More salt, please.

Do you know who tells you to cut back on salt?

That’s right, your doctor. And not just your doctor, doctors everywhere of almost any kind. I’m pretty sure they’ve modified the Hippocratic Oath to add a “no salt” clause. Give me a minute to look.

OK, I’m back now, and sure enough the “classic” Hippocratic Oath contains this line:

With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.

The no salt clause could definitely fit in there.

Oddly, the whole thing about diet — especially the “best diet” — is completely missing from the Revised Hippocratic Oath (1964). So can we now eat salt after all? Probably not, because there is this new line that says:

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

That’s the goal of one doctor in particular. His name is Michael Greger. I first discovered him when he published a book with the engaging title How Not To Die.

Early on in the book he reveals that when he was but a lad, his grandmother was sent home from the hospital to die. She was 65, had had multiple bypass surgeries, and now her doctors had given up on her ever recovering.

About that time she saw a 60 Minutes episode about Nathan Pritikin, a lifestyle-medicine pioneer. He had just opened a center in California, and Mrs. Greger, who was in Florida, convinced them to take her in. She somehow made it across the country and joined the live-in program.

As Greger says in his book, “They wheeled my grandmother in, and she walked out.”

She also lived to the age of 96.

Dr. Greger

The “extra” 31 years she lived included watching her grandson Michael graduate from medical school. He had chosen medicine in large part because of what happened with his grandmother.

He also noticed that not many in the medical field were practicing preventive medicine, but he believed he could make the biggest difference there. And he has.

So what does Dr. Greger say about salt?

You don’t even have to buy the book, you can look up almost every bit of the unbelievably extensive research he has done on his web site Nutritionfacts.org.

The bottom line: if you want lower blood pressure, reducing your salt intake is the answer. That doesn’t just mean you should stop salting your fries, it means you should cut way back on processed foods.

Dr. Greger is not alone in all this, of course, though I am certain there are doctors who would rather prescribe Lipitor than prescribe a whole foods, plant based diet.

OK, I’m now off the soapbox except for this next important point. It even deserves its own header.

Lifestyle is the key

Remember Mrs. Greger, the “about to die” heart patient who lived 31 more years?

All she did was change her lifestyle.

That started for her at age 65, under the direction of the staff at the Pritikin center. Wheeled into the center in a wheelchair, she changed her diet, her sleep, and added exercise.

She was even featured in Pritikin’s biography, Pritikin: The Man Who Healed America’s Heart. It says of Frances Greger

…her condition was so bad she could no longer walk without great pain in her chest and legs. Within three weeks, though, she was not only out of her wheelchair but was walking ten miles a day.

Just by changing her lifestyle.

We are now learning that a whole foods, plant based diet can not only heal your heart, it can heal your brain.

In fact there have now been studies that a lifestyle change including diet, sleep, and exercise can help prevent and even reverse dementia. That includes Alzheimer’s.

Who knew that a lifestyle change could have such a dramatic impact on our entire body?

So what is up with my title, More salt, please.?

That, too, is a call for a lifestyle change.

Saline solution

In my ever spinning mind, it was hearing about one particular effect of Hurricane Helene that gave birth to this article.

Baxter is a leading manufacturer of IV fluids, and their plant is in North Cove in western North Carolina. It was hit hard by rains and winds and surges. All 2,500 employees there have now been accounted for and are safe. But the supply and production of the fluids was badly hurt.

One consequence was that elective surgeries all over the United States were postponed. And one of the most important and most used IV fluids for surgery is saline solution.

That’s right, salt and water. At least in part it helps patients who are under anesthesia stay hydrated during surgery.

When I heard that news I said, “More salt, please.”

And then I thought of a famous Bible verse, where Jesus said to his followers: You are the salt of the earth.

The world around us, which is pretty sick, could use a little saline solution. It needs more salt.

Now you may not believe Jesus was talking to you when he said, “You are the salt of the earth” because you’re not one of his followers. But I think this task of “being salty” is very much like “doing good.”

Here are some of the things salt does: it cleans wounds; it holds off decay, acting as a preservative; it adds to the taste of foods and enhances other flavors; and it has, as we’ve seen, other medicinal values. In other words, it is good.

More salt, please.

I’ve used that phrase when I was trying to cover the bad taste of food I was still going to eat.

Now I want to use it to help heal the world. I don’t just want to make it taste better, I want it to be better. If you do good, you want that as well.

Do good. It’s in you. And just like salt in a shaker, it only really works when you pour it out.