Salt

"Salt is absolutely essential to human health and nutritional balance. Salt alkalizes blood and other vital fluids, helps retain water, and is deeply involved in the biochemistry of metabolism.

It's not salt per se that's so bad for human health, but rather the industrially refined, land-mined,  mineral-deficient table salt sold on the market and hidden in packaged and processed foods.

One to three grams of salt per day is a good measure for human nutritional requirements, but most Americans today consume 12-15 grams of salt daily.

In refining commercial table salt, manufacturers remove virtually all the minerals and trace elements, leaving a white crystal that is 98 per cent sodium chloride.

Among the nutrients removed is magnesium, which is essential for proper immune function. Magnesium supports a process call phagocytosis, which enhances the assimilative power of scavenger cells that are responsible for controlling infectious bacteria and other unwanted microbes.

Magnesium is also essential for proper function of nerve and brain cells, is involved in the metabolism of sugars and fats, and has been shown to lower mortality dramatically in heart-attach patients.

A study in Canada showed a 66 per cent drop in the death rate of heart-attack patients who were given intravenous injections of magnesium, and Dr. Cass Igram reports that magnesium injections resulted in a 90 percent reduction in heart-attack mortality in a similar study in the USA.

Owing to modern farming and food-processing methods, magnesium is deficient in almost all foods today, including fresh vegetables and whole grains. Dr. Igram reports that 76 per cent of all Americans are deficient in this vital mineral.

The only viable dietary source of magnesium these days is whole, unrefined sea salt, especially the coarse grey variety harvested by hand along the Brittany coast of France, known as 'Celtic sea salt'.

The Epsom salts some people take as a magnesium supplement contains magnesium sulfate, which is rapidly excreted through the kidneys and therefore difficult to assimilate. Whole sea salt contains magnesium chloride and magnesium bromide, which are easily assimilated and metabolized in the human body.

The big ballyhoo in Western media and medical circles about avoiding salt to cut down on sodium and thus control high blood pressure is all based on the detrimental effects of industrially refined, land-mined table salt, which is 98 per cent sodium chloride.

The health problems caused by this kind of salt is another typical example of how the processed-food industry has cornered the market on a vital food element, then refined and denatured it for 'convenience' (i.e. higher profits), duping the public into daily consumption of a product that undermines rather than supports health.

By contrast, Celtic sea salt contains only 82 per cent sodium chloride. Furthermore, the magnesium salts it contains naturally drain excess sodium from the body, thereby preventing the edema, kidney malfunction, high blood pressure, and other ailments associated with excess sodium intake."

Source: Daniel Reid.