Benefits of sea salt
in boosting immunity and protecting against the flu

One of the benefits of sea salt is that it enhances immunity and protects against infectious diseases like the flu. And unike regular common, table or refined salt, it does the job without causing high blood pressure and other health problems.

The benefits of sea salt in enhancing immunity can be understood in a few ways:

• salt directly destroys bacteria and viruses - which is why it works effectively as a perservative to prevent food from rotting
• natural sea salt, which is made up of mainly sodium, potassium and other minerals, contribute towards creating an alkaline condition in the body and bacteria and viruses do not thrive in such an alkaline condition
• salt thickens the blood and thick blood contributes to strong immunity.

Actually, all types of salt produce the above effects. But it is only when you use natural sea salt, and use it properly, that you avoid high blood pressure and other problems that have been blamed on salt.

Proper use of sea salt

To take full advantage of the benefits of sea salt, it is important that you learn the proper use of salt. This means:

• Always use natural sea salt, which contains sodium chloride along with about 60 other types of mineral salts. Except for potassium chloride, which might make up about 4 percent of natural sea salt, the other minerals come in very minute amounts. They are still vital to health. Never use common / table / refined salt, which is pure sodium chloride.
  
  
• Always cook salt together with food - for at least 10 minutes. Do not sprinkle salt onto food at the end of cooking. The purpose of cooking salt with food is so that the salt and food molecules combine. Apart from regular cooking, salt may also combine with food in salt-fermented products like miso and soy sauce, or salted pickles like kimchi and sauerkraut. These foods, provided they are naturally prepared using sea salt - and without chemical additives - are healthy, not harmful.
  
  
• Avoid processed foods. Processed foods contain a great deal of salt. If you generally avoid processed foods, it is not likely that you will take too much salt, even if your food is somewhat salty.

If you observe the above guidelines, you will enjoy the benefits of sea salt without having to worry about any harm.

Many people today are unduly worried that salt is "harmful". There are certainly many scientific studies to "prove" this, particularly to "prove" that salt "causes" high blood pressure. Yet practically all these studies were done on people in Western / modern societies who take refined salt, take it excessively and use it improperly.

One of the few studies ever done on people who take natural sea salt was a study on followers of the macrobiotic diet, done by a Harvard Researcher in the early 1980s. That study found that people on a macrobiotic diet, in spite of eating fairly salty foods, have excellent blood pressure readings of about 10 points below the national average.

Salt and water

The benefits of sea salt in enhancing immunity also depends on the amount of water we drink. This is because saltiness of fluids determines whether a particular life form lives or dies.

The role of water is opposite to that of salt. While we can kill bacteria by adding salt, we can also kill bacteria by removing water. The balance of salt and water is therefore crucial. If we have too much salt and/or too little water, we die. If we have too little salt and/or too much water, bacteria will flourish and we may also die.

In 1882, a British doctor named Sidney Ringer succeeded in keeping body tissue cells alive – he used a frog’s heart in his first experiment – in a solution of salt and water. If he put cell tissues in plain water, they would absorb too much water, swell up and explode. If he put them in water that was too salty, the cells would also die.

This can be easily understood in terms of osmosis – the process by which water passes through a permeable membrane. Water always passes from a thinner (less salty) solution to a thicker (more salty) solution.

In Sidney Ringer’s experiment, when he placed the frog’s heart in plain water, the fluid in the frog’s cells were more salty than in the surrounding environment. Through osmosis, the cells absorbed water, swelled up, exploded and died. When Sidney Ringer placed the frog’s heart in a very salty solution, the reversed happened. The cell lost water and also died.

We can apply this principle of salt and water to immunity. We can make our blood and body fluids too salty for bacteria, viruses and other harmful organisms. So when these organisms enter our body, they will lose water (through osmosis) and die. This is done by adjusting our intake of salt and water.

It is crucial, therefore, to balance the benefits of sea salt with the benefits of drinking water. Just as taking lots of salt is harmful, drinking lots of water is also harmful - it weakens the cell membrane structure and allows viruses to enter. On their own, viruses are harmless. They cause problems only when they enter our cells.

Click here to learn more about balancing the benefits of sea salt with water.