What Is Salt Loading?
As we consume unrefined salt on food, the body is able to pass any excess. But if we consume salt mixed with water, the body is forced to absorb more. This can come in handy for the right situations, but also carries the potential to cause offsets.
What Is Salt Loading For?
As we increase the amount of iodine we're exposed to, one of the substances we can very likely start knocking loose is bromine. Bromine is something we are extremely commonly exposed to in today's environments and diets.
Salt loading can potentially help us bind and remove bromine that has been knocked loose by iodine.
There is a good chance a lot of our current thyroid hormones have been created with bromine instead of iodine. Keep in mind that we're made of trillions of cells and every single one depends on thyroid hormones — which are potentially made of bromine at this point. This could explain why some of us seem to push bromine out forever and have lingering bromine symptoms no matter what we do. Trillions of cells.
As we push these bromine-based hormones out of our cells, we can potentially use salt loading to bind with bromine and remove it from the body the next time we urinate.
I try to move slow with iodine in order to give my body time to keep up with the toxicity I might be knocking loose. I also get a lot of salt on my food. There have been times salt loading helps me clear bromine symptoms. But I am likely keeping most of my bromine symptoms away by consuming enough salt with food and going slow with iodine.
Salt Loading May Not Be Good Long-Term
There are several people in the iodine community advocating for daily salt loading. Some doctors have their patients doing several per day. Although this process is relatively safe, we're all very different. So it might not be the best idea to dive into this method full force and assume there are no drawbacks. This is why saving salt loading for bromine detox symptoms and getting as much salt as possible on food may be a wiser approach.
"Sustained overconsumption of sodium, particularly as salt, has been related" to development of hypertension in sensitive individuals. When we add salt to food, most of it will be absorbed in the gut, which can limit how much it wants to absorb and pass the rest. But when we drink salt water, most of it will be absorbed into the bloodstream just about instantly where it is essentially forced through the organs.
There is some information about electrolytes damaging liver and kidney cells in order to increase hydration. What's happening here is actually beneficial to some degree because it's increasing the ability to hydrate. But this is not something we want to do all the time.
Have you ever noticed how a balloon can be filled up much larger if it is filled slowly? But if it is filled very quickly, it can pop while it's still rather small. The stretching of the balloon is similar to our cells being stretched apart by salt water. Increasing the size of the area that we can hydrate might be a good thing, but we don't want to do it too quickly. And it's possible that consuming enough unrefined salt on food might allow this to happen at a more natural rate. So maybe salt loading is best saved for bromine symptoms.
Long-Term Use Might Backfire
I talk to a lot of people. The last time I downloaded my Facebook chat log, I had connected with 2,000 people through messenger. During these discussions, I have learned a lot of details about how various things work or do not work for others.
I have had a handful of people reach out to me from either the emergency room or with paramedics at their home due to a major electrolyte imbalance that caused them to have a reaction. Every time this happened except one time, it was most likely due to people drinking salt water at least once per day for a week or more.
Another issue I am noticing is that people who drink salt water all the time because they read it's good are having bromine detox reactions. Except salt water is supposed to help us detox bromine, so how are they experiencing bromine detox? I'm not sure how, but it seems like constant salt loading reduces the ability to bind bromine and remove it, which is the exact reason we're using salt loading in the first place.
Salt loading should be reserved for bromine detox symptoms.
Common Bromine Toxicity Symptoms
Brain fog. Headache. Fatigue. Metallic taste. Cherry angiomas. Anxiety. Depression. Dark thoughts. Mood swings, irritability, rage. Hair loss. Skin eruptions or rashes. Kidney pain. Tingling in hands or feet. Muscle weakness. Unusual urine color or odor.
If any of these symptoms show up after starting iodine or increasing the dose, bromine being knocked loose is a likely explanation. A single salt load may help clear the symptoms. If it does, that's a good sign that increasing salt on food and possibly slowing down on the iodine dose is worth considering.
The Salt Loading Recipe
Dissolve 1/4 teaspoon of unrefined salt (Celtic grey salt or similar) in a small amount of warm water — just enough to dissolve the salt. Drink the salt water, then follow immediately with at least 12 ounces of pure water.
Some people repeat this process once or twice more over the next 30-45 minutes if symptoms persist. The goal is to bind with bromine in the bloodstream and flush it out through urination. Expect to urinate within an hour or so.
This process is best used only when experiencing bromine detox symptoms, not as a daily routine. If salt loading seems to help frequently, that may be a sign to increase the amount of unrefined salt being consumed with meals.