Salt
Salt is one of the carnivore controversies. Most of the long term carnivores either don't put salt on their food at all, or do so very sparingly.
In the beginning, the recommendation is to salt your food to taste. Don't add salt to your water, don't try and eat a certain amount per day, just add whatever tastes good to your food. Most people find that over time (months and years) they want less and less salt.
Similar to stopping electrolytes, stopping salt abruptly can initiate an unpleasant withdrawal process. This doesn't mean you need salt any more than feeling crap after quitting coffee means that you need coffee. This is a withdrawal process. Your body has been compensating for the additional salt by doing things like making you thirsty. When you stop adding salt to your food or water, it takes a while for your body to adjust.
The most common side effect from suddenly reducing salt is cramps, but people have reported a wide range of symptoms including fatigue, grumpiness, headaches etc. The best way to minimise symptoms is to slowly reduce your salt intake over at least a couple of weeks. Withdrawal symptoms can be surprisingly unpleasant, so please be careful.
I quit salt about six months into carnivore. I was feeling pretty good, but my psoriasis hadn't budged. At first, I quit cold turkey and got horrible cramps. They started at night, but slowly got worse until I was getting them at random times during work. So I added salt back in and within a day or so the cramps went away.
This time I started to reduce salt slowly over a couple of weeks. What worked really well was eating salt directly instead of salting my food. First thing in the morning and immediately before bed, I’d put a little salt on my finger and eat it until it stopped tasting "sweet". This seemed to be enough salt to keep the cramps away.
Over the next few months, my psoriasis began to slowly heal. While it's hard to know anything for sure, I'm reasonably confident that it was the salt that made a difference because I reintroduced salt twice, and both times my psoriasis started to come back. Interestingly, now I can salt to taste, and it doesn't seem to make my psoriasis come back.
There are lots of anecdotes from people who struggled to get the results they wanted from carnivore, only for everything to magically clear up once they cut out salt. In particular, I've talked to half a dozen people whose psoriasis didn't start to heal until they completely removed salt.
Links
- Blood, Sweat, and Tears: How much salt do we really need? – Amber O'Hearn
- Why I don't eat salt – Steak and Butter Gal
- Salt on the carnivore diet – Dr. Anthony Chaffee