16 Comments
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Tim G's avatar

Extremely well written piece that highlights how health messaging that focuses on the truth can save lives.

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Lana's avatar

Your article show so much warmth & love while packed with good, science-backed information. Thank you, Joseph! And R.I.P or Namo Amitabha to your aunt (another Buddhist who don’t meditate here)

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Carol's avatar

Joseph, your vulnerability is heartwarming, and your sense of humor is LOL hilarious so thank you!! That said I am Very sorry for the loss of your aunt. What a huge (and preventable!) loss of a treasured person. IMO Hyponatremia is much more common than believed. Thanks for pointing out that polydipsia (drinking TOO much) is a risk factor just as much as drinking too little. Drinking too much of anything can dilute not only sodium and chloride but also potassium and magnesium. The loss of any combination of these can cause confusion, and I shudder to think of the misdiagnoses (psychiatric misdiagnoses in particular) on account of folks having electrolyte derangement. Our health overlords' advice to reduce sodium and drink 8 glasses of water need to go into the dustbin of history and hopefully they will . . . . . .

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Carol's avatar

Both sodium And chloride are absolutely essential and should not be reduced in the vast majority of people, sick or otherwise. I'd strongly recommend everyone read the British Medical Journal article "The wrong white crystals: not salt but sugar as aetiological in hypertension and cardiometabolic disease ". You're welcome!

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John Raisor's avatar

A friend has low blood pressure because she doesnt add salt to anything. He father had to restrict salt and she got used to never using it. Meanwhile, my BP is a tad high but I have to eat a lot of salt or face cramps. I think my body clears it faster than most people. If I run and dont wipe sweat from my face, when it dries, you can see the salt on me.

PS: Sea salt has traces of magnesium, potassium, and other minerals. But I mix it with table salt for the idodine because I rarely eat shellfish.

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Basilika's avatar

❤️‍🩹

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David Chandler's avatar

What a lovely piece of writing. A personal account with some feeling, touching on a important health issue.

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Ruvindu's avatar

Thanks for the story, Joe. That's great. This article somewhat supports my idea that there's uncertainty around how much water people should generally drink. For me, drinking too much water causes extra saliva, which makes it harder to speak clearly. When I'm a bit dehydrated, my speech is clearer because I don't have as much saliva.

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Tamara's avatar

Strangely beautiful article. I wasn’t expecting heartfelt, personal content with scientific information, but I enjoyed this one. I like to salt my water and add some lime with a little bit of honey. People react very strongly about it when I say that’s actually hydrating, lol.

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Dallas M's avatar

Water definitely had a good marketing kick when that eight glasses a day thing came about because all of the sudden everyone’s keeping tabs on their gallon of water daily drinking habits. And also take into account how people probably weren’t tracking their water habits until then. Then right after they’d be like “I’m supposed to get eight glasses? I never knew!”. I think everyone would agree that they’d think drinking water is the healthiest thing just out of instinct but then it gets bumped into overdrive.

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Fieda's avatar

Salt matters but it can not be the table salt that has chemicals and all minerals taken out of it. Best is Celtic Sea Salt or Himilayan Sea salt. It has 84 plus trace minerals in it our bodies need. Chekck out Barbara O'Neils Youtube on it. We need to be adding this to our water intake. Also The books by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj are awesome as to the importance of water. He was a political prisoner in Iran and all the inmates came to him to help with all their ailments. The only thing he had was water. Great insightful read.

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Vladimír Imrich's avatar

Well learned story-telling lesson from Bryan! :)

Nice job and *insert loving and kind words about your relationship with your aunt, im not possible to put together in english*.

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Dan Smedescu's avatar

Touching story, wonderful health message wrapped inside! Thank you for sharing!

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Keri's avatar

I’m not crying, you’re crying!

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Bogdan's avatar

Beautiful post

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Joe's avatar

Great post, Joe.

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