Sometimes I am a complete and utter idiot.
I was born with natural low sodium levels. It's genetic. My renal-failure on-dialysis brother is, as far as I know, the only kidney patient who has ever been told to eat more salt.
To top that off, I'm on a nearly no processed food diet, since we cook almost everything from scratch. That means I don't get salt the way most Americans do, through excessive salt in food.
I'm also very sensitive to the taste of salt and don't like excessive amounts.
Salt is necessary for hydration, and necessary to keep dehydration at bay. Drinking enough water to keep hydrated is pointless without eating enough salt to keep the water in your cells.
I learned this lesson hard in Phoenix, where merely walking out the door was enough to make me dehydrated. Summer was intolerable, and to this day I'm the only person I know who took runner's salt tablets just to keep hydrated.
Ever try to find salt tablets in a health food or vitamin store? They look at you like you're nuts. Salt is bad for you, didn't you know?
So compared to constant dehydration in the desert the summer here so far has been a breeze.
Until it got up to 80 and severe clear that is, and I forgot that I needed salt with all that water. Water drunkenness is just as bad, if not worse, than dehydration itself. Sure feels worse.
So now I'm making myself some Southern Gatorade (sweetened iced tea with salt added), and I will be drinking at least a gallon a day of it until the temperature dips again.
Mel
Cross-posted to We Few
