and it changes the whole game.


What I tell parents, soccer moms or when I go biking, I say get a quart of good, clean water. Maybe that spring water, maybe that's filtered-- just a quart of good, clean water, add a quarter teaspoon of natural salt. Of course, I use Real Salt for that. Then, a squeeze of a lemon and a little bit of honey for some sweetness and from some energy and you can make that for pennies on the dollar compared to the processed sports drinks. You're not getting the artificial colors, the artificial sugars, the artificial sweeteners and all the other kind of garbage that's in there. That's a great sports drink. I use it mountain biking, I've used it for my kids and lacrosse and soccer and it's been great. 


We are busy people though, and so sometimes making that up isn't convenient. We have actually-- one of our new products, we have a product called Re-Lyte, as in re-electrolyte and we take our salt, because people don't get enough magnesium, potassium, we actually add a little bit of magnesium, we add a little bit of potassium. Then, we put some stevia, so it's not going to impact somebody that's fasting, and then a little bit of flavor, and so this is a berry-flavored electrolyte. It comes in a jar or a stick pack that you can take with you when you're mountain biking or you're on the road or you’re roofing. 


One of the things that we think of electrolytes, we just think of athletes. We don't think about the time when we're in our garden, or maybe we're skiing for the day, or we're a roofer, and we're out in the sun or we're a firefighter, my sister used to fight forest fires with the Forest Service. They would go through all kinds of salt, because you're in your heavy protective gear, you're packing a chainsaw and a shovel, and you're just losing all of these electrolytes. It's just a fun, easy, flavorful way, and we've got several flavors, and we've got an unflavored you can put in your coffee, but that's something that's new, and people are talking about. We've got a few of these. We're actually making an immunity version coming out soon and it's got the same electrolyte base and then we added some vitamin C and some other herbs, elderberry and ginseng, that are good for the immune system. Those are some of the fun things coming down the pipe. 


Cynthia: Well, it's exciting and I have to tell you, my 13-year-old, my little food aficionado loves the piña colada variety. I think I lean heavily towards the berry for when I'm in my feeding window, but I love that you're able to provide a service a much-needed service, I love supporting small businesses and certainly small businesses here in the United States in particular. 


Darryl: For somebody who's exercising and working out, we'd say like a scoop to 16 to 20 ounces of water, I think that's about the right ratio for mountain biker, an athlete. But even taking just one scoop and adding it to 72 ounces of water, gives a very mild, very light flavor that you can just sip on throughout the day. It doesn't mess with the carbs and it's not the sugars that we have a problem with but it does give you a nice, clean electrolyte drink to replace because every second of the day, we are processing water and we're processing salt. So, we need to be more conscious of replacing those by salting our food liberally, adding some salt to our water, and then listening to our bodies talk. Yeah, there's probably some people, much more rare than we know, that are salt sensitive and if they're on dialysis, then ignore everything I've said today. But for most of the population that is eating healthy foods, going out of their way to eat non-processed foods, they also have to go out of their way to add good, clean salt and good, clean water to their diet. 


Cynthia: How can we connect with you on social media? What's the easiest way to connect with you? 


Darryl: So, we're on Facebook, Redmond Real Salt, we're on Instagram, and if you go to realsalt.com, that just has kind of the salt products. Then, if you're interested in maybe the Re-Lyte or we have actually got some cosmetic products, facials, a few things like that are clay-based products, our main website is Redmond, R-E-D-M-O-N-D dot life, not dotcom, but dot life. So redmond.life, and we'd love to hear from anybody. 


Cynthia: Well, it's been such a pleasure to connect with you. Thank you so much for your time. 


Darryl: Cynthia, thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun.


Presenter: Thanks for listening to Everyday Wellness. If you loved this episode, please leave us a rating and review, subscribe and remember, tell a friend. And if you want to connect with us online, visit the link in the show notes.



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