Salt, saltier, saltiest

An informative look at recent Holistic Fitness News

DR KAPLAN'S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Return to the Fitness training News and Holistic Health Archive

Salt was back in the news this week, but it was just repetition of some bad publicity for salt once again. Old salt in a new salt cellar, one might say.

It has long been made clear that we, in the West, eat too much salt. In fact we may be eating up to ten times our daily requirement of salt. This can have consequences. It may raise your blood pressure making you more vulnerable to heart attacks and strokes. This has been known for some time and led to the marketing of some 'lo salts' that have a lower sodium content than the standard salt, sodium chloride.

Most fast foods such as hamburgers and pizza are laced with salt. Now it seems that many ready meals available from supermarkets are far too salty for our health. In an article in The Guardian, it was reported that the Food Standards Agency found that half of all ready meals contained at least 50% of our daily salt requirements. (RDA - recommended daily allowance). This is unsettling as it indicates that as a society:
1. We are addicted to some degree, to salt
2. This addiction is known to food producers who give the market what it wants rather than what it needs (food with less added salt)
3. Somebody needs to wake up about this and start insisting that prepared food packages indicate exactly how much salt is included and specifically what percentage of our RDA of salt a single portion of the meal contains. At the moment the emphasis is on calories. But if you eat a lot of calories you will start to put on weight. If you eat 10 x your RDA of salt, nothing will feel wrong until something really goes wrong.

The article goes on to name some specific dishes produced by well-known supermarket chains. The worst was a shepherds pie produced by a famous chain. A single pie contained 98.3% of our RDA of salt. Another dish, a lasagne listed as 'Good for You' contained two thirds of our RDA. The Food Standards Agency claimed that ready foods laced with salt are far from 'healthy' and that customers are being mislead if these foods are labeled as such.

Homeopathy Awareness Week

Hope you noticed it, because it ends on Saturday, 21st June. The British Homeopathic Association (www.trusthomeopathy.org and Tel: 0870 444 3950) has produced some useful consumer information about homeopathy.

In a recent leaflet they describe homeopathy briefly in five points.

1. Homeopathy is often successful where other treatments have failed and can help reduce your need to take conventional medicine.
2. Homeopathic medicines are not addictive and have no dangerous side-effects
3. You will be treated as a whole person - emotional and environmental factors also affect your well-being.
4. Homeopathy tackles the cause of ill health rather than suppressing symptoms.
5. People often say that homeopathic treatment has made them feel better in themselves.

My own view is that homeopathy encourages the body to heal itself. Sometimes our bodies can heal themselves but for some reason are not doing this. Homeopathy, in my opinion, simply gets our inherent healing ability to jump into action.

The British Homeopathic Association welcomes enquiries and is happy to supply anyone with a free information pack on homeopathy as well as a list of homeopathic doctors, pharmacists, dentists, podiatrists and vets.

Here are the useful homeopathic links that I published at the beginning of Homeopathic Awareness Week. This list will not be repeated until the same time next year.

USEFUL HOMEOPATHIC LINKS

http://www.homeopathyawareness.com
website dedicated to homeopathy awareness week June 14-21

http://www.trusthomeopathy.org
An excellent medical homeopathy site loaded with information on homeopathy and how to locate a homeopathic doctor.

http://www.hptg.co.uk
A site for doctors, vets and nurses wanting to study homeopathy.

Dr Kaplan's personal website is: www.drkaplan.co.uk and his practice website is www.140harleystreet.co.uk and he can be contacted on (020) 7487 3416