OBESITY AND THE SALT CONNECTION - Mensa article by Margaret Wilde

Obesity and the Salt Connection

What follows is a slightly modified version of an article I wrote for the British monthly glossy magazine of Mensa, the high IQ society, of which I am a member. It was published in the December 2004 issue. Four months later, the April 2005 issue contained a letter from Joyce Barnard, who has given permission for her name to be used here. She wrote that by following the advice I had given her a few years earlier - i.e. that to lower her high blood pressure and lose weight she simply needed to eat less sodium - she had lost 5 stones in weight (70 pounds) in a year! - All she did was stop sprinkling salt onto her meals and use LoSalt instead of ordinary salt when cooking.

Many years ago I gained a great deal of weight because of taking HRT prescribed by my GPs, mainly on the advice of an endocrinologist. - I did not realise at the time that the weight gain was because of the medication.

I became desperately ill and exhausted and had very high blood pressure for which I took Atenolol, a beta-blocker. I was so fat I could barely walk. Yet I was not overeating. My feet, hands and breasts were exquisitely painful and very red and swollen. I was unable to use my hands for many tasks. I needed a larger size in shoes. My face and neck became beetroot red and very swollen. I developed acne and eczema. I suffered from breathlessness.

Having never sprinkled salt on my food in my life, and never used it in cooking, in 1997 I became aware that there was a lot of salt in bread and cheese and breakfast cereals. Because of the connection between hypertension and salt intake I altered my eating to reduce, and eventually to exclude, all avoidable sodium. This lowered my blood pressure and I no longer needed to take Atenolol.

More spectacularly, and very unexpectedly to me, eating less salt reduced my weight by 51 pounds! - This was nothing to do with calories, fat or sugar. - The weight I lost was clearly water, which I worked out was held in my body by the salt - held in my veins, which had become massively distended and painful since I had embarked on the HRT.

I worked out that it was the oestrogen that had caused the sodium and water retention and this was confirmed when I looked in the British National Formulary for the side-effects of oestrogen. I then realised that oestrogen was a steroid, though it is not normally thought of in that category, and that the sodium and water retention came about because certain steroids and certain other prescribed drugs relax/weaken the walls of the blood vessels so that they take in excess salt and the water which accompanies it. I realised that I was a 'steroid victim'.

For many years I have been providing a free telephone helpline for people in pain in my area and for the last five years have been advising all callers to reduce their salt intake, particularly when they were obese. Their weight loss, too, has been dramatic and swift. One Mensa member whom I helped lost about a stone in a month just by eating less salt. Her dog, too, lost weight when she stopped salting his food!

I firmly believe that the massive rise in the incidence of obesity, especially child obesity, is due to the prevalence of salt in modern diets, mainly from manufactured foods, and that calorie counting and advice about reducing fat and sugar intake and increasing exercise are counter-productive.

But salt causes obesity only in vulnerable people, i.e.

People whose veins are weak because of immaturity (babies, children),

People whose veins are weak because of steroids or HRT or amitriptyline or certain other prescribed drugs, too readily prescribed, often in very high dose,

People whose natural oestrogen levels are higher than normal (e.g. pregnant women).

People whose blood vessel walls have been weakened by 'slimming' – i.e. eating insufficient food.

Inactivity does not cause obesity. Obesity causes inactivity.
In 2001 I wrote to MPs, to medical people, to journalists, to nutritionists and others, explaining that salt sensitivity is what causes obesity, and urging that the facts be made known, particularly to steroid victims. The powerful and influential people to whom I wrote have taken no action to give publicity to the life-saving message. The public is not being told the truth about weight gain and weight loss. The best, the healthiest, the safest way to lose weight is to concentrate on eating less salt (and more potassium).

An Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Professor Sir Richard Doll, wrote back to me in August 2001 that I was right about steroids causing weight gain because of salt and water retention and that weight can be lost by eating less salt or by taking diuretics. Sadly he seems to be the only medic who knows this! - A book on salt, written by experts on hypertension and brought out in a blaze of publicity a few years ago makes no mention of steroid victims and specifically states, among other errors, that HRT does not cause a salt problem.

A person who gains weight has a higher calorie requirement. There are two reasons for this. Having to carry a greater mass around and service a more massive body uses more calories. And having a bigger surface area means greater heat loss, since heat lost is proportional to surface area. - A greater calorie requirement results in greater appetite/hunger, so, really, overweight people need to eat more than people of normal weight. If the overweight eat insufficient calories (ie if they 'diet') they may lose weight, but it is at the cost of being hungry. There has never been the slightest evidence that the practice of fewer calories in and more calories out by way of exercise reduces obesity! - It is often confidently stated that fat will be lost by doing this. - Sadly, what is more often lost is lean tissue, usually an irreversible adverse effect.

The result of the misunderstanding of the cause of obesity is the well-known fact that over 95% of dieters actually gain weight in the long term! - They cannot be expected to go hungry all the time. - Nor would staying hungry all the time benefit them. - With insufficient calories for the body's needs, the body feeds on itself. - The skin becomes thinner; the bones become less dense; there is some hair loss, etc.

Contrast this with the right way to lose weight - by eating less sodium. - Eating less sodium releases some of the excess water held in the blood stream. This lowers the blood pressure and, significantly, lowers the weight. - Weighing less results in a lower calorie requirement so very gradually less food is eaten and this becomes a virtuous circle because less food eaten results in lower sodium intake.

In societies in which no salt is eaten (what some might describe as undeveloped or uncivilised societies) there is no obesity and no hypertension.

The cavemen and women who were our ancestors lived for millennia without added salt. Our bodies evolved on a low sodium and high potassium intake. The modern diet has reversed this to high sodium and low potassium. The intake of salt has massively increased in recent years - as has the incidence of obesity.

I submit that the universal 'slimming' advice - to eat fewer calories/less fat/sugar - is a major cause of obesity. - All that is normally necessary to lose weight is to eat less salt/sodium. This is a drug-free, cost-free course of action. There are no hunger pangs and no adverse side-effects. It requires no visits to the doctor or to the gym and it WILL work.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! -Try it! My website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ provides more details and advice. (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Margaret Wilde

Anyone is welcome to copy this article in whole or in part, provided only that it is always attributed to me, Margaret Wilde, that the information is provided free, and that my web-site address http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ is always included.

If you wish to get in touch with me, you can email me from my website.

Many people who were not sensitive to salt become so when they take certain prescription drugs

Many people who were not sensitive to salt become so when they take certain prescription drugs. - Yes. These are some of the pharmaceutical drugs that cause salt sensitivity and a host of associated health problems: amitriptyline and the other tricyclic antidepressants, also many prescribed steroid meds, including HRT and some birth control meds, also Epilim and other anticonvulsants, and some painkillers, and some anti-psychotic drugs. And you can read here about other groups of people who are or who can become vulnerable to salt in different ways.

HRT and water retention: my personal experience

You can read about my personal experience of HRT causing massive water retention and, consequently, morbid obesity, in my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection. Many other prescription drugs cause similar problems. - See amitriptyline and other antidepressants and prescribed steroids and other drugs. If you have these problems, you may like to consider cutting down on salt and salty food.

If you are going to start taking prescribed steroids, e.g. prednisone, or prescribed antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, you would be wise to avoid food containing added salt

If you are going to start taking prescribed HRT or steroids, e.g. prednisone, or prescribed antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, you would be wise to avoid food containing added salt/sodium. See my webpages http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html. See also my webpage about salt/sodium in food.

To reduce the obesity caused by prescribed steroids or HRT

To reduce the obesity caused by prescribed steroids or HRT, there is helpful advice on this page.

Pfizer: Prempro HRT Settlements costly

"Pfizer Inc. (PFE) (PFE), the world’s largest drugmaker (PFE), said in a securities filing that it has paid $896 million to resolve about 60 percent of the cases alleging its menopause drugs caused cancer in women. Pfizer has now settled about 6,000 lawsuits that claim Prempro and other hormone-replacement drugs caused breast cancer, and it has set aside an additional $330 million to resolve the remaining 4,000 suits, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."
Read article at businessweek.com

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen

It's surprising how even your arms swell and can become painful when you are inappropriately or excessively dosed with Premarin or other oestrogen-containing drugs, including some birth control meds or HRT

It's surprising how even your arms swell and can become painful when you are inappropriately or excessively dosed with Premarin or other oestrogen-containing drugs, including some birth control meds or HRT.

Read of my own experience in this matter and of how I found a simple drug-free way to lessen the harm done. It's best to avoid pharmaceutical drugs if you possibly can. Just because they are prescribed for you, it doesn't mean that they are safe. Your doctor may not be well-informed about their side-effects, and the drug companies are notorious for down-playing harmful effects or keeping them secret for as long as they can. Big Pharma is/are frequently in the criminal courts for this and other misdemeanours. See this page also - especially if you did not know that oestrogen is a steroid.

Obesity: New Vulnerable Group

I see that there's a new Vulnerable Group reared its head - or swished its little tails! - There are some genetically modified mice that are very vulnerable to becoming obese because of a mutation in a particular gene, reported here. Well I don't think we need to trouble ourselves about that particular vulnerability, though one feels sympathy for the mice having their genes damaged, apparently in the cause of providing some information for the drug industry to avail itself of in its never-ending trawl for profitable products to unload on innocent citizens. Unless we allow drug researchers or their mates who work in genetic engineering to interfere with our genes we are unlikely to suffer this genetic problem ourselves, or - perish the thought! - any of us is tricked into eating any of these GM mice and something untoward happens... (Memo: best to avoid eating GM foods, whether animal or vegetable, and best to avoid eating animals that have been fed GM crops. Since no one knows what could happen, the precautionary principle should be applied.)

The Vulnerable Groups in whom I am most interested are those who are vulnerable to becoming obese because of salt sensitivity or sodium retention. The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake. They will lose weight easily if they eat less salt and salty food.

When * come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

Yes, you recognised that, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies But in battalions," is a quotation from a speech by Claudius, in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is something most of us have experienced: something goes wrong, something else goes wrong, and so on. Or as the saying goes, It never rains but it pours.

I am particularly aware of the way that troubles seem almost to breed, when I think of the adverse side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. Adverse effects of drugs are often spoken of as rare or infrequent. I do not believe this to be the case. They are unfortunately common. For example, consider the many drugs, including including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone, SK-Prednisone and Sterapred®), methylprednisolone (Brand names Depo-Medrol, Solu-Medrol), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone (Brand name Decadron), betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair - a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like Premarin and Prempak, and like some birth control medication (contraceptives) - amitriptyline, doxepin and some other anti-depressants, some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably sodium valproate (trade name Epilim), that cause sodium retention.

In effect, sodium retention means that the blood vessels have become distended/swollen with extra sodium and water, and therefore the blood volume is greater than normal. That greater blood volume obviously means that the person's weight is increased by the weight of that extra fluid in the bloodstream. And because the walls of the blood vessels have become stretched, they must also be thinner and weaker, and so the blood volume may more easily fluctuate as the person ingests more, or less, salt/sodium and salty food. This in turn makes blood pressure more variable, and also adds to the variability of blood sugar concentration and increased variability of concentration of other components in the blood. Greater variability of blood sugar concentration is a factor in increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The weakening of the blood vessel walls increases the risk of stroke and of heart problems.

The weight gain will continue if the offending drugs continue to be taken without reducing sodium intake (and this is usually the case because physicians rarely warn their patients about the dangers and consequences of eating added salt when taking these drugs). So obesity, or even morbid obesity, is a very real possibility. The patients are then likely to be told to eat less and take more exercise in order to lose their excess weight. Taking this advice would cause them further harm because their excess weight is the result of the prescribed medication and their intake of added salt (even if it is only a modest intake of salt), and not because of over-eating or taking in too many calories and expending too few calories. If the person then tries to diet/eat less food than their body requires this will exacerbate the nutritional deficits they are already experiencing as a consequence of sodium retention depleting the body of essential minerals (principally calcium, but also magnesium and potassium). A host of health problems tend to develop because of this malnutrition. They may include nerve damage, excruciating cramps, osteoporosis or even osteomalacia, and therefore very weakened bones and much greater risk of fractures, weaker muscles and reduced mobility.

The swollen blood vessels/veins will proliferate, causing the skin to look redder because of the blood vessels close to the skin surface; the skin itself will be thinning and be becoming weakened and overstretched by the greater volume/mass of the person's swollen, heavier body with its increasing fluid retention. The kidneys become over-worked and their function impaired by the greatly increased blood volume and similarly the heart becomes enlarged. The enlarged heart takes up too much room in the thoracic cavity so that breathing becomes more laboured and the person begins to suffer from breathlessness.

And I haven't even mentioned yet the insults of the ignorant, who add to the emotional problems of the victims of drug-induced sodium/water/fluid retention and obesity, the social isolation, the constant misunderstandings, the fatigue, the pain from the over-stretched blood vessels and over-stretched skin and weakened bones. - Have I sketched out for you enough of the battalions of troubles/sorrows/degenerative health problems/adverse side-effects that can and do come from taking certain pharmaceutical drugs when they are too readily prescribed, by prescribers ill-informed about their side-effects and insufficiently informed about the many possible contributory factors involved in causing obesity? I feel sure that, following my lead, you will be able yourself to think of many more adverse consequences from taking these powerful and highly dangerous drugs, with their insidious cumulative damage. Best avoid them if you can!

See obesity and the salt connection, amitriptyline and sodium in foods.

Taking prescribed oral steroids? You may have a severe deficiency of vitamin D.

People taking oral steroids are twice as likely as the general population to have severe vitamin D deficiency, according to a study of more than 31,000 children and adults by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Their findings, in the September 28 online edition of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, suggest that physicians should more diligently monitor vitamin D levels in patients being treated with oral steroids. Read this Medical Xpress report.

""When doctors write that prescription for steroids and they're sending the patients for lab tests, they should also get the vitamin D level measured," said study lead author Amy Skversky, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of pediatrics at Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital for Einstein."

And remember, steroids include HRT and other oestrogen-containing drugs. And remember also that research in recent years has found that low vitamin D levels are very common indeed. And children are at even higher risk than adults are from adverse steroid side-effects.

Are you aware that HRT is steroid medication that can cause massive weight gain?

Are you aware that HRT is steroid medication that can cause massive weight gain? Read more about HRT and Steroids here. Read my Mensa article about weight gain caused by HRT and Steroids here. And read about how to lose weight by eating less salt and salty food.

What if it's not too much fat that you are carrying around? What if it's excess water weight?

What is it's not too much fat that you are carrying around? What if it's excess water weight? - That's right. - Have you considered that it could be fluid retention that is your problem? If it's fluid retention it is a simple matter to reduce it. You need to eat less salt and salty food.

Your excess weight is likely to be water weight/fluid retention if you are one of the people who are vulnerable to salt, also known as sensitive to salt. The vulnerable groups include people who take or have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants, or SSRIs like Prozac, people who take or have taken some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children.

If you fall into one of the vulnerable groups I have listed or if you ate a high salt diet as a child you will be sensitive to salt. People without this problem can eat salty foods without doing a lot of harm to themselves, because their kidneys will excrete the sodium which is excess to their requirements. But for people sensitive to salt, some of the excess sodium, along with the water it attracts, will enter their blood stream and not be excreted. So they carry extra weight - as water - around with them all the time. They also lose more heat from their bodies because the surface area of their body has increased with the added water, and the rate at which a body loses heat is proportional to its surface area. - They therefore need extra calories to do the extra work and to provide the extra heat. - So their appetite increases in order to obtain these extra calories. - So they may very well eat more to satisfy their genuine need for calories. - If what they eat is salty, then the cycle will repeat itself and they are likely to become obese.

To break the cycle and put the process into reverse, all that is necessary for them to do is to eat less salt. And eating extra potassium by way of fresh fruit and vegetables will accelerate the excretion of the sodium and water and speed up the weight loss. If you want to lose weight, eat less salt!

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day?

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day? - If you have, then you are, perhaps, puzzled at how that could be possible. Here is the answer to the puzzle:

The weight you have gained is water weight, also known as fluid retention, sodium retention or salt sensitivity. It is often caused by pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors. See anti-depressants and other drugs and HRT, Steroids and other drugs. It can also be caused by pregnancy.

You can read on my website about the vulnerable groups that can gain (and lose) weight very rapidly. They include children.

You can lose water weight fast, easily and safely. You can also safely lose excess fat.

Zoe has some good ideas about reducing obesity

This Daily Mail article informs us that Zoe Harcombe has written a book which attributes the increasing incidence of obesity on a radical change in government dietary advice a few decades ago, and the promulgation of myths about what is healthy food and how to reduce obesity. I tend to agree with her and I believe that people who follow her advice are likely to be successful in losing some of their excess weight and in improving their health. I especially agree with her in her criticism of the involvement of the food and drink industry in public health advice.

The article does not, however, mention salt intake or salt sensitivity, or that people who are sensitive or vulnerable to salt gain weight because of salt intake, which for them results in fluid retention leading to obesity. Salt and salty food is indeed the main cause of child obesity. Protecting toddlers and small children from high salt intake protects them from many health problems in addition to protecting them from the main factor in children becoming obese.

The other very important omission from the article is the role of pharmaceutical drugs in causing obesity. Prescribed drugs are a major cause of obesity, since many, possibly most, prescription drugs cause fluid retention/obesity when they are taken for an extended period of time. Drugs that routinely tend to cause overweight/obesity include many steroids, HRT, most anti-depressants, anti-epileptics, anti-psychotics, etc. See steroids and HRT and amitriptyline and other anti-depressants.

See Sodium in Foods and my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection. You may also like to read my political page about salt, pharmaceuticals and medical misinformation leading to obesity and a host of avoidable ill-health and suffering.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

The weight gain associated with oestrogen therapy is an increase in Blood Volume.

The weight gain associated with oestrogen therapy (and with PMT, I am sure, when the body’s oestrogen levels rise naturally) is an increase in Blood Volume. See oestrogen-induced weight gain and PMT. It can easily be reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. Read how to lose weight.

Study: HRT Even Riskier Than Thought

Latest analysis finds combination of estrogen/progestin increased risk of more deadly breast cancer
Not only does prolonged use of hormone replacement therapy raise the risk of breast cancer, new research finds, but it also ups the risk for more severe forms of the disease and increases a woman's chances of dying.
Read article at msn.com

The article is about breast cancer. I took combined hormone therapy of the kind written about in the article. From my own experience I know that there are many other serious diseases/conditions that HRT can and does cause, most of them stemming from fluid retention. See HRT causes Fluid Retention and What to do about Weight Gain caused by HRT.

Steroid Victim Campaigners: Babs Diplock and Janice Fairbridge - How Eagerly MPs Strove to Help Them!

You've got to be joking! Read this archived article from The Northern Echo of 1 December 2003 and see how these two very ill, very courageous women got precious little help from MPs in trying to prevent other people from suffering as they had done, from the many appalling side-effects of prescribed steroids.

I've experienced the same kind of 'help' from the dozens of MPs to whom I've written on the subject, e.g. a pre-printed House of Commons postcard dated 18 July 01, which says:

The Rt. Hon. Menzies Campbell Q.C. MP
acknowledges with thanks the receipt of your communication of the
July 2001
the contents of which have been noted.

Well that was a ton of help! - MPs of all three main parties were similarly useless, though I remember there were some kind hand-written words from Charles Kennedy and from Boris Johnson, both of whom had realised that I was a human being.

Innocent British citizens are still being transformed into steroid victims in their thousands every year, even though I have informed MPs, journalists, broadcasters, doctors, etc precisely how to prevent this, but nobody does a damn thing about it, and most sufferers from drug-induced morbid obesity and its attendant host of chronic illnesses and disabilities are treated very poorly indeed by health professionals who are scandalously ill-informed about these matters and routinely add to the problems and suffering of the victims.

I urge you to read http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page. And if you are intending to vote in the forthcoming election you may like to think about how/whether your favoured candidate/party would act to put an end to this wholly unnecessary suffering. My MP, Nick Clegg, has done nothing effective about the matter as yet, though I have written to him many times about it.

See also prescribed steroids and HRT

Obesity-related deaths on the increase

BBC News reports "a "dramatic rise" in deaths in England in which obesity was a contributory factor".

About a quarter of adults in the UK are now obese and the incidence is growing. Since advice about obesity is so prevalent and so spectacularly unsuccessful in achieving improvement in the situation, it should be blindingly obvious that the advice being given is WRONG. - Millions of people are not deliberately going against expert advice and are not deliberately making themselves fatter and more uncomfortable and ill in consequence. The experts must stop giving the wrong advice. Their misinformation is damaging the lives, health and happiness of millions of innocent people, most poignantly, children.

Obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. – No matter how many doctors and other ‘experts’ claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. – It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.

Now – what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? – Here are the main causes:

1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.

Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.

2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone, prednisone, cortisone, hydrocortisone, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen – like some birth control medication (contraceptives) – some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the any of the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing’s Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients’ progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient’s progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.

3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.

4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.

These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.

I can be contacted from my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Prescription Drugs Can Seriously Damage Your Health

Adverse side-effects from prescription drugs are not at all rare. In fact, many drugs routinely cause very serious adverse side-effects, often very much more serious than the health problems for which they are taken. Only take them if they are really necessary and take them in the lowest effective dose.

Get informed about the harm drugs do. – For a start you could read about tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline here:

Amitriptyline

and about steroids like prednisolone or HRT here:

Steroids and HRT.

Reduce Risk of Steroid/Oestrogen/HRT-Induced Asthma by Lowering Salt Intake

Reduce Risk/Severity of Steroid/Oestrogen/HRT-Induced Asthma by Lowering Salt Intake. There is a common element here. Certain steroids, of which oestrogen is one, frequently cause weakened blood vessels/weight gain/sodium retention/water retention/sensitivity to salt, the result of which is that the veins become distended/swollen as blood volume increases, retaining extra sodium and water. Obviously this extra weight has many negative effects on health, e.g. tiredness from carrying extra weight around, increased appetite because of needing more energy to carry the extra weight and service the heavier body, greater demands on the heart and lungs and kidneys, etc.

You can reduce all of these problems by reducing your sodium intake. You will then excrete some of the excess sodium from your body, along with its accompanying water. You will lose weight swiftly and safely and you will find your breathing is easier and you will feel much better.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection