Ep. 179 - Hydration mythbusters & how much salt do you need to optimize your fast & lower blood pressure? Salt supplements: LMNT, Redmond, & Celtic salt | Salt myths: Water retention, swollen ankles, & low sodium foods | The Salt Fix | Fasting Challenge
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In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss low salt diets effect on insulin, glucose and other markers, how low salt diets induce insulin resistance, why cutting salt off your diet is not recommended, ways sugar causes salt depletion, and much more.
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Reference Links to Articles:
https://insulinresistance.org/index.php/jir/article/view/78/245
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6695889/
Fasting For Life Ep. 179 Transcript
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I’m Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.
[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life you truly deserve.
[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way. Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. Name's Dr. Scott Walker and I'm here as always. And my good friend and colleague, Tommy Whelan. Good afternoon to you, sir.
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Doing fantastic, my friend. Excited for today's conversation. We are going to be diving into the Journal of Insulin Resistance and we're going to talk about sodium, a.k.a. salt, and we're going to blow up some of the myths that we have learned or we have dispelled over the last few years of adopting a fasting lifestyle. So be prepared to talk salt and all things salt.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
As always, we want to give you some actionable things that you can do from today's conversation, and there's going to be some really cool connection points. And as AHA's, as we hope we can distill them down through today's convo. So if you're new to the podcast, thank you for joining us and thank you for giving us a shot and making us part of your fasting journey, Head back if you want to learn more about our story and how fasting has transformed our lives, You can hear more about Tommy and I and why we do what we do week in and week out.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you're a long term listener, thank you for tuning in again. If you feel so inclined, please give us a shout out. We love the five star review kind as we continue to put out episodes each and every week. Now, Tommy Salt as I go and ask my dad, my mom and their friends what they think about salt, what do you think their number one thing is going to be?
[Tommy Welling]
That for blood pressure? Exactly.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I have to watch my salt intake and now some of my my dad is an ex diabetic, but friends and family, that generation lot of diabetes, pre-diabetes, etc., which typically starts years before with metabolic syndrome, which is elevated blood pressure, abnormal labs, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.. So yeah, the number one thing they're going to say is, Oh yeah, I'm going to watch my salt intake or, you know, swelling of the legs or.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, my doc said I got a, you know, the blood pressure meds I'm on, etc. And honestly, that couldn't be farther from the truth now that we know what we know. So this first study came out of the Journal of Insulin Resistance and it is a review of 23 clinical trials.
[Tommy Welling]
Wow.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that's a lot. Okay. 23 clinical trials. And one of the authors of this study is Dr. James De. I am not going to attempt his last name, but he also wrote the book called The Salt Fix, and it is jam packed with research links and kind of an overview if you've ever read Dr. Jason Fung, who is where we were exposed to fasting and the art of fasting and how powerful fasting could be.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, the.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Diabetes code, The Obesity Code, The Complete Guide to Fasting. This book, The Salt Fix, is much like that. Too easy to read, but it breaks down the fact that low salt diets worsen markers of insulin and glucose issues. So if you've been listening to us for a while, we always make sure that we speak from a place of decreasing insulin, decreasing insulin resistance and decreasing the potential for disease processes that are related to all of these things as well.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
As you know what we feel the easiest way to do that is adopting a fasting lifestyle.
[Tommy Welling]
Sure. So when you talk about a book like The Salt Fix and we start talking about those things that we hear all the time, like salt is going to lead to higher blood pressure. It's leading to fluid retention, swelling in my ankles, like you mentioned. That means there is some there is definitely some some cognitive dissonance that can be there.
[Tommy Welling]
And so, like, you have to know that what we're going to be talking about, like the evidence is clear, much like the heart healthy, low fat, you know, back from the seventies and eighties and trying to get burn fat by eating low fat and how that wrecked a lot of the trajectory of a lot of our waistlines and our and our blood metrics over the past few decades.
[Tommy Welling]
The same thing could be said about demonizing salt, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We're going to give you recommendations of how much salt we recommend, especially if you're fasting or if you have insulin resistance or pre-diabetes or diabetes. And just share some of the stats that have kind of connected all of the dots to the realization that especially if you fall into the blood sugar category, pre-diabetes, diabetes, insulin resistance, etc., that you absolutely need to increase your salt, which is counter culture to the previous conversation that we will have.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Some of you had mentioned that you had a conversation with some 55 plus year olds, right where you got to watch my salt. My dad is still stubborn in that he wants to still kind of like this, still pops up every now and then. And I'm like, your dad, remember? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because it's so.
[Tommy Welling]
Ingrained, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Low fat, you know, decrease your cholesterol that you're eating to to lower your cholesterol. Well, that's actually not true. We know that now that the cholesterol we eat doesn't turn into the cholesterol floating into our bloodstream. So this conversation on salt falling in the same category. So the study was sodium restriction and insulin resistance.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
A review of 23 clinical trials. And we're just going to go over the big premise, the paper aim to find human clinical studies looking at low salt diets on markers of glucose and insulin. So went to PubMed using search term sodium, insulin and insulin resistance and found 23 human clinical studies testing low salt diets showing negative harms on insulin and glucose.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
[Tommy Welling]
Wow. I think out of all of those 23, there were only two that showed anything that was like that that may have been conducive to like keeping blood pressure the same or lowering it in any given patient population, which meant that 21 of them, 21 out of those 23 so 90% showed that it worsened the markers, all the important markers, and didn't result in a decrease in blood pressure anyway.
[Tommy Welling]
So it was like it's so reverse from from everything that we've heard over the past several decades or like a I have high blood pressure. So what happens? I get put on a medication, usually starts off small and then usually increases over time and told to get on a low sodium diet, period. And now we're hearing more and more about the DASH diet and some other things that were like specifically designed around blood pressure control.
[Tommy Welling]
But so many of them are like so far off the mark. It's incredible.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So I want to come at this from the perspective of that. We have 80 million Americans with pre-diabetes, 30 million Americans with diabetes, that metabolic syndrome. This metabolism, the inability to process the energy that we ingest. We're going to talk about sugar, our food supply, food choices. But the reason why this really directly speaks to you, the listener as a fasting advocate, is that most people that come to fasting are going to be wanting to lose weight, get healthier, potentially reverse some of these issues, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So metabolic syndrome is increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol triglyceride levels. Well, what they're finding is that by reducing the salt is that you're actually furthering the LDL increase and triglyceride levels. Yeah, never mind not benefiting the cardiovascular system or decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. And you're kind of swimming with the disease process rather than or furthering it rather than trying to reverse it.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's it's a complete like 180. Yeah, right. And never.
[Tommy Welling]
Mind right.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Never mind when you fast the same mechanism or similar mechanism that insulin is actually causing the salt retention, not the salt itself, when you fast you are going to be decreasing the LDS drone or excuse me, you're going to be decreasing insulin. Aldosterone is going to go to the kidneys and telekinesis to flush out water, which is the issue of diuresis.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Diuresis is the flushing of fluids, low carb or fasting. You flush the fluids out, so you actually pull all of the electrolytes out as well.
[Tommy Welling]
Because you get that without pulling additional electrolytes out.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The best way to get them back in is by adding salt back into the equation.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, the crazy part, like I remember going through physiology, like medical physiology and and all of the charts showing, hey, this is exactly where it comes from, the sodium and potassium from your diet. Here's where it goes, here's where it acts on the kidney. Here's why it directly affects blood pressure, etc.. But the the big assumption that was made erroneously was the fact that if you if you pulled on the lever, which was your food intake and change your sodium and potassium, then that had the direct effect on the kidney and on the on the water, on basically your your overall, not your hydration levels, but also your your hydrostatic pressure levels like actually in
[Tommy Welling]
your in your vascular walls. So the problem there is that it completely ignored the fact that insulin is acting on the kidneys to change aldosterone and to change the actual pressure balance and then the blood pressure itself. So it's not just this the simple food intake, salt leading to blood pressure changes, as I saw in so many physiology charts.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So. Right. So we're talking about the mechanisms of action here. So mechanisms for how low salt diets induce insulin resistance. This was part of that study that we mentioned in the Journal of Medicine Resistance, and we're talking about activation of the sympathetic nervous system blocking sympathetic nervous system signaling catecholamines contributed to decrease insulin sensitivity, meaning worsening of insulin resistance, hyperactivity.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Some of that hyperactivity can lead to constriction of peripheral blood vessels, reducing skeletal muscle blood flow and inducing insulin resistance elevation of non-certified fatty acids, lower intracellular sodium concentrations, which can increase sugar absorption in the intestines. So all of these different mechanisms end up coming to a head. When we look at certain groups of individuals having reduction in blood pressure with sodium restriction and equally substantial subgroup, younger individuals.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. With normal, normal blood pressure or pre hypertension have significant increases in blood pressure with salt restriction.
[Tommy Welling]
Wow. In that anyone.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not what we want. So additionally low salt intakes increase and elevate heart rate which may outweigh any blood pressure lowering benefit. So considering that at least 23 studies have shown that low salt diets worsen insulin resistance, fasting insulin and or glucose insulin responses to an og og t t test, which is an oral glucose tolerance test, which is more accurate than a fasting blood glucose test, which is the one where you just eat dinner, go to bed in the way, come get your blood test done.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Sodium restriction should be used cautiously. And then there was the amount of analysis that this study mentioned that 19 of 20 randomized crossover trials showed that sodium restriction significantly increased fasting insulin levels. So we're kind of undermining all the efforts.
[Tommy Welling]
Not good. So when we're fasting, we start fasting and then we see this effect, this this drop in insulin that then can lead to a drop in water retention, that can lead to a drop in blood pressure, good or bad. If I if my blood pressure was elevated, then that can drop it. And so that would be a good thing unless I was taking blood pressure lowering medications.
[Tommy Welling]
Right. That could kind of throw a wrench in things. But it can also make me feel different as well. But the cool thing is the encouraging part to start with is lower blood pressure in general is going to be is going to be an improvement, especially if I if I have weight to lose. You know, most of us have have room for improvement on our blood pressure, Right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
[Tommy Welling]
So that's a good thing. Very good.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes. Yes. Fasting lowers insulin, low carb lowers insulin. Right. So that's when we look at all of these hyperinsulinemia people with type two diabetes or even in random systemic reviews or men analysis of random controlled trials of people that have normal blood sugar, we'll see that the blood pressure will come down, but it's due to the insulin genic effect or the insulin effect, the lower insulin on the kidneys.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Now the other side of that is the problem side where it's like, well, if we're going to, you know, try to reverse diabetes or prevent diabetes and we want to opt for a lower carb or more healthy carb. Right. Non processed nine refined carb approach, then we're absolutely going to have to add salt into our protocol to help counteract that and direct type effect, which is going to cause us to feel dehydrated.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Brain fog. Fatigue.
[Tommy Welling]
Fuzzy.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Little fuzzy. More hunger, more cravings.
[Tommy Welling]
Maybe even added sometimes.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, some lightheadedness. And then we feel we're more sensitive to those changes and blood pressure. So even the famous dash diet, the sodium trial.
[Tommy Welling]
Now.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Found that salt restriction increased the triglycerides, LDL and total cholesterol ratio. So it's like.
[Tommy Welling]
I don't hear anybody talking about that either.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I know. So we realize that. Wow, Yes, we do recommend salt. We recommend it to all of our challengers. Right. Maybe our 70 challenges. We just did a fasting fundamentals master class. That's something we're rolling out a new master class series this year where we can start going over the different pillars of a fasting lifestyle and one of the three or four main pillars of that fundamentals master class was how to hydrate properly.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's not more water. It's you need to add in salt to help balance all those things out. And never mind. It can also help with that transition from sugar burner into fat burner when you're going from glucose to ketone production.
[Tommy Welling]
Absolutely. And the crazy part is that when you go from having at least three eating opportunities in a day, but some of us may have had four or five or six eating opportunities to count up all the snacks and and things like that going from that. That's a fairly consistent salt intake all throughout the day. And then and then go from that to now.
[Tommy Welling]
I set my first 16 or 18 hour timer or now I just did it. Oh Nomad and I have one opportunity maybe or two opportunities to bring in salt. So not only do we have insulin coming down and our salt levels are going down, but our opportunities are going down as well. So it can be it can feel like a lot, especially in the very beginning, before we have a chance to kind of adapt to these this this change in salt intake frequency.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we did an episode recently, episode 174, and there was a research article in there that was the mainstay of that of that episode and in that nutrition dot BMJ dot com article, there was a supplemental that was created for providers to actually be able to help, you know, insights from a general practice service evaluating a lower carb diet in patients with type two diabetes and like literally how to manage these this this patient base or this type of individual.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And in there it says salt due to the renal sodium retaining properties of insulin. For those with type two diabetes, you're going low carb and therefore lower insulin resulted in considerable loss of sodium and consequently it decreases, which is that water flushing effect, right? It says in here patients may well need to increase salt intake, particularly in the first few weeks.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So if you're starting to stack your fast on top of one another or you're starting to reengage with going more low carb because you just feel better, you absolutely have to increase your salt intake. Now, if you're a healthy individual, you don't really necessarily need to worry about hitting like a salt overload because you're going to have a more normal metabolic function where aldosterone, acting on the kidneys and your normal hydration that you're that that you keep on a day to day basis isn't going to fluctuate as much if the insulin resistance is not there.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we're going to give you some guidelines here in just a couple of minutes. But I just found it interesting that if you go back to pretty much the gold standard, the Cochrane meta analysis, like if you hear Cochrane, then you're going to be looking at like like the gold standard of gold standard when it comes to recommendations based off of research.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
MM hmm. They found that the last thought here on the low sodium interventions lowered blood pressure only minimally. This is after looking at 170 studies that low sodium interventions lowered blood pressure only minimally, while significantly raising levels of kidney hormones, stress hormones and unhealthy triglycerides. So overall negative health effect on cholesterol and triglycerides and possibly a thickening of the blood and increases fasting, norepinephrine increases heart rate.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I don't know how else to say it, but man, did we get it wrong, Right?
[Tommy Welling]
It's compounded by the fact that you end up chasing your tail around looking to, you know, lower these bad markers or, you know, lower the blood pressure, lower the triglycerides, lower the LDL. And at the same time, I'm I'm doing the reverse. But I don't even know why that's happening. So then I'm just trying to pour more fuel on the fire.
[Tommy Welling]
Like it's almost like the caloric restriction and the fact that, well, my diet stopped working at 1500 calories, so maybe I need to go to 1200 calories or, you know, like, like further cut it. Same thing with salt. I hear that all the time. Like, you know, just raise my raise my dosage, you know, double my my dosage of my blood pressure lowering medication.
[Tommy Welling]
It's not working.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Some of those are actually diuretics. Sure. Yeah. Hey, Yeah, well, if you're fasting, be careful.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. So further cutting salt is is not the answer. It's. It's. That's probably going to lead to to worsening effects. It's crazy.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? So let's let's shift to the what are we going to do about it side. Well let's talk first about sugar and salt. So salt first so we're talking about table salt, right? Like Martin's table salt, it's typically mined inland, heated to extreme temperatures. There's usually some added chemicals. They add in potassium and sodium iodide for iodized salt, they add in colors and dextrose and sodium by carbonates and all this other stuff.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when we look at the fact of like, okay, is that really what our body needs? No, it's it's more of like a modified salt than it is a true salt. So when we talk about salts, we want to make sure that we're being really particular about the type of salt we're using and the type of salt we're recommending.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So Celtic Sea salts read Redmond's Redmond Salt and or Himalayan salt are all great sources. And what's the big difference between them? Well, one of them is Celtic, Himalayan and Redmond's all on that side of the aisle. All of those have all of the trace minerals and electrolytes that we need to balance our hydration normally to allow the kidney to function normally.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
All of the stuff gets flushed out, right as we are fasting, as we are going low carb, as we are on blood pressure lowering medications or diuretics. Right. We're losing that hydration. So all of the trace minerals, the magnesium, the potassium, everything down to the bronze in the selenium, right. Are in these think of them almost like a multivitamin or a therapeutic salt rather than just a table salt.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that's the type of salt we're going to recommend that you increase when you start adding in or playing around with your individualized salt daily kind of salt requirement. I know what works for me now, but I've been doing this for a long time, right?
[Tommy Welling]
Sure. Yeah, it takes a while. Also, this is another shout out to eating nutritious leave when you do breaks rather than well, you know, I'm craving it. And can I just, you know, continue to eat whatever I want whenever I break my fast because I'm fasting, I'm going to encourage you making good, healthy, nutritious choices. When you do go to break, your fast is only going to help.
[Tommy Welling]
It's going to help balance the blood pressure and reduce the cravings and accelerate your fasting results. If you're looking to burn through some old fat stores because better, more nutritious health choices means I'm bringing in more of those, you know, full, broad spectrum electrolytes that I need. And, you know, like proper salt, hydration is really, really, really going to help.
[Tommy Welling]
So continue to lean into good habits. When you do go to break your fast, too.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So just to summarize the differences in salt, right? So when we're looking at, you know, table salt, it's composed mainly of sodium chloride. But some of those things I mentioned anti CAKING agents additives, some, some added things as well. Yeah, very small amounts of minerals. The other salts, the other salts, the Himalayan, the sea salts, the Celtic Sea salts and the Redman salts.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
They have all of those trace minerals already in there. So that's the main difference between the two. One thing I want to mention about sugar is this came came out of the Salt Fix by Dr. James De. He mentions with research links to all of these that there are 22 ways sugar causes salt depletion. So I'm not going to list all of them.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But there's 22 ways here where and this speaks to your making better food choices or better decisions with our nutrition opportunities when we're fasting because we, like you said, we do have less of them.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Now.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, sugar pretty much causes salt, wasting salt depletion. We're talking about changes in the gut with Candida to an allergic response to autoimmune thyroiditis to Hashimoto's to fiber excuse me to hyperthyroidism, to salt depletion. You know, sweat changes, reabsorption changes. So we really want to make sure that when we say the recommendation that we have for you is to increase your optimum sodium intake, the healthy salts to 3 to 6 grams per day.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We also want to make sure that we're focusing on the other side of things, which is, hey, we've got fasting and low carb, right. That are going to decrease insulin and and decrease aldosterone to help flush out. Right. The water leaves, all the electrolytes leave. But then we have sugar, which also causes 22 ways it causes salt depletion.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when we say we, we're going to recommend 3 to 6 milligrams of sodium per day, that we're also taking into account these other causes as well. So making better food choices, decreasing your sugars, decreasing your refined process, carbohydrates, etc. will change that recommendation. That's why we see you going to play around that of 3000, 3000 to 6000 or 3 to 6 grams, which is about one and one third to two and two third teaspoons of salt per day.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not the 2300 or 2.3 grams of sodium, which is less than one teaspoon of salt per day. That's commonly advised. I say all that just to say that we're going to have to play around with this, but making sure that we know that that sugar content also plays a big role in that salt depletion problem.
[Tommy Welling]
Dropping the dropping the sugar deliberately, but then increasing or prioritizing I yes, the salt I mean that's that's where we kind of like for the scale flip the balance kind of on its head but that's where we start to see, you know, better and better results for our overall markers and for our fasting journey as well.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, 100%. Couple of things just to mention is if you have hyper aldosteronism Cushing's disease disorder of the pituitary or little syndrome, which is an inherited form of high blood pressure that causes excess reabsorption, sodium, those are issues. Those are situations where you would not just want to follow the recommendations of increasing your salt intake. Make sure that you talk to your doc because those are issues, those are places where you would not want to be increasing your sodium just to make sure that we say that on the front end.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
A few other things I want to mention just in terms of the fact that our bodies might need more salt. We mentioned overconsumption of sugar that can cause salt, wasting hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency. Congestive heart failure can also lead to hyponatremia or low blood sodium medications like we mentioned, diuretics, right? So blood pressure medications are diuretics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, and even some.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
This is like catch 22 stuff, diabetes, drugs, energy drinks, teas, caffeinated beverages. I always love when I say this. I don't know if we've ever said this on the pod, but add a little salt to your coffee.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
When I used to do bulletproof coffees, I would do salted butter rather than just regular.
[Tommy Welling]
The the other thing is exercise. You know, the more strenuous your exercise is your your sweat is also going to be a bit salty, too. So, you know, you do lose some more excess salt, you know, whenever you're you're working out. So keeping that in mind, too, especially if you're your fasted.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yep. And then we mentioned the last couple, which is intermittent fasting, especially if you're doing longer fasting windows and you predominantly eat low carb, you definitely want to be upping the salt intake. So tell me, how do you get your salt in every single day? As we wrap up today's conversation.
[Tommy Welling]
I start off with with a couple of things. I like the discipline of of putting some salt about a gram or so with like my morning, my water before I actually intake any coffee just because that's like a good subconscious reminder, like fasting in my fasting lifestyle is very important to me. And so it's one of the first votes that I that I place for myself.
[Tommy Welling]
Like right there in the morning. I usually try to get most of my salt in by around 2:00 in the afternoon because after that it's a little random, can be a little bit of a family free for all, like going into the evening time. I definitely don't want to be playing catch up later on in the day, but there's just a few moving parts.
[Tommy Welling]
There depends on activity level, especially early in the day. Different things like, you know, like what my morning actually looks like. I can kind of play a role. So definitely some moving parts there that that that can take some time to kind of iron out or kind of get comfortable with.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So we talked on the Masterclass a couple of weeks ago about you know, the hydration piece, right? It's not just more water. If you're drinking more water and you're still thirsty and you're drinking more water and you're just peeing all the time like that shows that you have an imbalance if you're waking up in the middle of the night.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So for me, taking into account the history of insulin resistance, etc., I found that I like to load my hydration most of it in the middle of the day. And then I sip or just keep my mouth not from getting dry with some mineral water like Pellegrino or top of teeth or something like that, and sip on that the rest of the day.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can't chug. I could never possibly even chug Pellegrino if I wanted to, because it's way too bubbly, but I typically will load in the front of the day. So I'll do an entire teaspoon of Redmond's in a 30 ounce yeti in the morning with my vitamin C. What else I put in there? My CITRULLINE, which is part of a restored protocol that I do.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Having had severe asthma, you know, most of my teenage into my early adult life. I just noticed I feel better when I do that. So I get a teaspoon in right off the bat. The vitamin C knocks out the salt flavor. You can even taste it, and I'll get that down before my coffee, which is at about 90 minutes after I wake up.
[Tommy Welling]
Okay.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So then I'll add a little pinch of salt into my coffee as well. It just takes the acidity out of it for me. I typically want that boost right about 90 minutes after waking up, getting the kids out the door, getting ready for the workday, boom, here we go. And then in the mid-afternoon time between one and three, especially if I'm not eating lunch that day and I'm fasting to dinner or fasting through to the following day, then I like to do an element tea with another teaspoon.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So now I'm up to two teaspoons plus the 1000 milligrams in the elementi and we'll drop a link to we have an element tea partnership where you get a free box, no matter what box of elements that you order from the link, you get a free box, which is really cool. So by the sample package, the $20 one, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tommy And then you get another free box.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
On top of that, which is really cool. If you never tried elements, it's a really easy way to hide the salt flavor because some of y'all just gag at the, like the idea of this and it's just like hopefully by now, you know what, this episode, it's not important.
[Tommy Welling]
I'll just start on the crystals. Do you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Know? No. See?
[Tommy Welling]
No, no, I can't. Yeah, yeah. Or, or like a like a 1 p.m.. Like salty coffee in the afternoon, like with, like a chocolate element. Now that is something to look forward to in the afternoon.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So guarantees not, not made. All right. I'm talking about the.
[Tommy Welling]
Flavors made for coffee. No.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Disagree, but that's okay. See, this is why we did this. Why ask you the question, how do you do it? How do I do it? So then so that second one in that day is I'm now I'm up to two teaspoons of Redmond's and then I will get my element in as well to give it a little bit of flavor.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's typically my standard day. I'm doing a lot of rehab, so very low anaerobic exercise. I don't sweat that much. So when I was doing the Peloton challenge, my wife, I would add in just another half teaspoon and shoot it with the pre workout right before I got on the before. Yeah, but that gets me to about two teaspoons plus that thousand from the elementi.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I'm in that was probably in that to the two and a third teaspoon of salt and I just feel better on my fasting days when I do that. Yeah. So that is how I get it in. So you just going to have to play around with it. You can get the book, The Salt Fix as well. Dr. James The link to the research articles will be in the show notes, the link to the Elementi.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I want to encourage all if you're looking to accelerate and learn some of this stuff with us, meaning like alongside of you, then we have that upcoming challenge on June 7th with the seven day fasting Lifestyle Challenge. If you want to figure out some of this stuff with us as your fractional white glove fasting supports that, I encourage you to head to the show notes, Click the link you can get registered for that as well.
[Tommy Welling]
Tommy Yes.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I love this conversation, man. Breaking down some of the myths, some of the things that have been generationally passed down. We need salt salts imperative find assault that you like. Try a few different things and let us know if we can help in any way. Final thoughts is wrap up today.
[Tommy Welling]
Final thoughts is like this is one of those things where especially in the beginning of fasting or when you start to push a little bit outside of your comfort zone, Salt can be one of those things where when I'm not getting it right, I'm not very comfortable. So it can it can be like one of the discouraging things if I'm not make the.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Process easier is what I'm hearing.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it can make it harder or easier depending on if I'm getting it right or not. So absolutely, this is one of the one of the big things that we focus on and we teach on during the seven day challenge. So I think.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's on day one.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. So I mean, because it's that important. So like that, that's a huge, huge opportunity for sure. So I love this. Give yourself permission to do something new and get some new results because there's some things that we've been hearing for a long time that we need to kind of on here, you know, But as we start to get new results, then we confirm the fact that, oh, yeah, you know what?
[Tommy Welling]
I'm on the right track now. Absolutely. Go try something new.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I love it. Breaking down those barriers. Sara, appreciate the conversation. And if you got questions or need resources, head to the show notes, find the links. Appreciate, Sara. We'll talk soon.
[Tommy Welling]
Thank you. Bye. So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to the fasting for life dot com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
While you're there, download your free Fast Start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life and.