Speaker 1: 2:09

When you go whole food, plant-based, a lot of times you hear about eating SOS-free. Sometimes this language can be a little confusing, but it means salt, oil and sugar-free, and today we want to tackle one of those three things that can stand in your way of optimal health, of finally feeling good so that you can do all the things that you want to do, and that one thing is salt all the things that you want to do and that one thing is salt. Stick around with us and find out exactly why you want to get less and how its hold can be broken over you. Hey sister, welcome to the Power on Plants podcast. Are you tired of staring into the fridge wondering what to eat so you can just feel better? Do you want to avoid spending hours in the kitchen making complicated meals in the name of health? Would you love to leave fatigue behind and finally have the energy to do all the things you want to do?

Speaker 1: 3:02

Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, healthcare professionals, parents of four and big fans of great tasting food. We, too, tried exercising more, eating natural and clean foods, but we still found ourselves struggling with what we thought were changes that come with age or bad genes, and we weren't finding answers the traditional route. So we dug into the research and created our secret nutritional weapon sustainable plant-based living. The truth is, you can eat more whole plant foods and it's not hard. You just need the way that's realistic and delicious so you never feel deprived. If you're ready to enjoy your meals, no longer be held back by your health struggles and actively live your life, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite plant-based cup of happy pop in those earbuds and let's get started. Pop fam, we are so happy to have you with us today and if you are new to the family, welcome to the Power on Plants family.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Jared and I are so very passionate about showing you how you can feel better. Naturally, because we are in the medical field Jared is a physician assistant and I'm a registered nurse. We also went back to get specialties, jared, in lifestyle medicine, me as an integrative nutrition health coach, because we know how eating this way can change your life. How do we know that? Because we've experienced it. These foods have basically brought us back from the dead. We were so sick, dealing with multiple health struggles, and now we feel good every day. We're energized. Yes, there's always room for improvement, and we should always be getting better and better in our lives, striving to feel better and do more. But we've come to a place now where we have so much energy that we have to force our well, I have to force myself to go to bed. Jared's got energy, but he knows he has to get up a little earlier than I do, so he's like, okay, turn out the lights. We got to go to bed.

Speaker 1: 5:02

I still have patients that I see on a regular basis, and those patients want to show up early and see their physician assistant before work, and so Jared has to be up at the crack of dawn.

Speaker 2: 5:12

And they want him to be coherent and not sleep deprived. So I've got to go to bed.

Speaker 1: 5:17

It's super important, but we all want to feel our absolute best, and learning how to eat whole food, plant-based, in the way that's simple and delicious but also provides you with optimal health, is the key here, because we don't want to just make it easy and quick and delicious yes, those are the keys. Don't want to just make it easy and quick and delicious yes, those are the keys. But we want to get the optimal nutrients in and get those things out that are sabotaging our health, and one thing that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that salt can be damaging to our bodies. Now I know, as a Southern girl, some of us hate to hear this almost as much as we hate to hear that cheese really needs to go if we want to feel our best. But don't worry, there are things that you can do to make your foods taste better, to give them that flavor so that you won't miss the salt, and to even give them somewhat of a saltiness without adding any salt at all. These are the kind of things we love showing you inside our free community podcast insiders experience.

Speaker 1: 6:14

If you have not joined, why have you not joined us? On the inside, it is a no brainer. We've even set it up where every single podcast episode is searchable for you and that's 300 episodes and counting. I mean, you may be listening to this and we're 400, 500, 600 episodes down the road. Everyone's searchable and it takes you to the exact spot in that exact episode where we said whatever term you're searching for. It's literally a search glass. It looks like a magnifying glass inside our group where you can do that.

Speaker 1: 6:45

And that's just the beginning of the benefits. You then have like-minded believers in this community who are eating plant-based for their health because they want to feel good, because they want to fully live the calling that God's placed on their lives, be that starting a business that you've never felt like starting before because you can barely survive the day, or going to the next level in your business, or homeschooling your children and planting all the seeds in their life that God has for you to plant. Maybe you want to be a missionary. Whatever it is that God's placed on your heart to do with your life, you have to feel good, you have to be able to physically function and be mentally clear to be able to do that. If you can't think clearly and you don't feel good, how are you ever going to be able to do the things that God has called you to do?

Speaker 2: 7:34

You could want to go to the Grand Canyon, but if your car has no gas, you're never going to make it Such a good point. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 1: 7:41

So, while it may be hard to hear, especially if you're a Southern girl like me, that you need to eat less salt yeah, that sounds great and all, anita, but I like my salt. Well, I loved my salt too, but I'm eating way less of it than I used to Almost none now because I have certain things that I know to substitute it with that work that give me that flavor. We're going to be taking you through all the most wonderful substitutes for those old favorites inside our upcoming course. You are going to love it, but for now, you've got to understand why is it even important for me to get salt out of my life and to start eating less and less of it over time? And we know beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Speaker 1: 8:23

According to research, salt causes certain problems. The truth is, we need salt, our body requires it to function, but we only need certain amounts of it, and we're getting way too much because the food industry has cleverly figured out that adding more salt affects the craveability of a thing, and so they add more and more and more, and you are getting more than what you realize, I promise you, if you don't start turning that peppy over and reading that ingredients label and learning how to decode it so that you know the sneaky tricks they play to make it look like there's no salt in there, when there is all those types of things. You will keep getting fooled, and we don't want that for you. We want you to understand where this stuff is sneaking in and when you're eating processed foods. 9.9 times out of 10, it is sneaking into your life in ways that you don't even realize what we know is that people eating the standard diet.

Speaker 2: 9:21

We always say standard American diet, but if you're listening to us outside of America, unfortunately that is one of the things that we have exported to many countries in the world. So if you're eating just a standard diet, we know that 70% of the sodium you get is from pre-packaged, pre-made foods. So, like you're saying, anita, it sneaks in there A lot of times we don't taste it because it gets cooked in the foods and so we don't taste it when it's inside of it, the same as if it's something we just sprinkle a little bit on top of the dish, because it's outside the food and it hits our salt receptors on our tongues. So we sense it more that way, without getting an excess amount like we do in all these pre-made foods. So you may be asking okay, I understand that I'm probably getting too much in what I'm eating on a daily basis, but how much do I really need? What is a normal amount of salt?

Speaker 2: 10:09

If salt is healthy in certain amounts and is something that my body needs, well, actually, what we know is that only about 200 to 500 milligrams a day is what's necessary. So if that is what's recommended, then what would be too much. Well, I've seen recommendations of keeping it below 2,300 milligrams, although they're in the process of making revisions to suggest below 1,500 milligrams. All right, that sounds great. Well, how much is 1,500? How much is 2,000 milligrams? I mean, what would be a measurement? Well, this blew my mind when I first learned this One teaspoon of salt, just white table salt, is 2,000 milligrams. So really, if you get more than a teaspoon a day, you're starting to get into the realm of too much.

Speaker 1: 10:57

And you know that most of us are eating more than a teaspoon a day, unless we've been doing this for a while. Maybe you're salt free already, but if you're not, you're probably eating way more than a teaspoon a day in just the hidden things. That's not counting things you might sprinkle on. So some of the easiest ways to start eating less are, you know, summertime. Right now melons are in.

Speaker 1: 11:20

When I was growing up, my parents put salt all over. Well, at least my dad did all over his watermelon, his cantaloupe and his honeydew. That's one simple way you can start backing off on the salt. Now are we saying you need to totally quit sprinkling salt on things? It would be beneficial to your health, yes, but what we are saying is that you don't have to go cold turkey, because what happens is the joyous thing that we've noticed over time when you just put a little less than what you normally would, and then the next time you put a little less than that, just when it seems like maybe it could use just a little more salt, and you start backing off. In that way, before long you can be completely off the excess sprinkled on salt. It will be unbelievable to you how your taste buds will change. And then if you went at that point and ate as much salt as you used to eat on something, it would shock you at how salty it tastes. Your taste buds literally change.

Speaker 2: 12:16

They adjust to the change in the salt.

Speaker 1: 12:19

It's amazing. And then you just can't eat it. And then you go out to eat and you're thinking this is so salty, I can't believe I ever ate this. It is so salty. And the other thing is the salt robs the flavor of the real food. It truly takes away from the real flavor. You think, oh, it makes my cantaloupe taste so much sweeter, so much better. But if you start backing off on the salt, you can actually taste things in that melon and those other foods that you could not taste before.

Speaker 2: 12:45

It is mind-blowing, it really is it very much overpowers the other flavors. It'd be like if you're having a nice candlelit dinner and then someone comes and throws the lights on in the room really, really bright lights and then you just you don't notice the candlelight. It changes the atmosphere of it. So then when you eat something like watermelon, cantaloupe, those subtle flavors not just the sweetness but the flavor of the melon itself it just gets overshadowed by the saltiness. And I've tried it before. I've had relatives that have added salt to melons. I never saw the appeal. It never really made it taste sweeter to me, it just made it taste like salty watermelon and that was not appealing to me at all.

Speaker 1: 13:22

So why is it important, if you actually want to feel good, to start decreasing your salt intake and get it as low as you possibly can?

Speaker 2: 13:31

The biggest issue that we've seen is that it affects inflammation, which really, when I learned this, was surprising, because I didn't learn this 20 plus years ago in school.

Speaker 1: 13:41

And this blows my mind too, because when we think about it we're like well, I don't need to listen to this episode, it's not for me. I don't have high blood pressure, so I'm fine, I can eat all the salt I want. It's not just about high blood pressure, it's about whole body inflammation. So if you're hurting and you're aching, especially if you have autoimmune disease, which I think Jared's going to go into this in- a minute.

Speaker 2: 14:01

I'm going to touch on that.

Speaker 1: 14:02

It is unbelievable the difference this can make for you.

Speaker 2: 14:06

So you mentioned high blood pressure. That was probably the first and main thing that we learned in school was that an excessive amount of salt causes increased fluid in your circulation, which puts more demand, requires more pressure for the heart to move, that which equals high blood pressure, and that is true. But that is only one part of the picture. Staying with the cardiovascular theme, we also know that it inhibits nitric oxide production, which adversely affects the health of the inner lining of your blood vessels. Even if you aren't having elevated blood pressure and they've done studies specifically so even individuals where their blood pressure stayed the same, they noticed that the blood vessels didn't seem as pliable, so that causes the blood pressure to be higher.

Speaker 1: 14:52

So we're not just talking about a number here. We think about blood pressure and we think about a number and we know that really high blood pressure isn't good for us. But what we've got to understand is our heart is having to pump harder with more fluid in there, so that's going to affect your heart health over time. Then you've got the blood vessels directly getting damaged and inflamed, unable to expand and contract the way they need to when the blood pumps through, and so that can cause damage to your vessels. All of this as a result of eating too much salt.

Speaker 2: 15:23

And this isn't something that builds up over time because it may be tempting to say, well, it's just this one time. There's this dish, I really love it. It's a little bit saltier, but I'm just going to indulge this one time. They can measure this even within 30 minutes of one high salt meal that you have a reduction in the arterial function. And before I go into autoimmune, I want to touch on that high salt diets also can damage the kidneys, that it makes the kidneys work a lot harder, which then causes actually decreased oxygen supply to them.

Speaker 1: 15:54

So the high salt diets actually starve the kidneys of oxygen, which creates injury to the kidneys and then creates an inflammatory response which creates injury to the kidneys and then creates an inflammatory response, none of which equals fun for us in our body and how it feels. We want our bodies to feel good. It's no wonder that we're struggling with all these things. We're just talking about one thing here that can cause difficulty when we eat it, and we don't even know all of these things are going on in the background. We're just eating a little salt. We're walking around oblivious to all that's going on as a result.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Well, we think we're eating just a little bit of salt. Right, we're actually eating a lot of salt, and it's funny because what we think of as our quote unquote and I'm doing the air quotes, I'm pulling them out here Our normal amount of salt is actually, by definition, too high, because we're getting way over 2,000 milligrams per day, way over. Now moving on to autoimmune diseases. This was something that I learned more recently with how salt affects inflammation.

Speaker 2: 16:54

Research has found that there are cells within the body called T-helper 17 cells. There is specifically a saltensing enzyme within these cells that when salt levels are high, it activates these cells. The T-helper 17 cells actually are part of inflammation. And so when you're activating them and you already have an autoimmune disease which is inflammation kind of gone rampant on our own body, on our own cells, that it makes those autoimmune diseases worse. It was specifically studied in multiple sclerosis that people who eat a high salt diet have more exacerbations three to four times more exacerbations with multiple sclerosis than someone that eats a lower salt diet. For those eating a higher salt diet, mri showed two to three times more lesions in the nervous system than patients who eat a lower salt diet, which is pretty amazing, because that was the only difference between the two groups was just the amount of salt that they eat.

Speaker 1: 17:54

So this study shows us that clearly, salt intake affects our immune system. It can ramp up inflammation even if you don't have an autoimmune disease. Inflammation is a good thing. It's something that God gave our bodies to fight off detrimental things and to keep us healthy. But when we're in a constant state of inflammation and it's always there day after day after day, that's not a good thing. You hurt, you don't feel good, you feel sluggish, you can't think well, all these things start happening that are keeping you from fully living.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And so decreasing your salt intake is one very simple thing that you can learn how to do. And it doesn't sound simple when you love it. I get that, but a lot of things don't sound simple until you know how. And then, when you know how, it is simple and you think how did I ever eat that much salt? Why was I eating that kind of stuff? I had no idea. Why didn't somebody tell me?

Speaker 1: 18:50

And that's why we're here, week after week, showing up for you, because we want you to know. This is why we're inside the community all the time. Again, if you are not there, you need to be there. Go to poweronplantscom forward slash P-I-E. That's poweronplantscom forward slash pie. Join us inside the free community. You're going to get so much benefit, so much information. It's such an exciting place to be and we love being here for you and sharing these things with you how to make it simple, enjoyable and delicious to live the life, the full life, that you were created to enjoy. We hope you're having a wonderful week, sunshine, and we look forward to getting to know you more inside the community, and we'll see you again next time on the podcast.