Salt and Sweating

amyhoss

First off, let me say that I ALWAYS go over on my salt. I probably consume 3500mg of salt on average every day. Bad, I know. I'm working on it...

But, I also have salt-heavy sweat. If sweat gets into my eyes when I am working out, it burns. I feel grimy after sweating and I can taste it on my skin. I sweat a lot probably 4 days/week and I just had my blood pressure taken and it is normal.

That being said, should I really be that concerned with decreasing the amount of salt I consume? Don't I just sweat it out on those days?

amyhoss

I know this is probably a stupid question, but I wanted to ask.

schicksa

I'd ask a health professional. My guess is the reason your sweat is so crazy salty is because you eat so much of it (think about how asparagus makes your pee smell after you eat it - yes I know that's gross). The extra sodium will make you retain water and bloat. But definitely ask a doctor or nurse if that's healthy, I would think it impacts your cholesterol and other important things.

amyhoss

I know for sure that I bloat because the socks that I wear for work come up about 1/3 the way up my calf and they leave indents on my legs. I think I was just grasping at straws on the sweat thing.

wolfchild59

The other poster is right, your sweat is salty because of the amount of salt you eat. If you reduce the amount of salt, your sweat will be also become less salty.

I can actually always tell the days after a high-sodium day by my sweat, as gross as it may be. But yeah, if I had a high sodium day, my sweat is definitely way saltier. On the other hand, I could tell that I actually needed to increase my sodium at one point during my half marathon training when I realized that my sweat had zero saltiness to it at all (a bad thing when doing any kind of distance running).

You can also see it on my hat. I wear a black hat and when I've had more sodium, I get white rings around where the sweat soaked the hat. When my sodium is lower, the band is much smaller or practically undetectable.