Can The Body’s Natural Salt Levels Change over Time?

In order to regulate blood-pressure and encourage proper muscle-function, it is important to maintain correct levels of sodium in your body, and recent studies have challenged previous ideas to how this is best achieved.

Previously, there was a consensus among the medical community that constant sodium-levels were produced by the correct balance of sodium-intake and urinary-expulsion, but new studies suggest that levels naturally change throughout the month – regardless of the amount of salt consumed.

The bespoke study, which focused on astronauts during long-term isolation scenarios, refutes widely accepted narratives relating to how sodium levels are maintained, which has the potential to have an impact upon how abnormal sodium levels in the body can be treated.

Past studies have demonstrated that when the intake of salt increases – the level of sodium in the body is balanced through urinary expulsion, which seeks to ensure that salt-levels in the body are safe and harmless. This process is determined by a hormone termed, “Aldosterone”, which allows sodium to be absorbed by the kidneys and, “flushed-out” of the body when the time is right. However, these studies were conducted over fairly short periods, and therefore fail to address how the body responds to intensive-salt-intake.

In order to explore this, research examined sodium-intake and its excretion over a longer period, and the data gathered suggests that sodium levels in the body produced longer-term changes that are independent of salt-intake. This was conducted with 12 male participants over a period of between 105 and 520 days in an enclosed environment designed to replicate the isolation of prolonged habitat on the international space station.  As anticipated, the levels of the hormone, “Aldosterone”, increased when less salt was consumed, but the decrease in salt-intake also led to a reduction of the hormone, “Cortisol”, suggesting that the two hormones work in opposition to ensure that correct sodium-intake and expulsion from the body is maintained.