Slashdot Mirror
Salt Linked To Autoimmune Diseases
ananyo writes "The incidence of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, has spiked in developed countries in recent decades. In three studies published today, researchers describe the molecular pathways that can lead to autoimmune disease and identify one possible culprit that has been right under our noses — and on our tables — the entire time: salt. Some forms of autoimmunity have been linked to overproduction of TH17 cells, a type of helper T cell that produces an inflammatory protein called interleukin-17. Now scientists have found sodium chloride turns on the production of these cells (abstract). They also showed that in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis, a high-salt diet accelerated the disease's progression (abstract)."
Salt, sugar, ethanol, nicotine, any food that isn't raw and tasteless--in an ideal healthy world, we would all eat a diet of cardboard and water and walk around flagellating ourselves all day.
Enjoyable = sinful = unhealthy
Don't eat or you will die.... oh wait.
These finding are contradicted by the epidemiological evidence. The hazards of low salt are immediate and deadly. The hazards of high salt are hard to detect. The chances that there are other variables at work are high. Just because you have a pathway, it doesn't mean you've identified all the regulatory mechanisms.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
90 years of whole wheat is indistinguishable from death.
yes, people used to die from flu, tooth infections and because of exhaustion when they traveled from Paris to Vienna in autumn by coach, now people live to 80+ until the system shuts down from almost anything ... soon we'll hear oxygen is linked to autoimmune diseases, diabetes and lack of interest in MSM
it's called living, it is dangerous, and at the end, no matter what you do, you die
Are you saying "processed" salt doesn't have sodium chloride? Or that natural salt doesn't?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
So "In recent decades.... rise of auto-immune linked to salt." means to me more intake of salt = more auto-immune. But haven't we been pushing low salt in "recent decades". I really can't imaged the average person ate less salt at the turn of the century then now. Salt helped preserve food and it enhanced flavor.
Nobody tell Bloomberg!
another thing I love that I can't eat? they're just throwing more salt in my wound!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
He's saying that natural salt doesn't have Bleach, Iodine, and non-binding agents.
Oh no! CHEMICALS!
Processed you say? EVEN WORSE
Can we not just have salt as the almighty intended? Without all those PROCESSED CHEMICALS
I swear, half the posts on /. these days read like Zippy the Pinhead (this post included)
Processed chemicals, processed chemicals, processed chemicals!
The article was about a biochemical pathway, and a mouse model. People didn't enter into the immediate evidence.
...is somewhere between 0 and 100kg per day. Now we just need to zero in on the exact number and we'll be all set.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
my wife mostly buys unprocessed pink salt from the Himalayas. other times its natural sea salt.
is there an epidemic of autoimmune diseases in Tibet? These things seem to happen only in the USA and other "developed" nations
That iodine has done a LOT of good for public health.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
I thought that came from being next to Sweden and Russia.
The problem with these guesses about salt is our kidneys are specifically designed for actively and precisely maintaining homeostasis of certain key ions (Na, Cl, K, Ca) in the bloodstream. If it weren't we would simply die within days or sooner. Moderate salt with good hydration is probably not harmful at all -- it is probably good for you as it helps the kidneys filter other bad stuff out. Low salt could easily be bad for you.
High salt plus low hydration might be bad. But where exactly is the line where moderate salt becomes high? Guessing based on what we eat is for witch doctors.
So I would like to see an actual study showing how adding/subtracting a little salt changes anything measurable at all about the long term serum average, otherwise I am inclined to believe that this guess is baloney. We are not walking petri dishes.
(There are specific diseases where controlling salts are very important, but that is a separate issue.)
So has the bleach... that wasn't exactly my point though. I'd be more worried about safe consumption quantities, how clean the machinery is and the exact natures and volumes of whatever other "harmless" or "beneficial" chemicals are used in the production process.
Keep in mind that, for example, up until recently they supposedly didn't know the lubricant they use on the machines that make aluminum soda cans can be conclusively, causally linked to obesity in lab rats...
I love it how the conclusions from a mouse study automatically equals 'the man' trying to force use to eat a salt-free diet.
You should always take news like this with 64.79891 mg of NaCl.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It isn't salt, it's too much salt. No one needs the huge levels of sodium chloride that is now added to most processed foods. It is there because it "tastes good" while making you want to eat more and more.
I had to give up salt completely some years ago and it took months before I regained my ability to taste unsalted food. Now, food without salt actually tastes much better that the over-salted crap served to us everywhere.
Yes, the body requires some sodium chloride but the amount is very small. What most people ingest is far, far beyond that. As with just about anything, too much will harm you.
Right, I'm sure you're speaking from your vast knowledge of the health of Tibetan people.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Because those folks are dying of diseases we already cured here. Stop the noble savage BS already.
Well, experts have been advising it. Everyone actually been eating that way? If they were, the entire fast-food industry would have collapsed.
This reminds me of everyone who tried to put crohn's disease or H Pylori infection into the autoimmune bracket, which we now know isn't true.
Auroimmune means a reaction to a self-antigen, and whilte Th cells are part of the adaptive regulatory response, they are not an explanation of why the body would attack epithelial cells. In fact, that Th17 actually upregulates inflammation every time has been questioned, since for example in crohn's disease, something which I'm familiar with, they find increased Th17 in people with quiescent disease versus active disease, the Th17 response calms the inflammation in the mucosa.
The expression "worth their salt" is a very old expression, salt use is not new, I really don't think that the increase in salt is responsible for the sudden increase in autoimmune diseases in the West, the body has a lot of protective barriers in place to prevent a self-directed immune response, the adaptive immune system is tightly controller and I don't believe any diet has enough of an impact to make this go wrong. I think a lot of diseases related to the immune system are simply not understood and are all thrown under this autoimmune bracket without a good understanding of their mechanics.
Because the Tibetan people probably don't consume MASSIVE amounts of salt. Salt is the most commonly-used preserving agent. If we want to be an industrial society and not an agrarian society, we need food preservation (so industrial farms can manufacture at one time and preserve the food to be consumed for another time).
Correlation != causation.
Why is it that developed nations lead in X disease and Y disease? A lot of it has to do with the fact that we screen for and treat these diseases rather than letting them go by unnoticed as they do in most of the less-developed world. Prior to modern medicine, a lot of now easily curable or treatable illnesses were fatal. Just look through a history book and you can see that a decent amount of children died not long after birth. Because of this, you've got people who are predisposed to getting sick living relatively normal, healthy lives in the west but in less developed nations these people would have died during childhood. Because of this we get this "skewed" idea that less developed nations are "healthier" which is not correct, it just is that those who aren't healthy have already died.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Keep in mind that, for example, up until recently they supposedly didn't know the lubricant they use on the machines that make aluminum soda cans can be conclusively, causally linked to obesity in lab rats...
Citation needed.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
What people continously fail to understand, is that no ingredient is responsible for health problems. Abusing them is.
That's the big difference.
Eating bacon is healthy. Overeating bacon is not.
Drinking wine is healthy, abusing it is not.
etc
etc
etc
Well, I've always called it "entropy", but suit yourself, to each his own.
Ezekiel 23:20
From the multiple sclerosis mouse paper's methods section:
Mice received normal chow and tap water ad libitum (control group) or sodium-rich chow containing 4% NaCl (SSNIFF) and tap water containing 1% NaCl ad libitum (high-salt group).
Hopefully, the normal chow and salty chow are pretty much identical except in how much NaCl SSNIFF added, though I don't know. Presumably the researchers would have thought of that.
The cell culture work, odds aren't bad that they tried multiple sources of NaCl to make sure it wasn't trace contaminants that were changing things.
At any rate, it's unlikely that the salt they used for their cell culture work in these two studies, and the salt they used in the mouse studies have a contaminant that is causing immune response and that you would not find in any salt you are eating.
I'm now going to have to give up potato chips in order to make my eczema clear up. Actually, fuck it. No one wants to look at my elbow anyway, and I love pringles too much.
Been an engineer for a salt company for 20 years, the processing of salt is to take out the few impurities there are, we do not really add anything at all. There is no bleach, you do not clean 316SS that way when working with salt, salt kills bacteria as well as bleach could. You can easily get non iodine salt, the only additive is a inert agent to help it keep flowing in high moisture... (think of the rice in shakers, yeah its like that). "Natural" salt and Sea Salt, which we do make, is basically less clean, kinda nasty... but the crystal size and organization is different so it gives a different taste, quite nice on some things. But it is still nasty compared to good ole processed table salt, 99.9% pure and the last 0.1 is mostly encapsulated sand and our flow agent. Salt is CHEAP, we used to joke when crackpots (sorry valued customers) sent us complaints we were "cutting" the salt with something because it tasted less salty.... we looked it up, sand is much more expensive, not sure what we could cut it with that is cheaper! Oh and while we are at it, if anyone ever throws out salt due to a best buy date I will find them and smack them, we are forec to put those on, most of the US salt is at least 10k years old, it is not gonna bad anytime soon.
You know, when you are asking for a Citation like a smart-ass, maybe you should first make sure there isn't one to be found by searching the very site you're posting on.
most of the salt is over processed crap with lots of chemicals
It's called iodine.
I didn't know Jenny McCarthy had a Slashdot account...
The problem with salt is that it can be too low or too high. And, despite what doctors might say, it's not that hard to run low.
Bottom line, is that it's how much you have in your brain and blood stream that ultimately matters more than your consumption does. If you're eating 2x the recommended amount, but sweating 3x as much as a normal person would, you will get sick eventually.
MOD Parent up! That's hilarious...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I came here to see this. I've seen in the US there's salt with and without, and without is cheaper, so I'm wondering if the problems is the salt or the use of cheap salt (without iodine) by many to save on costs.
Moderate salt intake is mandatory, if you're not consuming any you'll eventually run low and wind up dead or brain damaged. And, that's not as hard as people think, all it takes is a few days of unseasonable weather if you've been low balling your consumption to get seriously ill. As in wind up in the ICU of the local hospital with life threatening brain damage.
Yes, that's rather unlikely as most people consume so much salt that it would take weeks or more to run low, but it can and does happen.
Citation please. If that's really true, then why do so many people see their blood pressure improve by taken blood pressure medication that causes the excretion of sodium?
"The problem with these guesses about salt is our kidneys have specifically *EVOLVED TO* actively and precisely maintain homeostasis of certain key ions"
Fixed.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Multiple Sclerosis is a horrible disease that leaves you incapable of doing anything but sitting around waiting to die
You're doing it wrong. Double the amount of salt in your diet, throw in some other pleasurable and unhealthy things in your lifestyle and I guarantee you'll never linger in this world until you get bored.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Taubes on Salt - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Sin and salt and ruthless efficiency!
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
If only there were a homeostatic mechanism by which the body might increase salt consumption, like a craving...
If you live nowhere close to a coast, most of your table salt is almost pure NaCl ... trace amounts of iodine are added to it, as it is next to impossible to get that iodine from "natural sources" (almost exclusively fresh seafood - which residents of, say, Kansas don't have).
I don't think that is what the GP is talking about, though, I think (s)he's just spouting nonsense. It would take fairly a fairly sophisticated set of tests to find anything other than NaCl in a typical store bought container of Morton Salt (even Morton Salt Iodized).
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I do agree. Electrolytes are vital to a healthy body, and all it takes to put you in the "too low" category is a 24-hour GI bug accompanied by a half-dozen bouts of screaming into the porcelain microphone.
And did you ever notice that sports drinks with electrolytes (like Gatorade) taste great when you're sweating and salt-deprived, and positively horrible when you're not?
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Oddly enough, many people do. You can blame everything on fast food. You can blame things on twenty-year-old advice eventually turning out to be incorrect, as it's slowly appearing.
Huh? If someone claims they are on a low fat and low sodium diet and also eats fast food regularly, they are full of shit.
But, if you wish to believe that trying to eat low fat and low sodium is what's making you fat; feel free to eat at McDonald's five times a week.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Lets take a quick look at this, shall we?
If I drink the recommended amount of water 3 liters for a male in a temperate climate, by the Mayo clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283
That means I would consume 30grams of NaCl...
and the recommended amount for an average male? 2.3g, per the Mayo clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sodium/NU00284
So right there I am consuming 13 times the recommended amount.
4% in my food?
Let's see, according to http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter1.htm the average american eats 4.7 lbs of food, or 2.13 KG, or another 85.2 grams of salt.
So 115.2 grams when I should consume 2.3, or 50X what I should eat.
Yeah, that might cause some problems, it is half the LD50 for an average male.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Bisphenol-A is not a lubricant, it's a compound present in the plastic liners used in aluminum cans.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Isn't all salt originally sea salt? Some of it is collected by evaporating sea water, some of it is mined from underground deposits left behind by ancient oceans.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The rule of thumb is to simply avoid lack or excess of any thing! Maybe an ideal life is based on average...
lubricant they use on the machines that make aluminum soda cans can be conclusively, causally linked to obesity in lab rats...
BPA is not a lubricant.
It is a "key monomer in production of epoxy resins and in the most common form of polycarbonate plastic."
Also, he was asking for causation, not correlation.
Finding in your urine more of the chemical that you ingest while drinking sugary drinks, does not prove that it's the chemical and not the sugar that's making you obese.
All it proves is that the said chemical has apparently leached into your sugary drink - perhaps from its packaging and perhaps from the cups you use.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Seconded...I just tried googling to see if I could find a study of that nature and came up empty.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Also, butter. They make tea from it.
They tend to eat or drink on average more than 20 grams of salt per day.
They also tend to live 4900 meters above sea level. On average.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Are you saying "processed" salt doesn't have sodium chloride?
There's a somewhat strange term which can appear on food labels called "salt equivalent". It's derived by multiplying the mass of sodium by 2.5. In other words assuming that the only sodium containing compound present is NaCl. Possibly even in cases where there is zero NaCl. In such cases you can't actually tell how much "salt" is present...
I've been doing a lot of reading on dietary topics, and it is quite amazing how many opinions about our dietary needs are based on nothing but opinion or the opinions of other people. Even the scientific results can be mis-interpreted or looked at in so many ways that you can seemingly show whatever you want from these studies.
There's a ton of stuff out there, like the book "Good Calories Bad Calories" that covers it in depth, but watch this video by Dr Peter Attia. I think it sums it up pretty well. The limits of scientific evidence and the ethics of dietary guidelines -- 60 years of ambiguity
I've been following the Primal Blueprint lifestyle for a few months, and the effects have been pretty amazing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yeah, that might cause some problems, it is half the LD50 for an average male.
Indeed. Thanks to these studies, we know one of them is autoimmune diseases.
If your point was something along the lines of "This might not be specific to autoimmune diseases, they're practically killing the rats with salt, so it could cause any number of problems due to poor health," I'd remind you that the mouse models were merely bolstering the cell culture studies where they no doubt made sure they weren't killing the cells. They only did mice to show that what's true at the cellular level is true for the organism as a whole. The point was not to establish a specific dose at which your immune cells would attack you for eating too much salt (and, by the way, I'm not sure you can simply scale up from rats by weight like that when it comes to nutrition), they were merely to indicate that the effects were true of real organisms as well and not just cells in a dish.
The authors would no doubt be the first to admit that these findings are a long way from conclusive proof that people suffering from MS MUST eliminate all salt from their diets, just that the studies should move to the next level and see if low salt diets improve outcome for some autoimmune diseases.
I was not being a smart-ass. Google "aluminum lubricant obesity". Nothing of value is returned. I know about BPA. It is not used as a lubricant in "machines that make aluminum soda cans" [sic]. There is no way to for anyone to know just how confused you are and the severity of the misinformation you are spreading without some sort of citation. Now we know.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I had to look up "ad libitum"... it sounds like it means that the mice could eat however much they wanted. I would assume the salted chow would be tastier so the mice may have eaten more of it, which would then skew the results due to obesity.
I guess Dr. Raymond Cocteau was right after all! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/)
God created the rules, and sin is the breaking of those rules, therefore God created sin. God created humans flawed and incapable of following the rules, therefore God created us TO sin. God created the cause-and-effect relationship that makes death and decay result from sin, therefore God created death and decay.
It is *all God's fault* no matter how many arbitrary layers of separation you attempt to interject.
I once read a book.(A Mote in God's Eye, maybe) where God enrages the human race so much that He has to hide from us in a remote edge of the universe while we search for him in order to get our revenge. Sad ending since God knows eventually He will be found due to a contracting universe, it's just a matter of time...
(P.S.: The human body is just a temporary thing. Our spirit is what matters, it will by far outlive our bodies.)
---
Downmod to oblivion in 3... 2... 1....
Virtually all of what is sold as Himalayan pink salt comes from a gigantic salt mine in Pakistan. It does come from out of a mountain, in the descripitively named Salt Range, but it's as far away from the actual Himalayas as Kansas is from the Rockies. It's solely a marketing term. It's also just rock salt, and that pink color is just from iron oxide.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
The classic example of this sort of BS is saccharine.
for years it was labeled as cancer causing because of studies in rats, also with absolutely ridiculous dosage levels.
As tested in the amounts that a human could actually consume... negative results.
And you know damn well they are going to be scaring our parents/grandparents with this in an upcoming episode of Dr. Oz or some similar popularity contest doctor show.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
That's why God invented the dark energy. It will make sure that the universe keeps expanding, and the humans cannot find Him.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I didn't know that restaurants commonly use atomic bombs to prepare dinner. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, I've always called it "entropy", but suit yourself, to each his own.
Right, so you are saying that it is "entropy" if you cheat on your wife and she finds out?
Why is it so hard for people to understand? The ten commandments are basically summed up as "Love other people as if you would want to be loved and love god." It is bloody simple. Another way to look at it would be "Be grateful for what you have, be responsible and don't be a dick.".
That does not mean that you can be a dick as long as you don't get caught. It means that you should assume that you could get caught at any moment to treat everyone as if you would want others to treat you. Before you act like a dick, imagine putting yourself in the shoes of the other person.
God gave you such bloody simple instructions and you still screw it up or get mad at god because you are too thick to get it.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Do those people happen to have an ill kidney?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That iodine has done a LOT of good for public health.
I think he might be trying to suggest that perhaps processed salt might cause problems in the same way in the body as hydrogenated fats where they are basically no-reactive because they are bonded to something that prevents the body from processing it because the covalent bonds are "full".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Drinking only water for a day can do it. I drank a gallon of water to try to detox, and nothing else.
When I did that one time, I started to feel REALLY wrong, I then ate a salt packet and felt 50% better in minutes, almost 100% better in an hour or so.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Not really, the kidneys can only hold onto sodium that's potentially going to pass through them, the do precisely zip for sodium that gets secreted by the sweat glands or if there's a sudden over hydration that occurs.
Craving itself is based upon different needs from a different time, your body doesn't know that getting the appropriate level of salt isn't as hard as it used to be.
I wouldn't put too much on Taubes' analysis of the data, his main claim to fame that insulin responses cause obesity is BS. He might be right about excess salt not being a health issue (I honestly don't know what the long term issues are supposed to be) but be warned that Taubes is more interested in generating a novel result than a right one.
I stole this Sig
Don't drag out that dumb old book...
Cheap storage VM.
This short story? "Letter from God" by Ian Watson
http://davidlavery.net/Courses/3840/stories/watson_letter.html
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
The major acid in your stomach is HCl. Any ionic* sodium you ingest is effectively immediately turned into salt. The "salt equivalent" measure is actually more useful than a straight NaCl measure for monitoring salt intake.
*If you are ingesting non-ionic sodium, you should video it for medical purposes (and youtube).
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Another case of how the west has failed. The answer should have been education, not doping.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Learn to google so you don't spread nonsense. It is NOT hard at all to get a recommended daily intake of iodine.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
How dumb can you be? Overworking your kidneys is not a good thing.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The biggest problem is that even in the face of absolute proof to the contrary, our medical, government, and insurance industries are absolutely convinced that the only people who have different dietary needs are Eskimos.
My own weak anecedotal evidence leads me to believe that it's not just the amount of salt but the type and balance between those types of salt.
Salt is the sea is:
Cl 55%, Na+ 30.6%, SO2
4 7.7%, Mg2+ 3.7%, Ca2+ 1.2%, K+ 1.1%, Other 0.7%.
We are decended from fish and the fat distribution in our bodies is still marine mammalian...
so to me it makes sense that we need to stop thinking in terms of "salt" and start thinking about different ions in the body; a thing I coin electrolytic (im)balance.
It would be nice to see a study looking at this to either give this some scientific acceptance or rule it out.
A blog I run for the wealth
I can quite confidently say that you never have had any real experience with science..... and probably never even taken any basic classes in statistics. I can agree with you that science journalism is a big joke, and unfortunately that is often the only contact normal laymen get with science. Luckily in this TFA there is a link to the paper showing a mechanistic link between sodium chloride and the up-regulation of a protein that promotes T-cells to differentiate into Th17 cells. There are several Th17-driven diseases that could be influenced by this. On the flip side, there are also diseases (mostly people with susceptibility to fungal infections) that have a too low Th17 response. It would be interesting to see if those people would be helped by a higher salt diet...
Of course you crooks are cutting the salt to save money. It is clearly a conspiracy with the fast food cartel for use on their french fries that are not made of real potatoes.
That's why a funding for a follow up research is needed.
You often can't conclusively find things out because there isn't enough $$$$ to do a conclusive study, so you start on a media friendly one first, get publicity etc, hopefully get more $$$$ for a followup or two.
The problem is you end up with lots of studies that are useless on their own. And you might not even be able to easily use them properly in a meta study - since their shortcomings are in in those little details like you mentioned.
The iron oxide must be imparting some flavor on it, because it does not taste the same as more pure NaCl. Also, the shape/size of rock salt makes it wonderful for beef grilling. The salt will dissolve partially, but will remain concentrated in spots. The effect is similar to an aged Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
I don't want to support the AC's viewpoint about "processed crap" vs. "sea salt", but I would like to answer your question: Most industrially-produced salts are very pure: the processing done is a refinement which eliminates non-salty things. Salt harvested in "traditional" or "artisinal" methods will have more impurities present. Take sel gris, for example: it is pinkish or gray because some clay gets raked up along with the salt crystals. There are more minerals in there! My memory is hazy and I don't have a reference around, but some of the notable extra components are Iodine, Magnesium, and either Phosphorus or Potassium. Having more of these trace minerals around might be a good thing overall, but whenever I see the health benefits of "sea salt" I smell snake oil: the copy writers are just looking for a sale.
Because the excretion of sodium is a result of taking a diuretic, the main benefits of which are the excretion of water (def'n of diuretic) and the relaxing of blood vessel walls, both of which lower blood pressure. Most diuretics also cause excretion of potassium, but no one ever says "you need to cut down on the potassium - it's bad for your hypertension".
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Because of the distance between people on the planet, He simultaneously places one somewhere into the ground in Russia, and the other off the coast of Florida. And it works, people study the obelisks for insight, new inventions are created, and there's a new sense pride in us, since now we know that God is real and cares for us. That's when 'snafu' comes into play...
Something happens that causes both giant obelisks to fall at the same time. In Russia it causes huge earthquakes that wipe out many in the population. The obelisk that's in the ocean falls and creates a massive tidal wave that kills many on all the continents of North/South America/Africa, etc. God just did not plant the obelisks deep enough, it seems. Billions die as a result, and the human race vows revenge on God.
In order to find God to exact revenge, space exploration begins. Over the next many millions of years, we go out through the universe, colonizing planets, exploring deeper, all in the quest to finally find where God is hiding, and God is constantly having to find a new place to hide. The story ends with God placing Himself as far out in the void as possible, knowing that He won't be able to hide from his vengeful children forever, since once the universe finally contracts, we will all eventually 'come together' again.
I read this story as a teenager, and it always stuck with me over the decades. While I've read and forgotten many books (Don't do drugs, kids!), some of them were so good (like 'A Wrinkle In Time' read by me as an 8 year old) that they always seem to reverberate. If anyone recognizes the story, I'd appreciate knowing who wrote it...
Many thanks to you, Deimtee, 5+ Informative internets are awarded to you! (No actual cash value)
Right, so you are saying that it is "entropy" if you cheat on your wife and she finds out?
Wait, does that qualify as death, decay, or disease? Because that was what I was responding to, in case you didn't bother to read.
That does not mean that you can be a dick as long as you don't get caught.
You're barking at the wrong tree.
God gave you such bloody simple instructions and you still screw it up or get mad at god because you are too thick to get it.
I'm an atheist, I can't be mad at any god.
Ezekiel 23:20
I searched for "lubricant AND obesity" and found horrible...horrible things.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
The fact that rat studies were wrong once doesn't mean they're wrong again. Not to say "don't be skeptical" of course, but it sounds like you're not being skeptical, you're being simply closed minded.
And don't confuse the researchers here with the people who will overstate the results in exchange for attention on Dr. Oz or elsewhere. Different people. Read the paper. I didn't come across anything which suggested this should influence anyone's medical treatments. The researchers aren't being irresponsible. Your problem is with the media, not the scientists.
Yup. It's called Hyponatremia: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/hydrationandfluid/a/Hyponatremia.htm
Koans and fables for the software engineer
GGP claimed "everyone". "Many" is very much not the same as "everyone".
Maybe I can (or maybe you mean "can't"), but I didn't, so its irrelevant either way.
I pointed to it's continued existence as a major industry as evidence of that the claim "everyone has been eating low fat and low sodium for twenty years now" is false. No blame involved.
You could, but if you want to do so credibly, you'll also produce evidence.
God gives each of us free will to accept or reject him.
This notion of "free will" is flawed from the beginning. Our will is shaped by the evolutionary development of our brains. There are many things you cannot choose from, you just do them, because your brain works that way. As far as those things are concerned where you feel that you *do* have a choice, I'd be extremely wary of making any assumptions. The idea of self-influence smells of circular logic to me. There are no meta-levels in the brain.
Ezekiel 23:20
The salt that's added to processed foods and that you buy to put on your table isn't much like the "salt" found in nature, which isn't just NaCl; it's a complex of minerals.
The "salt" added to processed foods has been heated-up several hundred degrees, refined, and fucked with/denatured. Big surprise, it's not good for you and is the cause of disease.
Yeah, yeah, all sorts of assholes are going to say "it's not the "salt", it's "too much 'salt' "
And to that I say, bullshit. You put this fake "salt" IN almost EVERYTHING, and then say "ohhh, it's not the salt it's too much salt". Truly idiotic. That's like saying It's not the arsenic, it's TOO MUCH arsenic.
An adulterated food supply is an adulterated food supply. The sooner we lay the blame where it belongs the sooner we can get back to eating food that is primarily nourishing, as opposed to eating shit that's primarily designed to make a big profit for some bullshit corporation that's appealing to the lowest common denominator.
In fact they're more likely to say, "Eat a banana, you're shaky due to potassium deficiency".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It's inevitable. Now pass me some more cheese twists, potato chips, ice cream and a triple martini!
Would you like to explain how that agrees with "don't make statues" (2nd commandment) and "don't work on Sunday, and prevent everybody else from working then, also" (4th commandment)?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If there were no such thing as free will, it would be logically inconsistent to insist on punishment for any behavior, no matter how heinous. Argumentum ad baculum is valid in this instance. Or, to state it a third way, if there is no free will, you cannot have any objection if I punch you in the face.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
A quick internet search suggests that sea salt is about 4% potassium chloride (that's good) and likely to contain other impurities (both good and bad.)
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
So you're saying that places where a lot of people are dying are just as healthy as other places
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
If there were no such thing as free will, it would be logically inconsistent to insist on punishment for any behavior, no matter how heinous.
No, it wouldn't. A logical absence of free will does not mean that living organisms and sentient beings don't adjust to the feedback from their environment. They do. That's precisely the purpose of all social regulation mechanisms, not just legal measures, but also, e.g., shaming of inappropriately behaving people etc. You don't need free will for these mechanisms to work. And even if it did, it still does not negate the contradictory nature of the notion of free will. There is no meta level here.
Ezekiel 23:20
Myself I would like to see physicians who are a little more cautious about making health recommendations.
There's a lot of evidence that salt has been getting a bad rap, e.g. a Scientific American article from 2010 suggests it's time to end the war on salt.
That's based on attempting to find evidence that reducing salt intake will help avoid heart disease, hypertension, etc. I expect it'll be awhile before we know if this new cellular-level research has any application on the level of human populations.
But myself I don't see why I should "already" be avoiding salt.