"Avoid salt."

Frequently ordered, this advice in general helps only about one out of five people with high blood pressure to lower it. Worth a try. But if it does not work, don't bother doing it. (Unless you take a diuretic, or water pill.)

Salt is, usually, mostly sodium chloride, with a token amount of potassium iodide for the iodine. (Not enough iodine.) If there is sweating as with heat or strenuous exercise, then salt is lost and should be replaced. But please don't replace only sodium and chloride.

Pet dogs and cats started getting cancer when chloride was added to drinking water. Some researchers blame chloride, not sodium, for the bad effects of salt. If chloride is bad, then its effects can probably be overcome with iodide.

With sweating, lost materials are not only sodium, chloride, and water. Some toxic materials are removed. Unfortunately, some good materials are lost, too. They need to be replaced.

Replace them. Replace them with a safe and low-calorie food that contains a good balance of trace elements.

Use sea salt.

The nutrient values of common foods were measured nearly a century ago. Since then, farm practices have removed trace element from the soil and not necessary replaced them. Then the soil became deficient in those trace elements. With selective breeding and, more recently, genetic modification, crops can be induced to grow as well with limited trace elements as the old crops did with plentiful trace elements.

The forgotten fact, of course, is that no one has redone and published the revised nutrient values for foods. If the values were the same, then farmers and government people would be happy to say so, reassuring us that the foods are just as good as before.

Their silence is very important.

Use sea salt. If you do not have congestive heart failure (and take thiamine if you do!) or edema, then you can probably use it liberally. For best mineral content, get sea salt that was harvested in volcano country, where the ash adds to the flavor--and your health.