7 mo. ago • 88%

Can the salty ocean air satisfy our essential daily sodium nutrient needs?

Humans need approx 1tsp (or less) of sodium daily as an essential nutrient. I was low on sodium this morning* then spent the day at the beach in the salty ocean air, then within about 30 minutes I wasn't dizzy and nauseous anymore. Did the ocean air provide me sodium somehow?

*(dizzy & nauseous, I know the symptoms well since I often have no sodium in my diet and I've learned this through experience the last 5 years and I have to consciously remember to add sodium to my diet, and if I forget then I have dizziness and nausea)

Reddit wouldn't let me post this for some reason, Maybe because that subreddit r/askadoctor is dead, there have been no posts there for 3 years, so instead of abandoning my attempt at a post, I screenshat it and posting it here on Lemmy.

12 comments

Apparently sea air has a salinity of about 10ng per m^3

1tsp is about 5g of salt

So you would need to breathe in 500,000m^3 of air

Apparently we don't breathe anything remotely close to that in a day, so I'm gonna say probably not based on that

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- Not to mention needing to be able to absorb the salt through our lungs in the first place, and if you can do that I know some biologists who would like a word.
  
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  I'd be very surprised if you couldn't absorb the salt through your lungs
  
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- You did the math! ❤️🎓
  
  Thank you🙏
  
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  They did the monster math
  
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I'm not a doctor but having grown up in Florida I can tell you the answer is no. Chances are it was a coincidence and you just needed some fresh air and time for whatever you recently ate to make it's way into your system.

You need to make sure that you supplement way more than just standard table salt. Personally I use nuun when I feel like I need some electrolytes. You can also get some lite salt and mix it with water, ice and some lemon and/or lime concentrate for flavor. You need more than what's in the lite salt but it's a start, especially for exercise recovery.

Oh and what exactly are you eating that has literally zero sodium? Everything from bread to meat has salt in varying amounts.

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- for electrolytes I take 2,000 mg potassium every day, 500 mg magnesium every day, and try to remember to get my iodized salt in.
  
  and I drink a gallon of water a day
  
  The food I live on is this, it's fantastic aside from the fact it has no sodium and very little potassium so that's why I supplement those:
  
  And to quell any assumptions that I don't understand nutrition, I'm literally college-certified in nutrition, I've lived & breathed & practiced & preached nutrition for 20 years, and this is what I look like so I think I'm doing ok 🤷🏻‍♀️
  
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  You most definitely do not know anything about nutrition. First off, that's overkill for those electrolytes and it ignores the others, secondly, unless you are eating memory foam, you are definitely getting sodium, potassium, etc in your diet. Third and final, a gallon of water a day is probably overkill as well, even if you are sweating enough to need it, you probably aren't accounting for the nutrients it's washing out of your system.
  
  To close. Being certified in nutrition isn't the brag you think it is. I'm now going to block you because I don't have time to deal with your level of insanity, I can barely handle my own.
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
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I too have to consciously give myself a little extra sodium due to diet issues. I buy a single bottle of Gatorade every week and take a swallow before bed every night. That seems so do the trick for me and I don't have to change what I eat.

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Reply to rdyoung regarding electrolytes:

My magnesium gels come in 250 mg increments. 250 mg is not enough to fulfill the RDA, so 500 mg is just a bit more than recommended but far from dangerous toxicity levels.

And I drink water whenever I crave it. I tend to go through 4 of these per day but not always:

I've studied & practiced nutrition for 20 years and I've mastered it for my own self. You can enjoy your overpriced NUUN tablets, But I evolved beyond NUUN in 2018 I studied the individual nutrients involved in electrolytes, and that's when I learned to take potassium and magnesium and sodium in my water. Calcium is another part of the electrolyte family but I get plenty of that in my food. So I prefer to take the individual nutrients in capsule form instead of buying overpriced gimmicks from Whole Foods and REI.

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You probably just needed to ground yourself electrically. Were you barefoot at the beach?

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A daily teaspoon of, excuse me, but a fucking metal‽

I know it's everywhere but that seems excessive.

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- I've never really thought of sodium as a metal, but I once witnessed a 10-year-old girl reading the ingredients on a food label and she was like,
  
  "IRON??"
  
  🤣
  
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