Why do people say that sodium causes high blood pressure? Salt is sodium chloride not sodium?
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at
12:43 pm
sinecat2005 asked:
Most people say sodium to mean salt. Are they just shortening the phrase sodium chloride? Or does the body really break salt down into sodium and chlorine? Sodium is a white metal that reacts violently with water. We don’t really have sodium in our bodies, do we?
Most people say sodium to mean salt. Are they just shortening the phrase sodium chloride? Or does the body really break salt down into sodium and chlorine? Sodium is a white metal that reacts violently with water. We don’t really have sodium in our bodies, do we?
Tagged with: Sodium Chloride • Sodium Salt • Why Do People
Filed under: Blood Pressure
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actually, most people don’t realize that salt is actually sodium chloride. or at least, the idiots in my science class were unable to get there minds around that fact
Sodium chloride (salt) is water soluble. When it dissolves in water (and your blood is mostly water) it splits into sodium ions and chloride ions. It is the sodium ion that affects your body. Sodium doesn’t “cause” high blood pressure. In some people it contributes to high blood pressure but there are usually other underlying reasons for the high blood pressure like blocked arteries and veins.
Yes, sodium is a white (actually, silver) metal that reacts violently with water. But that is sodium as an element and the atoms are neutral. When sodium forms compounds it becomes a sodium ion with a +1 charge. The ion does not behave the way the neutral element does. (It would give new meaning to the phrase “heartburn”!).
People are just shortening the sodium cloride. When they say sodium, they mean salt.
They are referring to sodium ions. When you eat salt it dissolves into sodium+ ions and chlorine-, or chloride, ions. I don’t know what effect, if any, the chloride ions have on the body, but the sodium ions contribute to high blood pressure.
Sodium Chloride splits into ions of sodium and chloride in the body. High ion concentration in the blood causes water content of blood to rise to dilute back to normal concentration. This causes a rise in blood pressure due to higher overall volume of blood in the same system.
As others have mentioned, salt does dissociate in the presence of water into sodium and chloride ions.
Chloride ions are used by the body during respiration – it facilitates the movement of carbon dioxide into RBC so they can be transported to the lungs for expiration.
The primary reason why sodium ions cause high blood pressure can be demonstrated by a clever aphorism: “water chases salt”. Higher concentrations of sodium in your blood causes tissue fluid or other extracellular fluid to pass into the blood vessels to decrease the concentration. This increase in blood volume increases blood pressure as well.
NaCl (table salt) is an ionic compound so of course is becomes Na+ and Cl- in water.
Yes, they are just shortening the name of sodium choloride.
Yes, the body breaks down salt into sodium and chlorine. Because water molecues are polar (positive on one side, negative on the other) they act like a magnet in the presence of salt. Whenever water is added to Salt (sodium chloride) the water molecules surround the positively charged sodium ion and the negatively charged clorine ion, separating them. About 60-100 water molecules will surround each ion. When cells in our intestine (that are responsible for absorbing water) encounter one water molecule they need to spend one unit of cell energy (ATP) to bring that water molecule into the cell. So to bring in 100 water molecules they need to spend 100 ATP. But in the presence of sodium or chlorine ions they can instead spend 1 ATP to get the sodium or chlorine ion into the cell (bringing the 100 water molecules with it).
We also use sodium ions to send nerve impulses via sodium/potassium ion channels.
So yes, we do have aqueous sodium ions in our body, and we use them for many different processes (we would die without these processes).
Solid sodium (not to be confused with socium chloride) is a different matter. It also wants to combine with water, but when it does so, tons of heat energy is released. I’m glad we don’t put that on our food.
the mistake here is that some folk just can’t accept that sodium is only PART of salt.
High Blood pressure is (i) caused by an imbalance in the Sodium/Pottasium pumps in the cells of the body .. confusion comes when folk think that the amount of salt you consume affects this sytem WRONG .. sodium/pottasium disruptions are caused by sodium uptake in its pure form .. salt causes high blood pressure by tie-ing up the water molecules in the plasma and thus ‘thickening blood’, causing the heart to work harder and ‘drying out’ the walls of the blood vessels .. the resultant increase is easily removed by consuming water
(ii) Hypertension by disrupting the sodium/pottasium requires different approaches