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Plague 2021 #7 Salt
Apr. 22nd, 2021 05:53 pmMy BP is FINALLY coming under control after half a dozen med adjustments. But on Sunday we got takeout, which we rarely do, and it was very salty and the next day my BP spiked like 20 points. It took about two days for it come back down to where it had been.
Now when I was in nursing school (~1990) we were told that contrary to popular and intuitive beliefs, salt didn't actually affect BP unless you had underlying kidney issues. Well I just had an ultrasound that showed my kidneys are doing just fine, so I figured salt wasn't really an issue for me. But after that little episode I did some googlescholaring and found peer reviewed papers demonstrating that salt indeed has a major effect on BP, though some people are more salt tolerant than others.
So then I started looking at a low salt diet. Now I knew there was a lot of salt in most packaged foods, but I am still shocked to learn just HOW much salt is in things like bread. And tomato sauce. Canned beans. Everything, dangit. So now I'm contemplating going fullon granola woman and doing things like making big pots of beans and canning making my own tomato sauce because the brand of sauce I have in my cubard is like 17% of daily salt intake for half a cup, which is outrageous. Store bought chicken broth is shocking. My favorite condiment is Vietnamese fish sauce and a single tablespoon of that is like 8 million mgs. Sigh.
So now I'm contemplating what I am and am not willing to do. It seems pretty clear I need to do a diet overhaul, and I think I'll start with cooking up a big pot of garbanzo beans and roasting some veggies this weekend for my lunches throughout the week. I've also been contemplating only eating meat in the evenings - I'm married to a devout carnivore, and he wants a hunk of meat every night, but I can decrease the amount I'm eating. I've already drastically reduced my portions of evening meat, and I can cut it out totally during the day, especially stop with the lunch meats which are big source of salt. No more frozen lunch meals (which I only rarely resorted to anyway).
In other exciting news, I've been back working every other day in the office since the beginning of the month and then starting in May, we all have to be back in the office full time, which I'm fairly bummed about. It will definitely take me awhile to readjust and I anticipate being tired all the time for at least a month. I'm thinking seriously of leaving my job. Nothing terrible has happened, I'm just bored, and would like to find something more flexible that lets me travel (assuming travel ever becomes a thing again). We just lost ANOTHER manager, and really the logical person to take that position is me. But I absolutely do not want to. I won't do anything for awhile yet, but if the economy starts to open back up, I may take a gander and see what other options I might have. Like working remotely for one of our competitors.
Now when I was in nursing school (~1990) we were told that contrary to popular and intuitive beliefs, salt didn't actually affect BP unless you had underlying kidney issues. Well I just had an ultrasound that showed my kidneys are doing just fine, so I figured salt wasn't really an issue for me. But after that little episode I did some googlescholaring and found peer reviewed papers demonstrating that salt indeed has a major effect on BP, though some people are more salt tolerant than others.
So then I started looking at a low salt diet. Now I knew there was a lot of salt in most packaged foods, but I am still shocked to learn just HOW much salt is in things like bread. And tomato sauce. Canned beans. Everything, dangit. So now I'm contemplating going fullon granola woman and doing things like making big pots of beans and canning making my own tomato sauce because the brand of sauce I have in my cubard is like 17% of daily salt intake for half a cup, which is outrageous. Store bought chicken broth is shocking. My favorite condiment is Vietnamese fish sauce and a single tablespoon of that is like 8 million mgs. Sigh.
So now I'm contemplating what I am and am not willing to do. It seems pretty clear I need to do a diet overhaul, and I think I'll start with cooking up a big pot of garbanzo beans and roasting some veggies this weekend for my lunches throughout the week. I've also been contemplating only eating meat in the evenings - I'm married to a devout carnivore, and he wants a hunk of meat every night, but I can decrease the amount I'm eating. I've already drastically reduced my portions of evening meat, and I can cut it out totally during the day, especially stop with the lunch meats which are big source of salt. No more frozen lunch meals (which I only rarely resorted to anyway).
In other exciting news, I've been back working every other day in the office since the beginning of the month and then starting in May, we all have to be back in the office full time, which I'm fairly bummed about. It will definitely take me awhile to readjust and I anticipate being tired all the time for at least a month. I'm thinking seriously of leaving my job. Nothing terrible has happened, I'm just bored, and would like to find something more flexible that lets me travel (assuming travel ever becomes a thing again). We just lost ANOTHER manager, and really the logical person to take that position is me. But I absolutely do not want to. I won't do anything for awhile yet, but if the economy starts to open back up, I may take a gander and see what other options I might have. Like working remotely for one of our competitors.
