Physiology of Salt Metabolism
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: There's no point talking about—or restricting—the consumption of table salt without considering the potassium level of an individual. So says Dr. Lee in this discussion of the critical relationship between the minerals sodium and potassium in the body. "The present custom of restricting salt for patients with cardiovascular disease seems to be an ill-advised substitute for balancing up their potassium-sodium intake. A deficiency of potassium may be a primary cause of the very condition in which sodium is being restricted, and [more dietary] potassium [may] be the real remedy needed." 1951.
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Salt of the Earth
By E. R. Yarham
Summary: To modern medical thinking, salt is a health menace. As in most things nutritional, medicine does not have a clue. In this article from World Science Review, E.R. Yarham discusses the absolute necessity of (whole) salt for people who eat an agriculturally-based diet heavy in cooked foods. "Only where men live mainly on milk and flesh—the latter consumed raw or roasted—is it possible to go without ordinary salt," he writes. Yarham recounts the experiment of a doctor and three students who deprived themselves entirely of dietary salt. Within a week "cramp developed in the muscles, and the experimenters suffered from excessive fatigue and a general sense of exhaustion." Yarham presents numerous historical examples of the value of salt both nutritionally and monetarily, including the famous custom of Roman soldiers being paid in salt, a practice from which the word salary evolved. Reprint 99, 1958.
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