Week Seven - Eat Himalayan Pink Salt

Salt is essential for life and for good health of the human body. It helps maintain the fluid in your blood cells and transmit electrical impulses between your brain, nerves and muscles. Your body needs salt to survive, but too much or too little salt can kill you. It is important to have the right amount of salt in your body at all times.

Sodium that is naturally in food is not as harmful to the body when taken in great amounts as other salts. Table salt on the other hand, is not good for you. This is because, when salt is dried up by heat from a fire, instead of being dried naturally by the sun, it becomes chemically altered. Your body tries to use up the salt's nutrients, but because there's too much chemically altered salt, the table salt simply builds up and stays in your organs.

The build up obviously becomes a health hazard, and contributes to Hypertension and chronic diseases. Hypertension (high blood pressure), can cause tissue damage for up to 20 years without showing any symptoms. Some of the life threatening complications due to hypertension that may occur are: heart attack, stroke, arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), serious kidney damage or kidney failure, bleeding in the eyes (impaired sight or blindness), enlarged heart, congestive heat failure, and other serious problems.

Salt occurs naturally in sea-water. A deposit is left when an area of sea-water becomes enclosed, and the sun causes the water to evaporate. Over many millions of years, other sediments have been deposited above the salt, leaving the beds of rock salt, or halite below the surface. Rock salt is essential for our health. Not only does it perform important functions within our bodies, it also plays a key role in keeping our food safe to eat. Focus this week on eliminating table salt from you diet and replacing it with rock salt, ideally the Himalayan pink salt. Here are some important facts to remember:

• Table salt is highly refined. During the refinement process important trace minerals are lost so the salt becomes devoid of nutrients. Because of chemical alterations in the refinement process, table salt builds up and stays in your organs, leading to health issues such as hypertension, heart attacks, stroke, arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), kidney damage, impaired vision and more.
  

• Table salt is used a lot in junk food and its addictive tendency makes it difficult for people to stop eating junk food. If you recondition your palate to eliminate table salt from your diet, it will be easier for you to eliminate junk food as well.
  

• Himalayan pink salt contains the 84 minerals and trace elements. It is unrefined and hand-mined from salt caves formed about 250 million years ago in the Karakoram mountain range of the Himalayas. Some of its main benefits include:
  - Maintaining the fluid in your blood cells and transmitting electrical impulses between your brain, nerves and muscles.
  - Facilitating cellular absorption of minerals. By stimulating blood circulation and mineral balance it removes toxic minerals deposits.
  - Stabilizing blood pressure.
  - Aiding weight loss by equalizing minerals which inhibit cravings and eliminate fat dead cells.