Go back far enough in human history and you will find salt at the center of everything.
As far back as 6,050 BCE, salt shaped civilizations. The Egyptians offered it to their gods. The Phoenicians traded it across the Mediterranean. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews poured it over sacrificial offerings.
Salt was so precious that people paid for it with gold. Wars were fought over it. Roads were built specifically to carry it. One of the busiest roads leading into Rome was the Via Salaria — the Salt Road — where merchants drove oxcarts full of crystals harvested from the sea pans at Ostia.
The Romans valued salt so highly that soldiers received a payment called salarium argentum — an allowance connected to salt — and from that word we get our modern word salary. (Historians debate whether soldiers were paid directly in salt or given money to purchase salt — but either way, salt was the measure of a man’s worth.)
And look at other words we still use today: salute, salary, saliva, salad, salvation, salubrious — all rooted in sal, the Latin word for salt. Salt is not just in our food. It is in our language, our bodies, and our history.
For more on the rich history of salt, read Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. Click Here to learn more!
The Importance of Salt
Right now, your heart is beating, your nerves are firing, and your muscles are moving. Every single one of those actions runs on salt — on dissolved mineral ions carrying an electrical charge from cell to cell, organ to organ, thought to feeling.
Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge when dissolved in body fluids. They regulate fluid balance inside and outside every cell. They power nerve signals. They trigger every muscle contraction, including the one keeping your heart beating right now.
Sodium is the lead electrolyte. But it does not work alone.
- Potassium works alongside sodium to maintain fluid balance and protect against high blood pressure.
- Magnesium acts as a cofactor for over 300 enzyme systems in the body, supporting energy production, bone health, sleep, mood, heart function, and blood sugar control.
- Calcium drives nerve signaling, aids in muscle contraction, and keeps bones strong.
- Chloride teams with sodium to maintain blood pH and power digestion through hydrochloric acid production.
Salt also creates saliva — the very first step of digestion. Yet saliva is important for more than digestion. It promotes stronger teeth because saliva carries the minerals needed to continually build up your enamel. Adequate salt and salivation help build the mineral matrix of your teeth and also your bones.
Without adequate sodium and supporting minerals, your body cannot maintain proper hydration or electrical signaling. Low sodium contributes to fatigue, headaches, muscle cramps, brain fog, dizziness, and poor exercise tolerance.
In my Cleanse with Friends Detox Guide, I dedicate an entire section to “The Importance of Salt & Electrolytes” — because this is one of the most misunderstood areas in modern nutrition. People are afraid of salt. But they are afraid of the wrong thing.
The Problem: Modern “Salt” Is Not Salt
Here's the truth that the food industry doesn't advertise.
The white powder in a standard table salt shaker is not really salt. It is a heavily processed industrial product. When manufacturers refine salt commercially, they remove all trace minerals as “impurities.” They heat the salt to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit — 648 degrees Celsius — stripping away every mineral except sodium and chloride. What remains is 99.5% pure sodium chloride.
Then they add things back in. Anti-caking agents keep it from clumping — substances like sodium ferrocyanide, calcium silicate, and sodium aluminosilicate. Synthetic iodine gets added. Sometimes dextrose — a sugar — gets added to stabilize the iodine.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) flagged in 2018 that silicon from calcium silicate — one of those anti-caking agents — can accumulate in the kidneys and liver, and that nanomaterials in calcium silicate need further investigation. Unfortunately, some studies also show that anti-caking agents degrade vitamin C in foods they contact.
More importantly, refined salt is stripped of the minerals that buffer sodium in the body. Dr. David Brownstein, holistic medicine practitioner, wrote the book Salt Your Way To Health. In it, he explains that the compound sodium chloride, in its isolated, processed form, does not resemble anything found in Nature. Without its mineral partners, sodium behaves differently — and this is likely a major reason why research links processed salt intake to hypertension and cardiovascular disease, even while natural mineral-rich salt tells a very different story.
Not only that, but processed table salt is more likely to impact calcium levels in the body, potentially leading to weaker bones. Too much salt of any kind draws calcium from the body.
Natural sea salts, on the other hand, contain more of this trace mineral, and because high-quality sea salt creates a more satisfying flavor, you don't need to use as much. The concern of over-salting and precipitating calcium is, therefore, lower. Of course, it's important to put that delicious sea salt on your calcium-rich veggies! Also, avoid processed, pre-packaged meals.
Be Like The Ocean
So salt itself is not the enemy. Refined, denatured, additive-loaded, industrial sodium chloride is the problem. And most people eat it every single day without realizing what they are actually consuming.
