Thousands of years ago, the Celts found something of great value in the core of the Austrian mountains in the heart of Europe. A treasure that was at times considered even more valuable than gold or silver. It suddenly made it possible to transport perishable foods over great distances. In addition to that it had a unique flavor and a great effect on the tastes of many foods. Little did they know though that the strengthening and nourishing effect this treasure had on their bodies would one day be explained and proven by science to be a result of the unique range and particle structure  of its contained minerals (e.g. iron, magnesium, and calcium) that are essential to human survival and health. Today we call this treasure the “Sacred Salt of the Druids”.

Did your doctor ever tell you that salt, and especially refined sodium chloride, is supposedly bad for your health? Well, if you would ask him if there is any scientific proof for his claims he would most likely try to refer you to the recommendations of one of the big, anonymous government agencies or associations, like the NIHC in the UK, the FDA in the US, or the DGE in Germany. These organizations publish dietary advice to the public on a regular basis, allegedly based on the newest scientific research.

Most doctors never have a close look at this research themselves. Otherwise they would probably inform you about a few significant bits of information these studies provide us with. Bits of information that hardly anybody talks about, because they put the “official” recommendations about salt consumption into question:

Current studies suggest that only 20% percent of all patients suffering of hypertension actually experience any improvement in their health after reducing the amount of salt they take in. To be more exact, usually just patients in an early stage of hypertension can indeed experience a mild reduction in blood pressure by reducing salt in their diet. Besides of that, studies that aimed on researching any correlation between the daily intake of salt and cardiovascular disease or risk of death consistently showed, that salt cannot be blamed for influencing your health negatively or killing you by leading to cardiovascular disease. No matter if you suffer from high blood pressure, or not.

What most doctors are also not even aware of is that different types of salt can indeed differ greatly regarding the effect they have on the human body. So even if refined sodium chloride doesn’t kill you, it won’t do much good for your health either and it might indeed add to certain factors that over time significantly reduce the quality of your living. Simply because sodium chloride doesn’t contain any other minerals that would help your body to function. Fact is, REAL salt, to be good for you, needs to supply your body with a significant and balanced amount of the full range of 84 essential minerals that natural salt actually contains. So it is not so much about reducing salt. It is about eating salt that actually nourishes your body.

Many claims and factoids you might have heard about salt over time have been presented to you as scientific facts. Fact is though, these statements and allegations might not actually be scientific at all.

There are many claims and hardly known facts about salt, that could be addressed. To enable you to make up your own opinion, we would like to present to you a number of significant and little-known insights here. The knowledge we’re presenting to you will help you to actually understand how to use REAL salt not just as as a healthy food ingredient, but even as a food supplement that can give your body significant amounts of essential nutrients that those foods you buy in your local supermarket nowadays simply don’t contain any more.

1. REAL Salt contains MUCH MORE than just the well-known chemical compound called Sodium Chloride (NaCl)

Most people making statements about salt are simply referring to ordinary refined table salt. This is basically a lie of omission. While “refinement” does sound like a process that would make a product “cleaner” and better, in fact it reduces the value the salt has for the human body from huge to nearly zero.

Sodium Chloride is just one of many salts and is not the only salt that our body needs. In dietetics the term salt is used synonymous to the term mineral, or electrolyte (which is nothing more but salts that are dissolved in water). So salts are minerals that our body cannot produce by itself and, for that reason, need to be obtained via food. When salt is refined, it’s crystalline structure is being changed and all the other valuable minerals that are actually part of real salt are taken out. So what we mean by “real salt” is simply natural and unprocessed salt that contains the full spectrum of 84 Elements that our body needs.

2. Salt can only be good for your body if it contains a significant amount of minerals in colloidal form

To be good for our body a certain amount of those essential minerals you take in need to be in colloidal form, which means that the particle size has to be small enough to go directly through the cell membrane into your cells. If this is not the case, your cells will, at some point, start suffering from some degree of mineral deficiency. This deficiency makes it impossible for your cells to draw enough water in and will eventually lead to partial cell dehydration.
We cannot substitute these minerals by using other sources. Hundreds or thousands of years ago those of our ancestors who didn’t have the right kinds of salt available, didn’t suffer of deficiencies simply because they lived on a very different diet. They consumed considerable quantities of wild plants that contain much higher amounts of these minerals than those cultivated salads and vegetables we can buy in our supermarkets today. Hardly anybody will tell you though, that common food supplements, although they can be of great value, also don’t contain enough minerals in colloidal form to directly nourish our cells from inside.

3. Most kinds of natural salts like sea salt, so-called Himalaya salt and salt originating from salt lakes are not actually of much value for your body at all

Even when they’re unrefined, those natural salts they offer you in your local health store won’t make much of a difference for your health. These salts usually contain at least 97% or 98% of sodium chloride and just very small amounts of other minerals. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean it will hurt you. It just means that it won’t give your body much additional value as this salt doesn’t have much to give.

4. The famous “fleur de sel” (layers of crystallized salt, naturally dried at the beach in the sun) might be a delicacy, but it lost a lot of its nutritional value during the drying process

As mentioned before, from a physiological standpoint the smallest particles of minerals are the most interesting ones as they’re able to nourish the cells from inside. These minerals are so small though that, whenever salt is being dried in open air, most of them are being lost in the process of vaporization, especially from the top layer of salt.  The so-called “fleur de sel”, the most praised and expensive sea salt being sold, is nothing more than such a top-layer and, for this reason, despite its high price it is indeed less valuable than other kinds of salt.

5. Today’s levels of marine pollution might give you a reason to think twice if sea salt is actually such a good buying decision

Nowadays the world’s oceans are being polluted more and more. Do you really think that this doesn’t leave it’s mark on the sea salt millions of people consume every day? Most likely for the first time ever, a study was made and finally published in October 2015 that is clearly pointing in this direction. Scientists from the East China Normal University in Shanghai specifically researched the microplastic pollution in table salts, coming up with rather unsettling findings: “The abundance of microplastics in sea salts was significantly higher than that in lake salts and rock/well salts. This result indicates that sea products, such as sea salts, are contaminated by microplastics. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on microplastic pollution in abiotic sea products.” (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (22), pp 13622–13627 / http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b03163).
At this point there are still rather few studies that actually research the contamination of sea salt with chemicals, heavy metals like lead and cadmium, fossil oil hydrocarbonds, and microplasics. Of course, industrial producers of sea salt state that what they’re selling is coming from regions where the grade of marine pollution is below average. This doesn’t change the fact though that the world oceans are all connected to each other and there’s no way to avoid pollution completely.

6. Himalaya salt is not actually from the Himalayas, and many claims that are made about it are seemingly nothing more but marketing gags

Why is the currently most popular rock salt on the market called “Himalaya Salt”? Well, let’s be honest, because it sounds great. Truth be told though, there are no significant amounts of salt being mined in the Himalayas and that’s exactly why they usually claim it to be coming from the “foot of the Himalayas”. If that would be indeed the case, this “foot” would still have to be part of the Himalayas, wouldn’t it? Maybe not. In fact, what is called “Himalaya” salt is coming from a mountain range in Pakistan that is several hundred kilometers away from the actual Himalayas. Most of this salt originates from the Punjab province where, close to the city of Khewra, the largest salt deposit in the world is being mined. Salt mining in this region is, thanks to the low costs of labor, remarkably cheap, so transporting the salt over great distances and selling it all over the world is remarkably profitable.

Salt from Pakistan certainly won’t hurt you. Claims that are made about this type of salt being different and especially healthy because of the specific pressure conditions that brought it into existence seem questionable though. Proof or explanations for this claim are never given. Also, any difference being made between “crystal salt” and “rock salt” is indeed completely made up, as both are geologically and mineralogically the same thing. Crystal salt is in fact just another name for rock salt from the primordial oceans. So eventually the pink or sometimes white colored salt from Pakistan, with a quite high concentration of sodium chloride of 97-98%, that they sell as “Himalaya” salt is obviously nothing more but one of many rock salts we can find all over the world. It is indeed nice to look at though.

7. An incredible number of people actually suffer from salt deficiency, although they take in a multiple of the officially recommended dose of salt per day

To process sodium chloride, your body needs water. Not just any water but cell water that is deprived from your cells for this purpose and that is able to coat the NaCl molecules, which is called hydration. To process one gram of sodium chloride the body needs 23 grams of cell water, meaning that a high consumption of pure sodium chloride can cause cell dehydration, cell death, and eventually wrinkles, physical decline, but it can also aid and abet number of illnesses that are being linked to cell dehydration. Sooner or later this can lead to bloated body tissue, water deposits, and obesity, and in the long run even contribute to the development of acidosis, kidney stones, gall stones, rheumatism and gout.

Ironically, to produce cell water, in other words to enable the cells to take water in, we need salt. Not just any salt though but instead salt that contains a range of mineral particles that are small enough to go right through the cell membrane into the cell. These small particles are called colloids. From inside, these mineral particles are able to draw water into the cell, changing its structure from regular water to cell water in the process. Refined salt doesn’t contain any significant amount of these mineral particles at all. So to avoid salt deficiency we need mineral rich, unrefined salt that contains the right minerals in colloidal form to keep our bodies young and hydrated.

8. Studies show that iodized and fluoridated salt might not be beneficial for your health at all

We’re being told that those additives that we find in commercial salt products like iodine, fluoride, but also certain anti-caking agents, are either good for our health, or a least not damaging. These substances are not presented to the body in its natural form though. Chemists tell us that this doesn’t make any difference. On the other hand, to give an example from a different part of the field of dietetics, it is a well-known fact that the ability of the body to process vitamin c depends on the availability of bioflavonoids. So chemically produced vitamin c, not embedded in the full range of essential nutrients that come with it in nature, can never have the same effect on your body as natural vitamin c. What this tells us is that, no matter what the pharmaceutical industry wants us to believe, humankind is not able to create nature by artificially combining certain industrially produced compounds.

An increasing number of health practitioners all over the world raise the question if those forms of synthetic iodine and fluoride that are added to many of those commercial salt products that you can buy in your supermarket or even your local health store, are actually damaging to your health. What might support these claims is the fact that even the American government not long ago reduced the amount of fluoride added to tab water in the US when research made public that the government was basically slowly poisoning the population over decades. Well, luckily many governments in the world are still refusing to fluoridate drinking water. We certainly don’t know the whole truth yet, but when it comes to food additives, we might not want to wait till the damaging effects are proven by western science. We might want to take action much sooner and make very conscious decisions about what we allow to enter our bodies and what we feed to our children.

9. Not all kinds of salt actually taste the same

The flavor of salt basically depends on two main factors: Amount of contained minerals and, even more, crystalline structure. Few people know that the food industry is totally able to create a more mild tasting salt for certain purposes by just producing it with a slightly different crystalline structure. Salt needs to taste great to serve its purpose, but honestly, no matter how mild a salt tastes, the mildness won’t tell you anything about the salt you’re eating. We’re manipulated by the food industry into consuming denatured food for a very long time now, so our taste butts alone simply cannot tell what is good for us any more. As frustrating as it might seem, nowadays, to actually be on the safe side, we need certainty that whatever tastes good does indeed come from a natural source.

The probably safest and arguably healthiest salt we can get on this planet is rock salt from the primordial oceans, dried 250 Million years ago, long before humankind started polluting planet earth. But not all rock salts are the same. As mentioned before, rock salt from Pakistan contains about 97% of sodium chloride. After doing a huge amount of research, we stumbled upon a rock salt that contains only 87% of sodium chloride. The rest is minerals and clays that are nourishing your body in a very unique way.

The salt that I’m talking about comes from a salt mine in Austria, located in the so-called Salt Chamber Estates in the Austrian Alpes, a beautiful mountain area in the heart of Europe. This mine is most likely the only salt mine in the world that is still practicing underground mining without controlled demolitions, so the salt never had to experience the shock of explosions. They love their salt there and they still sort it out by hand and treat it with a lot of respect.

There are more reasons though, why this salt is indeed special:

• This salt has been mined for thousands of years under ideal conditions most likely starting with the Celts who made already use of it more than 2500 years ago. It’s usefulness for brine drinking cures (during such a cure you ingest small amounts of pure rock salt resolved in water) is known for a long time, not as a medication, but instead as a means to nourish the body on a cellular level for great health benefits.
• Some of the best chefs, not only in Austria but also worldwide, use this specific salt in their restaurants as a “secret ingredient” as it is not just healthy, but also, of course, enhances and adds to the flavor of foods. It has a great crystalline structure that makes it ideal as a rather mild but still intense source of delicious saltiness
• The 84 essential minerals that are contained in this salt occur to a significant part in colloidal form which means that they’re small enough to get through the cell membrane directly into the cell. Our digestion is not able to create this kind of small particles from bigger ones. Common mineral supplements don’t contain these small particles. We need to get them from a natural source to provide our body with a sufficient amount of these nutrients.
• Choosing this salt you know exactly what you get when you consume it and offer it to your loved ones. Our salt meets the requirements of the Codex Alimentarius (a collection of internationally recognized standards approved by the UN, the WHO, the WTO, and many NGOs). Our salt is mined, mostly by manual labor, under excellent working conditions in Austria, meeting high environmental protection standards. Our salt even contains natural iodine that your body needs, and, as mentioned before, a huge number of other healthy essential minerals.
• You can actually not just taste, but feel the difference between this salt and other salts physically. Take a table spoon of brine (saturated salt-water solution), made from our rock salt, in a glass of water and drink it first thing in the morning. Put in just enough of the brine to give a little bit of taste to the water. Feel how it affects your body and how it helps your system to wake up faster by rehydrating you immediately. Do this for several days for the nourishing effect to build up. If you wish, make your own experiment and find out what effect this water, that contains just a little bit of our rock salt, has, compared to the effect of water that doesn’t contain any salt or even compared to water that contains ordinary refined table salt. Most people feel the difference right away. Some people need the effects to build up over a few days, but usually you should be able to feel it rather fast.