Salt. The most basic of minerals

[Paul]

It's not a food yet found in both food and drink.
It's more than just a mineral.
Without it or too much of it and you'll die.
Yet it's not often included in a preppers pack.

It's recommended that adults eat 2400 mg of sodium or 1 tea spoon a day.
For children up to 10 years of age this allowance is ½ tea spoon.

If you don't keep your salt levels correct, the effects can be dramatic.
Too little and it can stop your heart, cause cramping of your muscles, upset the fluid balance in your body, and cause confusion and an inability to think.

Drinking lots of water without salt replacement washes out salt from your body as does excessive sweating. Salt is important to hydration in our bodies. After exercise, you must replace both water and salt lost through perspiration during exercise.

When diarrhea dehydrates the body, we must use oral re-hydration therapy (ORT) to restore fluid levels especially when treating diseases like Norwork, Cholera, or any other rapid fluid level depleting disease.
Note:- With cholera is it not uncommon for a body to lose 1 liter of water per hour.

But what about too much salt?
Symptoms of increased salt intake include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramps.
Persistently high levels of sodium in the blood can result in swelling, high blood pressure, difficulty in breathing, kidney and heart failure, and may be fatal.

It does not stop there though. Salt has a few other uses.

1. Oral re hydration. A DIY recipe for this is 1/2 teaspoon of salt , 6 teaspoons of sugar, and a liter of water.
2. Soothe a bee sting. Wet the sting right away, then cover it with salt.
3. Repels fleas and ants, and to treat mosquito bites
4. Eliminate a grease fire. Pour salt on top to smother it. (Never use water on a grease fire.)
5. Test for rotten eggs. Put an egg in a cup of water to which you've added two teaspoons of salt. A fresh egg will sink, but one that's iffy will float.
6. Clean teeth. Use one part fine salt to two parts baking soda.
7. Mix equal parts salt and baking soda in water for a fresh and deodorizing mouth rinse and gargle to ease throat problems.
8. Salt works as an effective yet gentle scouring agent.
9. Salt also serves as a catalyst for other ingredients, such as vinegar, to boost cleaning and deodorizing action.
10. It's also good as a barter item.

Neat stuff is salt.

[Armoured Gideon]

The problem with salt is that the table salt we buy from the supermarket has been changed from its natural state.
To make it whiter,dryer and easier to pour they remove the minerals and other nutrients so that what's left is white sodium chloride. what we buy is not salt it is sodium chloride.
Pure salt has 84 elements. When it's been processed 82 of them are removed by the processing, leaving only sodium and chloride.

Make sure you are using crystaline salt as this is usualy untreated

[Prepaday]

I bought rock salt crystals, really flavorsome.

[Greenman]

It's easy to make. Leave a large container of sea water to evaporate (over heat) as the water evaporates leaving a sludge, lower the heat to allow evaporation to continue and stir to avoid burning leaving salt. Simples ;-)

[NorthernRaider]

(24 August 2012, 22:08)Greenman Wrote: It's easy to make. Leave a large container of sea water to evaporate (over heat) as the water evaporates leaving a sludge, lower the heat to allow evaporation to continue and stir to avoid burning leaving salt. Simples ;-)

Seen piccies some place of a guy using old double glazing panels to make an evaporator with to dry salt from see water, bit like a solar shower in reverse, keeping the much and getting rid of the water rather than vice versa.

Hello Greenman BTW

[Hrusai]

seconding NR's welcome, so hello greenman, it'd be a good idea to make an introduction thread so we can "officially" say hello!

but yes as paul highlights salt is an invaluable part of our diet, its one of the things contained in these electrolyte energy drinks, to make them better at hydrating you, its all to do with water potential, e.g. the difference in concentration of water from one area to another.

so imagine 2 liquids eitherr side of a water permeable membrane, one is pure water, one is full of dissolved minerals and salts (i say salts because although traditional table salt is sodium chloride, there are manny other types of natural salts as a salt (in chemistry) is simply defined as ionic compounds that are made when an acid is neutralised with an alkali (base) and as you can imagine this definition expands to alot of different natural materials, but sodium chloride is the main one. anyway back to the point at hand, solute full water one side, pure water the other, rather than the water being pulled through to dilute the side with less pure water the dissolved solutes will move toward the side with pure water, so rather than hydrating you, it would just suck out nutrients, but if the water is balanced with added minerals and other solutes then you'll have more water moving toward the other side (also the size of the holes in the membrane contributes to what goes through it!)



According to the CDC, the average intake of sodium for American adults is about 3300 mg of sodium a day which is a ridiculous amount seeing as the guideline from the usda is 2300mg and from the american heart association it is 1500! (yeah i know american guidelines but was going for a quick google search to illustrate the point + americans are the worst lol) but heres the kicker, the average hunter gatherers intake of salt was roughly a mere 750mg a day, half of the lowest recommendation!

so simply by eating berries and meat you will easily meet the amount of salt you need, and as we've barely evolved since the times of hunter gatherers in terms of nutritional intake and digestion there is no need to add salt to your daily diets, we already operate at 5 times the amount we should eat! and even eating responsibly and watching salt intake you could be eating double or triple what you should

anyway if anyone wants to know more just ask, i can go into the various roles that sodium chloride and sodium ions and chloride ions have in the body and why they are so important