Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium. (warning, long and nerdy)
Aaron_K123
Posts: 7,122 Member
So lately I've seen a lot of posts about sudden weight gain or sudden weight loss and what does it mean or something about whether or not I should care about sodium in my diet. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation out there. This is an attempt to address what is actually going on in your body when you take in sodium (or other ions) which I think if understood will help answer any questions one might have about sodium intake. I realize this sort of explanation is definitely not for everyone, but for those who would like to know I thought I'd try to explain. I'm not going to try to cover everything sodium does, just the main thing I think people care about. If I misrepresent something in here please do provide a correction in the comments.
Why is Sodium important, what does it do to our body?
When people talk about sodium they are typically talking about sodium chloride or table salt, NaCl. In water NaCl dissociates into Na+ and Cl+, ions if you are a chemist…or electrolytes if you are a wellness blogger. Ions in solution are kept at a constant concentration by diffusion. If you had two 1 liter pools of water separated by a barrier that was permeable to ions like sodium but not water and you put 10 grams of salt in one side and 20 grams of salt in the other the sodium ions would migrate through the barrier from the high concentration to the low concentration until there was 15 grams per liter on both sides. The amount of water on either side would remain the same at 1 liter. If the barrier was instead permeable to water but not sodium what would happen is that water would transfer from the low sodium side to the high sodium side until there was the same amount of sodium per unit water on both sides thus coming to equilibrium just like in the first example. What this effectively would mean though is that one side would lose water down to 0.66 liters and the other side would gain water to 1.33 liters so that on both sides there were 15 grams per liter of ions on both sides. Same result, different thing traveling between the barrier.
Cells in your body are like the latter example, they are permeable to water but impermeable to ions. If the ion or dissolved solute concentration is the same outside and inside the cell then the solutions are isotonic and nothing happens. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much higher than inside the cell (hypertonic) the water will get sucked out of the cell to equalize the concentrations. That is bad. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much lower than inside the cell (hypotonic) then water will rush into the cell making it swell until potentially it pops and kills the cell. Which is really bad. This is why if you need hydration in a hospital they hook you up to a saline IV (that has salt at a concentration similar to your blood) rather than pure water.
Your cells naturally have a specific ion concentration within them that allows them to carry out the functions necessary for life. One of the critical regulatory parts of your body is to make sure that the liquid outside of your cells has the same concentration of ions as what is inside to avoid water either rushing into or out of cells. This is called ion homeostasis.
Okay with all that said what does it mean for you and what does it mean when you take in sodium in the form of salt. Basically it means your body needs to keep the sodium levels in your blood in equilibrium with that of your cells. If the amount of sodium you take in plus the amount of water you take in adds up to a solution that has a higher concentration of sodium than your blood your body will do what it can to pull water into your bloodstream to dilute the concentration so that it returns to equilibrium. When you drink more water your body will try to hold onto it to help lower the overall concentration of sodium. Since there is only so much physical room in your blood vessels the result is your blood pressure goes up…more water, same space, more pressure. Your bodyweight will also increase with the retained water.
If instead you take in more water and less sodium leading to a concentration that is overall lower than what is present in your blood your body will respond by flushing water out of your system to raise the concentration of ions within your blood back to equilibrium. This results in water leaving your blood and there being less volume of water in your vessels causing a drop in blood pressure. Your body flushing the water out will also drop your overall body weight.
Your body has a lot of water to work with, much of your bodyweight is water….so it is very good at keeping this equilibrium. Unless your consumption of sodium is extreme (either extremely low or extremely high) over a long period of time it is probably not something you really need to worry about. If you are concerned you can always have your sodium levels checked by a doctor. An easier way to have some idea of where you are at is the color of your urine. If you have a lot of sodium intake relative to water consumption your body is likely holding onto the water and your urine will appear much darker. If on the other hand you are drinking a lot of water and taking in very little sodium your body is likely trying to flush out the water as fast as it can and your urine will appear almost the color of water. A light straw colored urine is what to expect if you are close to balanced.
One thing to keep in mind is it is not how much sodium you take in it is how much sodium relative to how much water you take in that actually matters. What that means is high sodium foods (which have very little water in them) tend to raise your sodium levels while beverages that contain sodium (like soda or milk) tend to overall lower your sodium levels because they have a lot more water in them than they do sodium. Your blood and the contents of your cells are a lot “saltier” than a can of soda is so drinking soda is if anything going to lower the concentration of sodium in your blood. If you don’t believe that try drinking an IV saline solution.
Fad diets of the “Lose weight in just two weeks!” variety tend to “work” by having you do things that effectively drop your sodium concentration enough that your body responds by flushing water out of your system. They will do something like have you switch to a diet of fruit and veg or other low sodium foods while drinking lots and lots of water (to dilute sodium). The end result is that your body weight goes down rapidly as your body expels the water not only that you took in but also just the water retained naturally in your body. But you haven’t lost fat, you’ve just put yourself into a condition where your body is desperately trying to return the ion concentration in your blood into equilibrium which is not a particularly healthy state. You won’t be able to sustain this, eventually you will need to take in sodium and when you do your body will retain water and you will put the weight back on.
Honestly unless you have a heart condition or high blood pressure at a level where your doctor has specifically told you to monitor and limit your sodium intake you probably shouldn’t care about sodium in your diet. A normal diet is going to be close enough in sodium and water that your body is perfectly capable of sorting it out and you can just pay attention to the color of your urine. If it is too dark then drink more water. If it is too light then either drink less water or add more salt into your diet. Sodium and hydration are two sides of the same coin. Lots of health advice websites tout lowering sodium or drinking more water because they assume the average person looking to lose weight is consuming too much sodium relative to the amount of water they are taking in...but that isn't necessarily true.
MFP defaults to setting a sodium target for you to “hit” that turns red if you go over it. I think this is unfortunate that it is a default setting and you’d be better off turning that particular feature off. If during the course of your diet your weight suddenly goes up 3 pounds or suddenly drops three pounds in the course of a day most likely this is related to how much sodium/water you have taken in and not anything to do with fat. That sort of thing is safe to ignore, it has nothing to do with fat loss or your health...its normal.
Why is Sodium important, what does it do to our body?
When people talk about sodium they are typically talking about sodium chloride or table salt, NaCl. In water NaCl dissociates into Na+ and Cl+, ions if you are a chemist…or electrolytes if you are a wellness blogger. Ions in solution are kept at a constant concentration by diffusion. If you had two 1 liter pools of water separated by a barrier that was permeable to ions like sodium but not water and you put 10 grams of salt in one side and 20 grams of salt in the other the sodium ions would migrate through the barrier from the high concentration to the low concentration until there was 15 grams per liter on both sides. The amount of water on either side would remain the same at 1 liter. If the barrier was instead permeable to water but not sodium what would happen is that water would transfer from the low sodium side to the high sodium side until there was the same amount of sodium per unit water on both sides thus coming to equilibrium just like in the first example. What this effectively would mean though is that one side would lose water down to 0.66 liters and the other side would gain water to 1.33 liters so that on both sides there were 15 grams per liter of ions on both sides. Same result, different thing traveling between the barrier.
Cells in your body are like the latter example, they are permeable to water but impermeable to ions. If the ion or dissolved solute concentration is the same outside and inside the cell then the solutions are isotonic and nothing happens. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much higher than inside the cell (hypertonic) the water will get sucked out of the cell to equalize the concentrations. That is bad. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much lower than inside the cell (hypotonic) then water will rush into the cell making it swell until potentially it pops and kills the cell. Which is really bad. This is why if you need hydration in a hospital they hook you up to a saline IV (that has salt at a concentration similar to your blood) rather than pure water.
Your cells naturally have a specific ion concentration within them that allows them to carry out the functions necessary for life. One of the critical regulatory parts of your body is to make sure that the liquid outside of your cells has the same concentration of ions as what is inside to avoid water either rushing into or out of cells. This is called ion homeostasis.
Okay with all that said what does it mean for you and what does it mean when you take in sodium in the form of salt. Basically it means your body needs to keep the sodium levels in your blood in equilibrium with that of your cells. If the amount of sodium you take in plus the amount of water you take in adds up to a solution that has a higher concentration of sodium than your blood your body will do what it can to pull water into your bloodstream to dilute the concentration so that it returns to equilibrium. When you drink more water your body will try to hold onto it to help lower the overall concentration of sodium. Since there is only so much physical room in your blood vessels the result is your blood pressure goes up…more water, same space, more pressure. Your bodyweight will also increase with the retained water.
If instead you take in more water and less sodium leading to a concentration that is overall lower than what is present in your blood your body will respond by flushing water out of your system to raise the concentration of ions within your blood back to equilibrium. This results in water leaving your blood and there being less volume of water in your vessels causing a drop in blood pressure. Your body flushing the water out will also drop your overall body weight.
Your body has a lot of water to work with, much of your bodyweight is water….so it is very good at keeping this equilibrium. Unless your consumption of sodium is extreme (either extremely low or extremely high) over a long period of time it is probably not something you really need to worry about. If you are concerned you can always have your sodium levels checked by a doctor. An easier way to have some idea of where you are at is the color of your urine. If you have a lot of sodium intake relative to water consumption your body is likely holding onto the water and your urine will appear much darker. If on the other hand you are drinking a lot of water and taking in very little sodium your body is likely trying to flush out the water as fast as it can and your urine will appear almost the color of water. A light straw colored urine is what to expect if you are close to balanced.
One thing to keep in mind is it is not how much sodium you take in it is how much sodium relative to how much water you take in that actually matters. What that means is high sodium foods (which have very little water in them) tend to raise your sodium levels while beverages that contain sodium (like soda or milk) tend to overall lower your sodium levels because they have a lot more water in them than they do sodium. Your blood and the contents of your cells are a lot “saltier” than a can of soda is so drinking soda is if anything going to lower the concentration of sodium in your blood. If you don’t believe that try drinking an IV saline solution.
Fad diets of the “Lose weight in just two weeks!” variety tend to “work” by having you do things that effectively drop your sodium concentration enough that your body responds by flushing water out of your system. They will do something like have you switch to a diet of fruit and veg or other low sodium foods while drinking lots and lots of water (to dilute sodium). The end result is that your body weight goes down rapidly as your body expels the water not only that you took in but also just the water retained naturally in your body. But you haven’t lost fat, you’ve just put yourself into a condition where your body is desperately trying to return the ion concentration in your blood into equilibrium which is not a particularly healthy state. You won’t be able to sustain this, eventually you will need to take in sodium and when you do your body will retain water and you will put the weight back on.
Honestly unless you have a heart condition or high blood pressure at a level where your doctor has specifically told you to monitor and limit your sodium intake you probably shouldn’t care about sodium in your diet. A normal diet is going to be close enough in sodium and water that your body is perfectly capable of sorting it out and you can just pay attention to the color of your urine. If it is too dark then drink more water. If it is too light then either drink less water or add more salt into your diet. Sodium and hydration are two sides of the same coin. Lots of health advice websites tout lowering sodium or drinking more water because they assume the average person looking to lose weight is consuming too much sodium relative to the amount of water they are taking in...but that isn't necessarily true.
MFP defaults to setting a sodium target for you to “hit” that turns red if you go over it. I think this is unfortunate that it is a default setting and you’d be better off turning that particular feature off. If during the course of your diet your weight suddenly goes up 3 pounds or suddenly drops three pounds in the course of a day most likely this is related to how much sodium/water you have taken in and not anything to do with fat. That sort of thing is safe to ignore, it has nothing to do with fat loss or your health...its normal.
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I get it! Thank you so much. Now I don't have to stress so much or feel guilty for teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, etc... just drink a little more water to balance and keep going!0
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »So lately I've seen a lot of posts about sudden weight gain or sudden weight loss and what does it mean or something about whether or not I should care about sodium in my diet. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation out there. This is an attempt to address what is actually going on in your body when you take in sodium (or other ions) which I think if understood will help answer any questions one might have about sodium intake. I realize this sort of explanation is definitely not for everyone, but for those who would like to know I thought I'd try to explain. I'm not going to try to cover everything sodium does, just the main thing I think people care about. If I misrepresent something in here please do provide a correction in the comments.
Why is Sodium important, what does it do to our body?
When people talk about sodium they are typically talking about sodium chloride or table salt, NaCl. In water NaCl dissociates into Na+ and Cl+, ions if you are a chemist…or electrolytes if you are a wellness blogger. Ions in solution are kept at a constant concentration by diffusion. If you had two 1 liter pools of water separated by a barrier that was permeable to ions like sodium but not water and you put 10 grams of salt in one side and 20 grams of salt in the other the sodium ions would migrate through the barrier from the high concentration to the low concentration until there was 15 grams per liter on both sides. The amount of water on either side would remain the same at 1 liter. If the barrier was instead permeable to water but not sodium what would happen is that water would transfer from the low sodium side to the high sodium side until there was the same amount of sodium per unit water on both sides thus coming to equilibrium just like in the first example. What this effectively would mean though is that one side would lose water down to 0.66 liters and the other side would gain water to 1.33 liters so that on both sides there were 15 grams per liter of ions on both sides. Same result, different thing traveling between the barrier.
Cells in your body are like the latter example, they are permeable to water but impermeable to ions. If the ion or dissolved solute concentration is the same outside and inside the cell then the solutions are isotonic and nothing happens. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much higher than inside the cell (hypertonic) the water will get sucked out of the cell to equalize the concentrations. That is bad. If the ion concentration outside the cell is much lower than inside the cell (hypotonic) then water will rush into the cell making it swell until potentially it pops and kills the cell. Which is really bad. This is why if you need hydration in a hospital they hook you up to a saline IV (that has salt at a concentration similar to your blood) rather than pure water.
Your cells naturally have a specific ion concentration within them that allows them to carry out the functions necessary for life. One of the critical regulatory parts of your body is to make sure that the liquid outside of your cells has the same concentration of ions as what is inside to avoid water either rushing into or out of cells. This is called ion homeostasis.
Okay with all that said what does it mean for you and what does it mean when you take in sodium in the form of salt. Basically it means your body needs to keep the sodium levels in your blood in equilibrium with that of your cells. If the amount of sodium you take in plus the amount of water you take in adds up to a solution that has a higher concentration of sodium than your blood your body will do what it can to pull water into your bloodstream to dilute the concentration so that it returns to equilibrium. When you drink more water your body will try to hold onto it to help lower the overall concentration of sodium. Since there is only so much physical room in your blood vessels the result is your blood pressure goes up…more water, same space, more pressure. Your bodyweight will also increase with the retained water.
If instead you take in more water and less sodium leading to a concentration that is overall lower than what is present in your blood your body will respond by flushing water out of your system to raise the concentration of ions within your blood back to equilibrium. This results in water leaving your blood and there being less volume of water in your vessels causing a drop in blood pressure. Your body flushing the water out will also drop your overall body weight.
Your body has a lot of water to work with, much of your bodyweight is water….so it is very good at keeping this equilibrium. Unless your consumption of sodium is extreme (either extremely low or extremely high) over a long period of time it is probably not something you really need to worry about. If you are concerned you can always have your sodium levels checked by a doctor. An easier way to have some idea of where you are at is the color of your urine. If you have a lot of sodium intake relative to water consumption your body is likely holding onto the water and your urine will appear much darker. If on the other hand you are drinking a lot of water and taking in very little sodium your body is likely trying to flush out the water as fast as it can and your urine will appear almost the color of water. A light straw colored urine is what to expect if you are close to balanced.
One thing to keep in mind is it is not how much sodium you take in it is how much sodium relative to how much water you take in that actually matters. What that means is high sodium foods (which have very little water in them) tend to raise your sodium levels while beverages that contain sodium (like soda or milk) tend to overall lower your sodium levels because they have a lot more water in them than they do sodium. Your blood and the contents of your cells are a lot “saltier” than a can of soda is so drinking soda is if anything going to lower the concentration of sodium in your blood. If you don’t believe that try drinking an IV saline solution.
Fad diets of the “Lose weight in just two weeks!” variety tend to “work” by having you do things that effectively drop your sodium concentration enough that your body responds by flushing water out of your system. They will do something like have you switch to a diet of fruit and veg or other low sodium foods while drinking lots and lots of water (to dilute sodium). The end result is that your body weight goes down rapidly as your body expels the water not only that you took in but also just the water retained naturally in your body. But you haven’t lost fat, you’ve just put yourself into a condition where your body is desperately trying to return the ion concentration in your blood into equilibrium which is not a particularly healthy state. You won’t be able to sustain this, eventually you will need to take in sodium and when you do your body will retain water and you will put the weight back on.
Honestly unless you have a heart condition or high blood pressure at a level where your doctor has specifically told you to monitor and limit your sodium intake you probably shouldn’t care about sodium in your diet. A normal diet is going to be close enough in sodium and water that your body is perfectly capable of sorting it out and you can just pay attention to the color of your urine. If it is too dark then drink more water. If it is too light then either drink less water or add more salt into your diet. Sodium and hydration are two sides of the same coin. Lots of health advice websites tout lowering sodium or drinking more water because they assume the average person looking to lose weight is consuming too much sodium relative to the amount of water they are taking in...but that isn't necessarily true.
MFP defaults to setting a sodium target for you to “hit” that turns red if you go over it. I think this is unfortunate that it is a default setting and you’d be better off turning that particular feature off. If during the course of your diet your weight suddenly goes up 3 pounds or suddenly drops three pounds in the course of a day most likely this is related to how much sodium/water you have taken in and not anything to do with fat. That sort of thing is safe to ignore, it has nothing to do with fat loss or your health...its normal.
Thank u!!0 -
Very Insightful Aaron! Can I be ur friend?0
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My husband is a molecular biologist, and this is exactly what he has also said all the time.
(He also has very strong opinions about woo weight loss, namely that it's woo)
You should do a regular blog with the real science of weight gain/loss.
I told my husband he should do one called "Sexy Science Stud"...he was unamused.
I thought it was a clever title!14 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »
That's fine with me0 -
NoxeemaJackson wrote: »My husband is a molecular biologist, and this is exactly what he has also said all the time.
(He also has very strong opinions about woo weight loss, namely that it's woo)
You should do a regular blog with the real science of weight gain/loss.
I told my husband he should do one called "Sexy Science Stud"...he was unamused.
I thought it was a clever title!
Well probably not a coincidence, I am also a molecular biologist. I have yet to refer to myself as a sexy science stud though.
I have thought about doing this on the regular, that is why I made the title I did "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium" so that if it is popular at all or people find it useful I might do another that is "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: XXXX" for another topic, probably answering where your weight actually goes when you lose weight. Don't want to commit just yet though, not sure if this sort of long-winded technical description is something people actually want. If it stays up for a while or gets a lot of discussion I might do another.36 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »NoxeemaJackson wrote: »My husband is a molecular biologist, and this is exactly what he has also said all the time.
(He also has very strong opinions about woo weight loss, namely that it's woo)
You should do a regular blog with the real science of weight gain/loss.
I told my husband he should do one called "Sexy Science Stud"...he was unamused.
I thought it was a clever title!
Well probably not a coincidence, I am also a molecular biologist. I have yet to refer to myself as a sexy science stud though.
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That was pretty awesome!! Thanks for your knowledge on this.0
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I think those kind of answers are precisely what many of us need. I would love a well thought out technical explanation rather than being beaten over the head with repetitious, and often sketchy over-simplifications. Thank you!9
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Andizaleski5 wrote: »I think those kind of answers are precisely what many of us need. I would love a well thought out technical explanation rather than being beaten over the head with repetitious, and often sketchy over-simplifications. Thank you!
Thanks, that was my hope/goal. Arguably what I posted is also an oversimplification. Really any description of biology that fits into a forum post is going to be oversimplified to some degree. 8 also didn't transcribe anything from a text, those are my own words so it's possible I may not have represented something quite right. Overall the gist of it though I feel is accurate.
Sodium does more than just what I tslked about here but what I focused on is the effect people are reacting to when they are considering tracking sodium in their diets. The effect it has on blood pressure and water retention.10 -
I've heard that there's a good aspartame post circulating around too...
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I've heard that there's a good aspartame post circulating around too...
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1308408/why-aspartame-isnt-scary/p1
I may or may not have that one bookmarked for easy reference.
[ETA:] Thanks, Aaron. Great, very informative post.3 -
I seem to have never, to my knowledge, had huge issues with sodium based water retention... I sweat so much when I train that I guess my body needs the salt. I always put a lot on my vegetables etc. It is bready, doughy things that cause me the most issues in terms of retention... it only takes one meal out of my usual and wham, I swell up. Really irritating when I take my trips to stay with my mother... lots of meals out and even something as simple as having some calimari and chips will swell me up. Never found a way around that issue so that would be a useful topic to cover... I do not get this issue with other carb sources.3
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So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?0 -
Graelwyn75 wrote: »I seem to have never, to my knowledge, had huge issues with sodium based water retention... I sweat so much when I train that I guess my body needs the salt. I always put a lot on my vegetables etc. It is bready, doughy things that cause me the most issues in terms of retention... it only takes one meal out of my usual and wham, I swell up. Really irritating when I take my trips to stay with my mother... lots of meals out and even something as simple as having some calimari and chips will swell me up. Never found a way around that issue so that would be a useful topic to cover... I do not get this issue with other carb sources.
Carbs get converted to glycogen as an energy storage molecule in muscle tissue and with glycogen comes a lot of water retention. Going from high activity where glycogen is depleted to a meal with carbs that replenish those stores could probably end up feeling like swell or bloat...but mostly localized to muscle tissue. If you are talking like a bloated feeling in stomach or gut not sure.
I mean if you are active you probably know what I mean about the glycogen already.1 -
HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Graelwyn75 wrote: »I seem to have never, to my knowledge, had huge issues with sodium based water retention... I sweat so much when I train that I guess my body needs the salt. I always put a lot on my vegetables etc. It is bready, doughy things that cause me the most issues in terms of retention... it only takes one meal out of my usual and wham, I swell up. Really irritating when I take my trips to stay with my mother... lots of meals out and even something as simple as having some calimari and chips will swell me up. Never found a way around that issue so that would be a useful topic to cover... I do not get this issue with other carb sources.
Carbs get converted to glycogen as an energy storage molecule in muscle tissue and with glycogen comes a lot of water retention. Going from high activity where glycogen is depleted to a meal with carbs that replenish those stores could probably end up feeling like swell or bloat...but mostly localized to muscle tissue. If you are talking like a bloated feeling in stomach or gut not sure.
I mean if you are active you probably know what I mean about the glycogen already.
No, calves tend to swell the most, and usually when in London, I do not train the few days I am there.0 -
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
I buy those 503ml flavored waters and i drink roughly 3-4 of them a day, on a high sodium day i find that amount of water still gives me about 4 pounds of water retention, A couple weeks ago i had 3 days straight of 5000+ sodium days and gained 13.4 "pounds" which came off within 5-6 days of eating lower sodium again and drinking and sweating from some cardio.3 -
I remember when my parents went on a low sodium diet for hypertension. They cut out huge types of processed foods and of course lost weight (less food). So they chalked up their weight problems to sodium. When they discovered low or no sodium substitutes they added the foods back in and gained most, if not all of the weight back. But they still believe that sodium causes obesity and refuse to believe excess food intake has anything to do with it. Their doctor only told them to watch the salt, nothing else.3
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Sorry I hit woo by mistake, meant to tap Awesome! Darn phone. Thank you for this info!0
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This is awesome as usual aaron!0
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AND it should be noted that not enough sodium is also bad. Far more of my patients have low sodium levels than have high sodium levels. Your urine should be pale yellow, like straw. NOT clear (or dark). A gallon of water a day is a ridiculous idea for most people (too much water, too little sodium). 64-80 oz is perfect for most healthy individuals. This is a great post, @Aaron_K1233
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Interesting; thanks!
My cardiologist has actually told me to keep my sodium on the higher side since my BP tends to run low and I have vasovagal issues.0 -
Graelwyn75 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Graelwyn75 wrote: »I seem to have never, to my knowledge, had huge issues with sodium based water retention... I sweat so much when I train that I guess my body needs the salt. I always put a lot on my vegetables etc. It is bready, doughy things that cause me the most issues in terms of retention... it only takes one meal out of my usual and wham, I swell up. Really irritating when I take my trips to stay with my mother... lots of meals out and even something as simple as having some calimari and chips will swell me up. Never found a way around that issue so that would be a useful topic to cover... I do not get this issue with other carb sources.
Carbs get converted to glycogen as an energy storage molecule in muscle tissue and with glycogen comes a lot of water retention. Going from high activity where glycogen is depleted to a meal with carbs that replenish those stores could probably end up feeling like swell or bloat...but mostly localized to muscle tissue. If you are talking like a bloated feeling in stomach or gut not sure.
I mean if you are active you probably know what I mean about the glycogen already.
No, calves tend to swell the most, and usually when in London, I do not train the few days I am there.
Certainly not claiming to be diagnosing this medically or anything but that sounds like what I'd expect from glycogen stores. If you actively use your calves your body will pack glycogen in the muscle which comes with a lot of water. Your body sort of expects it to get used so it keeps putting it in there at a certain rate when it has fuel to store from. If you go from active to not active it can kind of overfill and swell the muscle a bit. Nothing bad about that other than feeling bloated or swollen.0 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think, based on the assumptions I made.9 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »HellYeahItsKriss wrote: »So, This post was pretty awesome, i actually learned some things i didn't know and it has actually prompted a question... or a few haha
So lets say i have a day where my sodium is high, say 5000 mg, I know that i don't really have any issues with water retention staying within the default 2300, but i do retain once i start creeping up and up.. so.. back to 5000mg cause usually thats a typical number in sodium i hit when i over kill.. How many ml of water per mg of sodium would be good to drink to balance yourself? I am the type that retains water for at least 3-4 days after, if i drank this amount of water to restore balance, would that cut the amount of retention i experience down some, since i tend to pee pretty quickly after consuming liquids, Or would drinking enough water to balance out just cause issues?
Oh boy good question I don't know off the top of my head but I might look into that and try to respond. Off the top of my head I'd imagine the solution to the question is just to know the natural level of sodium that is considered balanced in your body and use that to figure out how much water.
The way it gets complicated is that water is required for lots of bodily functions not related to sodium like for digestion so not all the water you drink would be available for bringing the sodium to the desired concentration. So therefore whatever I'd calculate just off of the desired sodium concentration you'd probably need to drink more water than just that. How much more hard to say.
That said if you know how much water you need to drink when you have 2300mg sodium we should be able to calculate how much more water you'd need for 5000mg using that method. Just have to look up what the natural sodium concentration is in your body (ie weight of sodium per liter of water)
Okay I am at a computer now so I can look things up to try to give an answer. So here are the numbers I found that we need.
Here is my source: http://book.bionumbers.org/what-are-the-concentrations-of-different-ions-in-cells/
Okay so sodium in mammalian blood plasma is about 100 to 200 mM, lets call it 150mM. In comparison sea water is 500 mM. So your blood is really only about 3 times less salty than sea water. Not suprisingly when I looked up medical saline it looks like it is at a concentration of 154mM, which is right in line with the concentration in your blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_(medicine). So if you are dehydrated and in a hospital they are going to hook you up to water that is only about 3 times less salty than sea water.
mM is a measure of concentration called millimolar. What 150mM of sodium means is that there are 150 milimoles per liter. A mole is a specific number of atoms. To convert that to weight we need to know the atomic weight of sodium which is on the periodic table and is 23 grams per mole which is the same as 23 miligrams per milimole. So what that means is 150 milimoles is the same as 150*23 = 3450 mg per liter. Wow, that is a ton isn't it. That is the amount of sodium in your blood right now. In comparison a liter of diet soda (that drink lots of people on here love to claim is high in sodium) has about 120mg in a liter...about 30 times less than what is in your blood. So yeah just a thought for people who claim soda is high in sodium. If you drink soda you are actually diluting the sodium concentration of your body, not increasing it.
Anyways, on to your question. You compared going from taking in 2300mg of sodium to taking in 5000mg. Lets pretend that the amount of food you eat is the same, its just much higher sodium content food. That would be an additional 2700mg of sodium. Given your blood has a concentration of 3450 mg per liter that would mean to take that 2700mg and put it at the same concentration that is in your blood you would only need to dissolve it in 780 mL of water. Call it an extra liter.
The reason though that we drink water and not salt water is because water is used for much more in our bodies than just solubilizing sodium so not all of the water you drink can be used to dilute out the sodium that you take in. All other variables held constant though yeah you'd only need to drink about an extra liter of water to hold that extra sodium in check...I think.
Haha, wow.. Thank you for taking the time for that, I will give that a try next time i sodium binge and let you know how long before i see my current weight again. Although i will probably just use tap water, those bottled waters are expensive enough as it is lol..
As a visual comparison of your brain and my own.. This post is a great display of your brain and its impressiveness and this photo is me.. hahaha
16 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »NoxeemaJackson wrote: »I have thought about doing this on the regular, that is why I made the title I did "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: Sodium" so that if it is popular at all or people find it useful I might do another that is "Biochemistry answers for common weight loss questions: XXXX" for another topic, probably answering where your weight actually goes when you lose weight. Don't want to commit just yet though, not sure if this sort of long-winded technical description is something people actually want. If it stays up for a while or gets a lot of discussion I might do another.
I would really enjoy this!0 -
AND it should be noted that not enough sodium is also bad. Far more of my patients have low sodium levels than have high sodium levels. Your urine should be pale yellow, like straw. NOT clear (or dark). A gallon of water a day is a ridiculous idea for most people (too much water, too little sodium). 64-80 oz is perfect for most healthy individuals. This is a great post, @Aaron_K123
Yeah the issue I think is that at somepoint well-intentioned health gurus looked at the general populace and saw (especially in the United States) that along with obesity tended to come high sodium levels and high blood pressure given many foods were high in sodium and overeating often went with too much sodium for the amount of liquid people were drinking. I mean I think on average that is true, or it certainly used to be true. As such the health gurus said unto the masses, if you want to improve your health lose weight, lower your sodium intake and drink more water. The last two things being meant to help lower the sodium concentrations in people's blood to help deal with high blood pressure.
Problem is people just take that like it is general advice and will take it to extremes. Sodium is bad, so avoid it...always get low sodium foods and never have sodium in beverages drink only water. And when you drink water, get 8 cups a day...no 16 cups a day...no 1 gallon a day...no 1.5 gallons a day, the more the better. Oh crap there is 40mg of sodium in a can of diet coke? Well better avoid that huh. (40mg is less than 2 grains of salt http://www.traditionaloven.com/culinary-arts/cooking/table-salt/convert-grain-gr-to-sodium-na-milligram-mg.html). I just cringe when I hear people say they avoid soda because of the sodium content.
So yeah, now suddenly there are a lot of people with very low sodium levels and low blood pressure because health gurus gave out advice without the reasoning behind it which meant people just assumed that meant sodium = bad, water = good when in fact its a balance and neither are good or bad.7
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