The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [48]
Other Problems Caused by Salt
Maybe you don’t salt your food. Good for you—but you should be aware that despite your good intentions, there’s probably more salt in your diet than you think. The average American eats 10 to 12 grams of salt every day. Almost 80 percent of this comes from processed foods—even those considered healthful. Two slices of whole-wheat bread, for instance, give you 1.5 grams of salt. So automatically there’s salt in any sandwich you make—even before you add salty meats like ham, salami, or bologna.
A high-salt diet increases your risk of kidney stones, stroke, and stomach cancer.
It also impairs sleep—this is one of the least-recognized benefits of low-salt diets. When you cut the salt out of your diet, you will sleep better almost immediately. Low-salt diets also have been shown to reduce motion and air sickness.
Many other foods are acidic and able to disrupt the body’s acid-base balance. Every time you eat cereals, peanuts, peanut butter, bread, muffins, cheese, sandwiches, pizza, doughnuts, cookies—basically, any processed food—you are overloading your body with dietary acid. Unless you balance these foods with healthful alkaline fruits and vegetables, you will be out of acid-base balance—and at increased risk for many chronic diseases.
Potassium
Another crucial chemical balance in the body is that of potassium and sodium. Paleo diets contained about ten times as much potassium as sodium. The average American eats about five times as much sodium as potassium every day. The beauty of the Paleo Diet is that it swiftly returns your body to humanity’s original high intake of potassium and low intake of sodium.
Digestive Diseases
Fiber is absolutely essential to your health—and at least thirteen illnesses can result when you don’t get enough fiber in your diet. Some of the most common digestive diseases that develop when you eat the standard American diet with its overload of refined grains, sugars, dairy, and processed foods are:
• Constipation
• Varicose veins
• Hemorrhoids
• Heartburn
• Indigestion
• Appendicitis
• Diverticular disease of the colon
• Crohn’s disease
• Ulcerative colitis
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Duodenal ulcer
• Hiatal hernia
• Gallstones
The Paleo Diet is naturally high in fiber because of its abundance of fruits and vegetables—about three to five times as much fiber each day as there is in the average American diet.
Some people worry that lean meat-based diets are constipating. This is not true. Meat, fish, and seafood are not constipating at all. The famous Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent years mapping and exploring the Far North at the turn of the twentieth century. During his expeditions on dogsleds, he frequently lived off the land for more than a year at a time. He and his men were entirely dependent on the all-animal food diet that could be obtained from hunting and fishing. Amazingly, he reported in his journal that men who had suffered from constipation on their former rations of flour, corn biscuits, rice, and breads were almost completely cured of their problem within a week of adopting the all-meat (high in protein, but with enough fat to avoid the risk of protein toxicity) menu of the Eskimos.
Years later, when Stefansson returned to civilization, he and another explorer were put on an all-meat diet for an entire year, under controlled hospital conditions, by the most respected scientists and physicians of the day. The clinical evaluations at the end of the year showed bowel function to be normal. Just like Stefansson and the Eskimos, you will not suffer from constipation when lean meat, fish, and seafood dominate your diet. In fact, you will find that most of your digestive problems will disappear.
Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis
As with every