Aldosterone & Sodium: Evolution & Modern Diet 🧂

追加: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]He started us out with just like talking evolution. I found this part fascinating. I don't know about you.

[00:00:06]>> Yeah, well no, I thought it was helpful context cuz I think it is easy to kind of skip past the underlying physiology and just go like, all right, what am I supposed to actually do here? So, I think sort of this initial framing was sort of a neat way to to start off. Do you want to talk more about it? Do you want to share?

[00:00:19]>> Well, yeah, so the basically he talked about how we evolved that we're eating mostly plant matter, right?

[00:00:27]And plant matter is high in potassium, very low in sodium, and aldosterone's part of aldosterone's job is to hang on to all the sodium that we we take in.

[00:00:39]And and he said if you check animals, if you check native uh human populations, they have much higher aldosterone, and it's because of this this uh fact that they're not eating much sodium at all, and they need to maintain a blood pressure, but these people are not hypertensive. Then you take it to our population where all the foods are sodium fortified, if you can even call it that, and we have we're getting a lot of sodium, and that that kind of if someone has these either hyper primary hyperaldosteronism, aldosterone-producing adenoma, you know, whatever the path uh pathology is, if there's aldosterone running wild, there's plenty of sodium around to really pump the blood pressure up, which is not the case if you were He he speculated, if you were eating just pure plants and no sodium, it if you had primary hyperaldosteronism, it might not even affect your blood pressure much at all.

[00:01:32]I don't know, I thought that was fascinating.

[00:01:34]>> Yeah, and we were we were talking a little bit before the recording that I you know, I am largely vegetarian. Um I don't have the courage of my convictions to be vegan. Like I'll buy these sort of frozen meals that are hideously expensive. And like I'm looking at the macros because I'm just trying to from gaining weight, which is a a losing cause at this point in my life.

[00:01:50]And it's easy to neglect the sodium, but even like these ostensibly healthy meals that are are plant-based and plant-forward and you know, $8 and healthy this and organic that. You know, like 20% of your sodium and 25% of your sodium meal. Like, you're just salt loading with these things. Um so, it's just you have to be really cautious and aware because it's just so easy to to hit 3 g without blinking. And then, probably even more than that.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah, it it is because any kind of any kind of dressings or seasonings or uh like cheese has a ton, pasta, bread, all those things, you know, pretty much anything that comes packaged, prepackaged, is going to have a a lot of sodium added to it. So, unless you're eating just like plain meat and unless you're eating just like plain meat and fruits and vegetables, nuts, and beans, and that is like seasoned with a potass- you know, a salt substitute, like a potassium chloride or something like that, Mrs. Dash, that uh you're you're going to be getting a lot of sodium. We talked about our sourdough bread, Paul, right? Sourdough bread it has it has like 10 g per loaf, and the and a loaf might be 20 slices of bread if that. So, it's like bro, many people would slice it into like 10 slices. It's like so