Do I have to salt things on carnivore?

newbies
(job) #1

I’m having severe indigestion flare ups like cold burning feelings in my chest and coughing and I’m eating nothing but steaks the past 4 days and I always add like 8 grams of salt a day to my food. Is it because lately I’ve been adding all 8 grams of salt to one small steak and its to much in one meal? Seems to be worse the past few days.The indigestion flare up feeling comes through out the next 24 hours. Do I have to salt my food with celtic sea salt? People are saying you don’t but then you need to drink mineral water. I’ve also read you can adapt to not eating salt but it can take weeks of feeling like crap and I’ve already gone through nearly two weeks of hell feeling like shit to finally adapt to the diet. :weary:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Try adding only a couple grams to your ‘one small steak’ and drink the rest mixed in a liter of water during the remainder of the day. I drink salted water pretty much every day. It’s not like drinking sea water or marsh water. Hope this helps.

(job) #3

I use celtic sea salt and it tastes exactly like sea water, I tried putting it into water, not gonna happen. But I’ll try adding less sea salt.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

I use Himalayan pink salt. I use about 10 grams per liter of water and I find it mildly salty. In fact, unless it’s ice cold, I prefer salty to plain.

#5

Himalayan pink salt is tasty. It’s still super gross in water to me. Some of us never ever will drink salty water, I guess :smiley: I hate salty water with a passion. I am curious so I tried once, way, way later than keto and multiple day fasts.

@voteforpedro, maybe it’s much for you to add salt at once. Maybe you don’t even need this big amount.
What if you eat some salt now and then? I had a very short time when I ate some Himalayan salt just because I liked the taste as I always have at least 4-5g salt in my food and it was always enough. I went a bit higher with very salty smoked pork and started to feel worse (some kind of inner “burn” and I started to develop an aversion to salt) but maybe it’s because a too big amount of my salt was in some overly salty little food? I got used to that anyway.That’s why I don’t agree with supplementing salt just because people say we should eat a lot of it. I never did that, the burning sensation came way earlier than the often advised 12g salt. I don’t supplement salt when I do my short, at most 48 hour fasts either. I am sure our sodium need is somewhat individual as some people experience sodium problems early and others are fine for a week without any (probably not in any circumstances, though. I would be careful if I would sweat a lot due to hot weather or high activity or if I would drink unusually much water and I would do these for days. I mean, I would be ready to eat salt if I got a bit dizzy. But eating some anyway is fine too, I just hate supplementing anything. I eat my food and that’s it. It almost always worked in my life.)

#6

WHY??? That’s a LOT of salt, keto or not… and on ONE steak? You don’t need that much salt. We need some more sale than non-keto’s but that’s overkill… like by a lot!

(Daisy) #7

Salt your food to taste. Are you only eating one small steak a day? If so, that’s probably not enough food. Eat to hunger, salt to taste. If you get a headache, take a pinch of salt directly in your mouth. I prefer Redmond real salt and pink Himalayan salt.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

A lot of people on an exclusively carnivore diet find that they get enough salt in their meat and don’t need to add it to their food. The healthy range for sodium intake appears to be 4-6 grams/day (confirmed by several independent studies published in the last decade), which translates to 10-15 grams of table salt (sodium chloride). The salt already present in your food counts towards this figure, so it is possible that you don’t need to add as much salt to your diet as you have been thinking.

Symptoms of low sodium include dizziness, lightheadedness, headache, and constipation. For me, a sign of too much sodium is something that, while not exactly diarrhea, is very much the opposite of constipation.

(Elizabeth ) #9

That healthy range in studies is going to be on people eating a standard diet though :slight_smile: So we really don’t know what is appropriate or optimal or even necessary on a carnivore way of eating :woman_shrugging:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

If anything, our requirement for salt will go up as our insulin level drops, because elevated insulin from a high-carbohydrate diet causes the kidneys to excrete sodium less readily.

However, it appears from comments I have read that a pure carnivore diet can provide enough salt in the meat to make added salt unnecessary.

(Bob M) #11

How do people even know how much salt they add to food? I truly have no idea. I just salt it until it tastes good. If I feel as if I need more salt, I drink olive or pickle juice (though I know that’s not an option on carnivore). If I don’t feel as if I need more salt, I don’t add it.

It does seem anomalous to me that keto people require more salt than carnivores. Doesn’t make logical sense. What is it about eating only meat that magically means you need less salt?

(Elizabeth ) #12

Then you throw in physiological insulin resistance which is a normal healthy reaction to a zero carb diet and that’s potentially sodium sparing :slight_smile:

(Elizabeth ) #13

It’s because we eat a lot more meat that has a reasonable amount of sodium in it already

#14

People know how much water they drink, I can’t do that :smiley:
But I easily can measure my used salt. Once I measured out a decent amount of salt and I used it up in 10 days. So I knew how much I used per day. I even calculated the sodium in my food, not very precisely but it was good enough for me. And I eat similarly on my normal (most) days…

I have no idea about reasons and actual needs but my body loves having ~5g salt per day and not more, no matter my woe. So I stick to that. (Actually, I stick to eating my food the way I want. I barely use salt for my eggs, they simply don’t need it especially the boiled ones. And especially when I have some salted meat… I automatically try to balance it out with not salted eggs and other things. I love automatic things and why to complicate my life if I feel okay? The human body is wonderful and its needs can’t be describe with some general numbers for everyone on every woe.)

#15

Are you sure you aren’t sick with something else? Is this just indigestion cause one does not usually cough with that? Maybe a virus or flu or something? Just checking cause it sounds more involved in a way than steak and salt to me in a way from your post?

but no, you do not have to salt.
you know when you need a bit of salt if you want it, go by what you feel you need ya know. some love salt, some don’t use it, but I think a lot of people do go by if they just want some or not kinda thing.

So maybe you are a little sick and going thru adaption at the same time could be making things worse maybe? I hope you do feel better very soon tho and take care of yourself!!