“Up
to now, salt has been regarded as a detrimental dietary factor. Our current
study challenges this one-sided view and suggests that increasing salt
accumulation at the site of infections might be an ancient strategy to ward off
infections, long before antibiotics were invented”
Dr. Jonathan Jantsch, a
microbiologist at Universitätsklinikum Regensburg and Universität Regensburg
commenting on his research that suggests that Salt helps the body fight
infection
I
am now thoroughly confused on what Scientists think about salt.
This
latest bit of research, published in the journal
Cell Metabolism, runs counter to a study done by Professor of Nutrition and
Epidemiology at Harvard, Dr. Frank Hu.
That
Harvard University Study was really focused on the use of preservatives and MSG
(Monosodium Glucomate) that can in the little sachet in these dehydrated
packets of Noodles. I personally know of salt being used as a preservative for some
foods, including salted fish and salted pork.
Sodium
chloride is a listed ingredient for Ramen soups also so they're not off the hook
totally and neither am I, as I eat them regularly while studying and doing homework
for my Diploma in Professional Studies in Teaching at the MICO University College in the evenings.
So
does this latest study means you can stock on all the noodles you can eat? Not
really.
Salt and Healing –
Bacteriophages get a boost from High Salt concentration in their diet
First
thing to get out of the way is that this does not mean salt is safe, neither does
it invalidate years o previous research stating the link between dietary salt
or Sodium Chloride (NaCl) and hypertension as noted in the article “Salty
foods could protect against microbes” Published Wednesday, March 4, 2015, 6:33 PM, The NY Daily News.
Dr.
Jonathan Jantsch was at pains to make this quite clear, quote: “Due to the
overwhelming clinical studies demonstrating that high dietary salt is
detrimental to hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, we feel that at
present our data does not justify recommendations on high dietary salt in the
general population”.
Rather,
it points to a previously unknown role played by salt in the body defending
itself against infections, being as it appears to accumulate under the skin
near the site of infections and cuts made by other mice and parasites, quote: “A
further understanding of the regulatory cascades might not only help to design
drugs that specifically enhance local salt deposition and help to combat
infectious diseases, but also may lead to novel strategies to mobilize sodium
stores in the aging population and prevent cardiovascular disease”.
Dr.
Jonathan Jantsch team decided to do their paper on Salt after senior author,
Dr. Jens Titze, a clinical pharmacologist at the Vanderbilt University School
of Medicine in Nashville as reported in the article “Does
high-salt diet combat infections?”, published 3 March 2015 1:00 pm By Kate
Wheeling, Science Magazine happened
to notice that mice bitten by members of the group, had a large accumulates of Salt around the side of their
cuts.
Most
likely too, Dr. Jonathan Jantsch team and his team may have possibly looked
into the mice getting a bigger wheel and a Flat screen TV with an Xbox so as to
reduce their tendency to fight.
After
realizing that a flat screen TV or getting a bigger wheel to fir into their
tiny cages was not in the budget, they decided to make the mice pay for
fighting amongst themselves.
Instead
of investigating the reason why they were fighting amongst themselves, Dr.
Jonathan Jantsch decided to focus his team to unravel this mystery to determine
how Sodium Chloride (NaCl) may be aiding the infection-fighting functions of
the immune system.
Then
they increased the sodium chloride in the nutrient bath in which the
macrophages were growing to levels equivalent to those seen in the cuts of the mice
that were fighting infections.
They
discovered that the macrophages produced higher concentrations of reactive
oxygen species, indicating that what may be happening in the mice's body was
the immune system carrying Salt to help the macrophages fight of the infection.
This
is somewhat like soldiers in the field of battle carrying extra cannonballs for
the artillerymen to shoot at the enemy behind a blockade also made of
cannonballs, which are the alt molecules. Or villages in a village carrying extra
sandbags to the edge of a river in spate to prevent it from overflowing its
banks and flooding the town!
Then,
in the name of science, they decided to test out this macrophage theory.
They
deliberately infected the nutrient bath that the bacteriophages were in with
Escherichia coli and Leishmania
major. To their astonishment, the macrophage cultures that had been fed
with higher levels of sodium chloride showed a stronger response in fighting
the infection, with infection being more quickly removed after twenty four (24)
hours, whether it is Escherichia coli and Leishmania major.
Now,
it was time for testing on the live mice to see how their actual Immune Systems
would stand up to an infection, with and without hello from a high salt diet.
The
researchers from the University
of Regensburg in Germany fed the two (2) different groups of mice on a two
(2) week diet. One group had a high-salt diet and the other had a low-salt
diet.
At
first, there were no significant difference between the two (2) groups of mice
and how their bodies fought the infections for the first twenty (20) days. But
after twenty (20) days, the mice with the high-salt diet showed improved
healing with fewer foot lesions and a lower level of parasitic infections around
those foot lesions than those mice that had a low-salt diet.
Salt is good for your
Cuts - Add Salt to your alcohol tinctures before soak bandages and applying to
cuts
The
results were clear; salt is good for healing your bunions to quote Dr. Jonathan
Jantsch: “[The experiments] demonstrate that extremes of salt intake result in
additional salt accumulation in infected skin and boost immune defense
experimentally”.
Dr.
Jonathan Jantsch team speculates that certain cells in the Immune System may be
stockpiling salt around the site where bacterial populations are high in much
the same way people on the side of a river in spate about to overflow it banks will
pile up sandbags to keep the levees from bursting and the rivers from flooding
their town.
No
humans were experimented on to prove that this worked on humans as well. But
the research group, using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to measure Sodium in
their skin, also noticed the same accumulation of salt around the wounds of
people with cuts of bacterial infections that caused skin lesions.
So
the practical takeaway from this research?
When
making dressings for your wounds, using alcohol, dissolve some salt into the
mixture; the alcohol will kill infection with the salt helping to prevent the
bacterial infection going deeper into your body. No salt consumption needed and
hypertension risk avoided!
Here’s
the link:
