Postponed. But not in the way you thought.
According to a common tale, salt is deposited in the bones, joints and on the back of the neck, after which these places hurt.
In fact, these areas hurt for other reasons, but the salt does adhere firmly to the connective tissue in the bones, joints, and skin.
Sodium
When people talk about salt, they mean sodium. And this sodium does not have to be in the form of chloride like table salt, but can, for example, be in the form of glutamate in soy sauce.
So, about 30% of all sodium reserves in our body are fixed in the so-called proteoglycans of bones, joints and skin.
Well, that is, in general, 95% of our sodium is stored in the intercellular space. But most of this sodium is easily mobilized, drawn into the bloodstream, or drained into the urine.
The bones are a different story. There, sodium is firmly fixed in proteoglycans. It cannot just leak out after the water.
Proteoglycans are complex organic molecules that contain few amino acids and a lot of branched chain carbohydrates. From this proteoglycans resemble fibers or scaffolds. They support our cells from the outside like reinforcement.
Remember chondroitin, glucosamine, glucuronic acid? These are all different connections from about the same opera.
Regular cartilage is packed with proteoglycans for strength, elasticity and slipperiness, which help the cartilage to be strong and smooth.
And in these proteoglycans of the cartilage sodium is fixed. The point is that sodium is positively charged, while proteoglycans are negatively charged. Due to this, they bond tightly.
There is about 2 times more sodium in cartilage than in blood. And it cannot be diluted with water there.
Sodium gets stuck there so firmly that under normal conditions it has no effect on the total volume of water in the body. That is, theoretically, you can overeat salty and not swell, because sodium will go into bones and joints. Bones and joints do not suffer from this. They even need sodium for their work.
It is believed that in this form, our body stores sodium for the future. This fact was known for a long time, but it was somehow forgotten. Fifty years. But in the last ten years they remembered again.
Fragile bones
Scientists have tested on rats, but it turned out that if they slowly pull sodium from the bones, the bones become fragile. Rodents had their blood sodium levels lowered, and the damage to their bones was even more noticeable than vitamin D deficiency. Almost to the point that sodium is more important for bones than calcium.
We discussed two types of cells in bones. Some build bone, while others destroy. It is believed that the lack of sodium in the blood affects hormones so that they activate cells that take bones apart. Bones become brittle.
I say right away that I am not suggesting to gorge yourself on chips and pickles. The fact is that in people it is the low level of sodium in the blood that leads to osteoporosis after a while. The excess sodium will not be beneficial.
So as not to fall when walking
If the level of sodium in the blood even slightly decreases in older people, then they noticeably more often lose their balance when walking, fall and break their bones. But there it is already a matter of the brain.
