excess salt metabolizes muscles to water?

yirara

I remember reading something like the header early on last year. Having some problems with sodium and constantly snacking on salt to feel better I'd love to read the actual study. Though at the moment I can't even find the articles that went through the press at that time, let alone the actual paper.

Any suggestions? Any comments on the actual research done?

Connected to that I always wondered why salt tablets are included in desert survival packs, to be taken if you run out of water. If you have no water then taking salt would not help I thought. But if water is created inside your body it would make sense...

sugaraddict4321

I've never heard such a thing. If salt turns muscles into water then I'd be a puddle every time I went out to eat Mexican food.

Salt makes me retain water, which is why if I've eaten a salty meal the scale can jump by several pounds from one day to the next.

yirara

I finally found it! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effects.html

And the two studies:
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/88530#SEC3
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/88532
(freetext available I think, unless I get freetext automatically via work)

So it looks like people were given higher amounts of sodium in completely controlled conditions. As a result they drank less because they felt less thirsty. But the amount of urine they excreted remained about the same. Thus the water has to come from somewhere.

yirara

Ok, finally time to read those papers.

quiksylver296

And the salt tabs in survival packs is based on old wives' tale and aren't helpful to survival.