Why sodium is bad for you?

Why sodium is bad for you?

Sodium or commonly known as salt is an essential element that the body needs. It regulates the balance between water and electrolytes inside the body. As the saying goes, ‘where salt goes, water follows,. Sodium also functions to regulate the amount of circulating blood that delivers oxygen to the different parts of the body. So, when sodium comes less or in excess, the whole system directly becomes affected. However, sodium is not bad when taken in moderation. Only when taken too much that serious effects may occur.

When for an instance, the body’s mechanism becomes altered, the regulation of water and electrolytes, such as sodium, also becomes altered. Once the imbalances become constant leading to permanency, the body’s becomes unable to excrete adequate amounts of sodium. As the amount of sodium increases inside the body, the whole system compensates because of the changes. This is the time when sodium becomes detrimentally bad for you.

Sodium becomes bad when alterations in the body cause it not to be excreted. Because of this mechanism, a certain system in the body is stimulated to increase the heart’s ability to pump blood to the body. When there is increase in the heart’s workload, greater pressure is also required. And when this compensatory mechanism constantly happens, the person may develop hypertension.

That’s why, along with a sedentary lifestyle, a diet with high sodium content is definitely one of the risk factors why a lot of people acquire hypertension that can eventually lead into heart failure, kidney failure and stroke. It is very much obvious how the emergence of highly processed foods become the primary option among consumers these days. What people don’t know is that these kinds of food contain large amounts of sodium that act as preservatives, which definitely makes sodium bad for you.