What should I eat if I crave salt?

What should I eat if I crave salt? Try to eat snacks or meals that combine fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains, lean meats, or plant-based protein sources. Eating sweet fruit like apples with savory vegetables like roasted peppers can enhance natural salty flavors without the added salt.

healthline.com - Craving Salt: 7 Possible Causes - Healthline

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You may also feel a craving for salt. Read on to learn what this may mean for your body and what you can do to eat less salt. But because most people take in close to 3,400 mg each day, the AHA recommends that adults reduce their consumption to no more than 1,500-2,300 mg of salt daily. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the body needs no more than 500 milligrams (mg) of sodium daily for optimal functioning. That’s less than one-fourth of a teaspoon (tsp). Over the course of history, finding salt was hard, so craving salt was a survival mechanism. Now that salt is readily available and often added to many processed foods, many people consume too much. Our body needs salt for survival, but many foods we eat contain more salt than we actually need. Craving salt can be a symptom of an underlying health condition. There are different reasons why you might crave salt, and some can indicate a problem with your health. Salt has a bad reputation in the nutrition world. Too much salt can be unhealthy — even deadly — but too little salt can also be dangerous. Salt is necessary for many bodily functions, including controlling muscles and maintaining fluid balance. You may crave salt as a symptom of a medical condition that requires treatment. That’s why you should never ignore chronic cravings. Below are some conditions that may cause you to crave salt.

1. Dehydration

The fluids in your body carry vital minerals. These minerals help your body function properly. Sodium, found in common table salt, is one such mineral. These minerals, also called electrolytes, can become unbalanced if you experience symptoms such as fever or excessive sweating. When you become dehydrated, the sodium in your blood rises too high. But other times, your sodium levels may get too low with dehydration, which is called hypotonic dehydration If those levels fall below healthy, you may find that salty foods taste better.

Other signs of dehydration or an electrolyte imbalance include:

cold, clammy skin

dizziness

feeling very thirsty

headache

decreased urine production

mood changes and irritability

rapid heart rate

muscle spasms or cramping

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nausea or vomiting

fatigue or loss of energy

confusion

seizures

If you are dehydrated and only replenish your body’s water content but not the sodium (such as when drinking plain water vs. an electrolyte solution), you can get hypotonic dehydration.

Many things can cause dehydration. They include:

taking diuretics

vomiting or diarrhea from a gastrointestinal illness or disorder or other causes such as pregnancy

excessive sweating

Learn more about how much water to drink and the symptoms of dehydration during pregnancy. Your adrenal glands are responsible for producing hormones that are vital to your survival. Addison’s disease, also known as adrenal insufficiency, is a rare disease that can decrease the amounts of cortisol and aldosterone produced by your adrenal glands on top of each kidney. Once these hormones decrease, your body starts to lose sodium.

People with this disease experience salt cravings in addition to other symptoms:

severe fatigue or lack of energy

dizziness, fainting

low blood pressure

loss of appetite

unexplained weight loss

long-term or persistent diarrhea

dark patches of skin, especially on the face and inside the mouth

3. Chronic stress

Why do you crave salt when stressed? Researchers are still debating the exact cause, but some think eating salty food causes you to feel good. This happens because salt induces your hypothalamus to release dopamine. Other experts say that since salt is required to live, your brain learns to crave salt as a life-protective reaction. That being said, the effect of craving salt in response to stress has only been demonstrated in animals, and more research is needed to confirm whether a similar effect occurs in humans. To further this debate, new tools used to study human cravings show that stress cravings are complicated body and mind functions that are not fully understood.

4. Bartter syndrome

People with Bartter syndrome cannot reabsorb sodium. Any sodium they eat is lost through urine. That means they’re always low on sodium. Bartter syndrome has two forms. The more severe form begins before birth (antenatal). The classical form begins in young children and tends to be milder.

Children may want to eat more salty foods. Other symptoms can include:

low birth weight

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slow growth rate

low blood pressure

muscle weakness, cramping, or spasms

frequently urinating, especially at night

excessive thirst

constipation

5. Cystic fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease usually discovered in early infancy.

When you have CF, your body has difficulty maintaining its chloride balance. This is important for many different organ systems. On the skin, chloride loss leads to sodium loss through sweat. Salty skin is a hallmark symptom of CF. One 2020 study states that people living with CF have two- to four-fold higher sodium sweat content compared to people who do not have CF. As a result, a person with MS may feel that they want to eat more salt. It is a good idea to check with your doctor before adding more salt to your diet.

6. Migraine

Migraine is a neurological condition that can cause many symptoms, the most recognizable being a headache. Research has found that people who experience migraine headaches may crave salty or sweet foods. This is because eating either of these types of food may help alleviate the pain in some cases. The researchers also propose you may get more migraine headaches as a form of withdrawal if you eat more healthfully and avoid processed foods, which may contain a lot of added sodium and sugar. For this reason, eating sweet or salty food may alleviate a migraine headache. Other migraine symptoms include nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to light or sound, numbness and tingling, and visual disturbances called aura.

7. Medications

Some medications may affect your adrenal glands and cause medication-induced adrenal insufficiency, making you want to eat salty foods. These include: sudden stopping of long-term glucocorticoid use such as hydrocortisone (Cortef), triamcinolone (Nasacort, Kenalog, Triesence, and others), fluticasone (Flonase)

immune checkpoint inhibitors such as nivolumab (Opdivo), pembrolizumab (Keytruda), ipilimumab (Yervoy)

protein kinase inhibitors such as cabozantinib (Cabometyx), lenvatinib (Lenvima)

antifungals such as fluconazole (Diflucan)

tramadol (Ultram)

rifampin (Aemcolo)

If you have unusual thirst and salt cravings while using these medications, you may want to talk with your doctor immediately about these side effects.

healthline.com - Craving Salt: 7 Possible Causes - Healthline