| "..craving salty foods is a sign of zinc deficiency." .... Excess Calcium in cells causes cravings for salt because the extra salt helps the body dispose of excess Calcium. ................. Give them free access to salt. They should reach a limit where they don't want more beyond a certain high daily intake. There is a ton of testing that is pretty uninformative as a rule and few physicians will interpret other than that you are an overwrought mom. One important question is where his potassium is on a standard blood chemistry panel. OTher than that you start testing for tons of steroids and releasing factors and getting ambiguous numbers, as well as finding out that a lot of labs can't measure some of the steroids at the low levels present in children. Things like a 24 hour urine steroid fractionation is helpful. As far as I know the choices are Mayo clinic (which insurance does cover) or Meridian Valley labs (which insurance probably won't cover, and few doc's will deal with since they do *GASP* alternative medicine tests). I don't know if Great Smokies has a hormone profile that is relevant to children, though it is well worth checking. Vitamin B-5, adrenal cortex extract and licorice extract may help in addition to the C you already should be feeding him. BTW, you might want to get sodium ascorbate at the store and see if she can be conviced to eat that instead of salt. You might as well get something else useful into her with We use Sodium Ascorbate for Grace's main Vit C.... Does not cause stomach problems from the acid. We add Ascorbate Acid (Vit C) with DMSA/ALA, .... The report mentions possible adrenocortical hyperactivity when it is high sodium but low potassium. DDI also states that high sodium with high potassium is associated with elevated levels of potentially toxic elements. They say it indicates that further tests need to be done. ... In his paper Acrodynia written in 1946, Cheek explains in the summary section: Mercury potentiates the sympathetic nervous system and induces diuresis with the loss of extracellular volume and sodium. With excessive response toepinephrine and the presence of mercury, damage to the ascending loop Henle (in kidney) eventuates, causing extensive salt wasting. Diminished blood volume further stimulates the sympathetic adrenal system, but neither the increased blood pressure nor sodium retaining hormones offset the renal salt loss. It is really important to have him evaluated and NOT TO KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THE SALT SHAKER, as if he does have a serious problem retaining salt a high salt intake is essential for life. If you never were able to get a doc to take this seriously you need to seriously look into where to find real doctors. That level of salt craving is serious. The kidneys and adrenal glands work together to regulate the body's salt level. What they do is to hold salt in while throwing other minerals out. If either of them isn't working right the person quickly builds up other minerals but becomes deficient in sodium (from salt). Adrenalectomized rats denied access to salt die in a few days. Those allowed free access to salt water survive indefinitely. You are probably correct that chelation will fix it (or make it a lot better), and it may well be wise not to do anything active for treatment, but you might as well find out what is going on before deciding whether to hide the salt shaker or to let him have at it as much as ....... I know that craving for salt means adrenal problems. The kidneys each have on top of them two glands called adrenals. They are directly connected with the nervous system and they secrete a lot of different hormones... but among those, one called aldosterone. Aldosterone causes sodium retention and potassium excretion by the kidneys. This helps maintain water balance and blood volume, which, in turn, affects blood pressure. I am thinking that if your son craves for salt like this he must have a deficiency in aldosterone secretion. That leads not only to a lack of sodium, but also to an increased potassium level (his heart can be in trouble). I found these on the web (I guess you can find a lot more, knowing your son better): "Symptoms of a deficiency in aldosterone secretion (with resultant sodium loss) would include dehydration, excessive perspiration and urination, increased skin pigmentation, muscle twitching, heart palpitation." Also, some tests... - With normal aldosterone secretion, when you shine a light into your pupil, the pupil should constrict for at least thirty seconds. In cases of decreased secretion it will either dilate, alternately open and close, or constrict for less than thirty seconds. - Normal tongues should feel slick. If aldosterone is low your tongue may have another feeling. I think mercury is implicated as a possible cause ..... The regulation of salt appetite is tied in with the same hormone that allows us to interpret social information: read faces, etc. This hormone is oxytocin, and it is also the same thing as pitocin which is used to induce labor. There has been a high enough association between increased use of pitocin in the delivery of children that later develop autism, that even Time magazine covered a story saying that it was thought pitocin might cause autism. I think the proponents of that theory were missing a major point: that sulfation problems in mom would lead to her having problems continuting to make oxytocin during the delivery, and that might make that mother's labor stall or stop, requiring the use of pitocin. Since during the last trimester, the mother's delivery of sulfate to the blood increases dramatically, as well as the rate at which sulfate crosses the placenta, there seems to be a biological importance for the child to be born with a lot of sulfate reserve. The reason for this is likely to be related to brain development. Especially in the first weeks, the demand for sulfate for brain development (especially the cerebellum) is critical, and that need continues until the brain is almost completely myelinated...into toddlerhood, if things are moving on schedule. Another reason for this appetite could be that a great many transporters whose job it is to move things across membranes are sodium dependent, and cell's can't use the items these transporters carry until after they have been actively moved across the outside of the membrane of the cell into the inside of the cell. Sodium outside the cell for this type of transporter will move into the cell at the same time as the specific cargo moves. I wonder if taking in extra salt helps this process when transport is hurting for some other reason. When I was at an ASA conference in Phoenix recently, Jerry Newport, who has autism, was a speaker and said that when he first started his support group for those with autism, and asked people to bring something to eat, everyone brought potato chips, and he laughed because he said that was because those with autism have such an appetite for salt. This observation about salt preference is NOT something new to internet discussion groups! Just for reminder, the production of oxytocin is dependent upon a signal from SULFATED cholecystokinin. That requires the action of a sulfotransferase called TPST, which Rosemary Waring has measured in autism and found to be variously inhibited, but in some children, almost completely inhibited. Oxytocin has been measured in autism and found deficient, and it is a hormone capable of changing how the brain processes social signals. At the NIH autism cell signalling meeting in the fall, there were presentations showing how those with autism do not process facial information normally, and look at the mouth instead of the eyes, generally. In oxytocin knockout mice, they know that these animals process social signals abnormally in their brains, but it is not a "wiring" problem. If you give them oxytocin, the social deficit totally goes away. |
| Salt Craving |