From Keto to Stress: Why Many Midlife Men Need More Salt Than Guidelines Allow - PART 6
Most men in midlife have been told the same thing about salt: eat less, protect your heart. But the truth is, salt needs aren’t one-size-fits-all. In fact, depending on your diet, lifestyle, and health, you may actually need more salt than mainstream guidelines recommend.
If you’re following a low-carb diet, training hard, working a physical job, drinking a lot of coffee, under high stress, or sweating buckets in the sauna, cutting salt can leave you feeling weak, dizzy, or constantly fatigued. For some men, it can even make blood pressure and heart health worse, not better.
This article breaks down the real-life scenarios where men in midlife need extra salt to perform, recover, and feel their best, and why blindly following the old “less salt is healthier” message could be holding you back.
1. Men on Ketogenic or Very Low-Carb Diets:
Low-carb diets (including keto and Paleo-style diets) have become popular for weight loss and metabolic health. If you’re on one, take note: when you cut carbs, your body dumps salt. This happens because reducing carb intake lowers insulin levels. Insulin isn’t just a blood sugar hormone, it also signals the kidneys to retain sodium.
On a high-carb diet, insulin prompts your kidneys to hold onto more sodium (and water), which is partly why high-carb diets can cause bloating or high blood pressure in some people[1][2]. Conversely, on a low-carb diet, your insulin levels stay low, and the kidneys start excreting sodium at a higher rate.
In the first week of a keto diet, it’s common to lose a lot of water weight, along with that water, you’re flushing out sodium and other electrolytes [3]. The notorious “keto flu” (those awful feelings of fatigue, headache, dizziness when you start keto) is essentially electrolyte depletion, chiefly sodium loss [4].
The remedy is simple: increase your salt intake. Experts on ketogenic diets (and research by Dr. Stephen Phinney and colleagues) recommend that low-carb dieters consume an extra 1–2 grams of sodium per day (on top of normal) to feel and perform their best [5]. In practical terms, that could mean drinking broth, liberally salting your food, or even taking salt tablets.
Many keto-adapted men find they feel optimal with 4–7 grams of sodium per day (which is ~2 to 3 teaspoons of salt) [6], well above the standard “limit,” because their body is continually excreting sodium.
If you’re a midlife guy who went low-carb to lose weight or control blood sugar and you’re feeling crummy, sodium might be the missing piece. Up your intake (with healthy salt sources), and you’ll likely banish the fatigue and lightheadedness that otherwise plague keto novices.
Remember, low-carb plus low-salt is a recipe for feeling terrible, but low-carb with adequate salt can make you feel energised and clear-headed once adapted.
2. Athletes and Heavy Sweaters:
Do you exercise intensely, do physical labour, or spend a lot of time in the heat? If so, your sweat is depleting salt from your body constantly.
Sweat contains about 1 gram of sodium per litre on average (it varies by person), plus chloride and some potassium. If you do an hour of vigorous exercise, you might easily lose 1–2 litres of sweat, that’s a gram or two of sodium gone.
Endurance athletes (runners, cyclists, etc.) and those doing long gym sessions need to actively replace sodium to maintain performance and prevent hyponatremia [7].
Guideline alert: The standard 2,300 mg sodium recommendation is for sedentary individuals. For athletes, recommendations often double. The American College of Sports Medicine suggests consuming sports drinks or snacks with sodium during prolonged exercise. Some studies indicate athletes may need 5-7 grams of sodium a day or more, especially in hot climates.
Signs you need more salt when training: muscle cramps, dizziness, rapid heart rate, or the feeling of “hitting a wall” could all indicate electrolyte depletion. Midlife men who take up endurance sports or high-intensity interval training for health should not carry over the “avoid salt” mentality from couch life; your needs increase with activity.
A simple practice is to add a pinch of high-quality salt to your water or sports drink for any workout over an hour, and be generous with salting your recovery meals. Also, if you use a sauna for health benefits (which causes heavy sweating), remember to replenish lost sodium afterwards.
3. Men with Low Blood Pressure (or Orthostatic Hypotension):
Not everyone has or is at risk for high blood pressure; some people naturally run low blood pressure. While low BP is generally a good thing for longevity, if it’s too low, it can cause symptoms (dizziness, faintness).
Certain conditions like autonomic dysfunction or POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) involve trouble regulating blood pressure upon standing, and increasing salt intake is actually a frontline recommendation in those cases to boost blood volume.
Even without a diagnosable condition, some men just have borderline low BP and feel better if they eat a bit more salt. For instance, if you’re the guy who always had BP like 100/65 and you feel tired and cold easily, you likely aren’t the person who needed to cut salt in the first place! Quite the opposite, you may benefit from salting your food more liberally to raise your blood pressure to a comfortable range.
Functional Medicine Doctors sometimes advise patients with chronic hypotension to drink salted tomato juice or broth daily. So if you’ve been slavishly following low-salt advice despite already having low/normal BP, you might be inadvertently making yourself feel worse.
4. Those Under High Stress (Physical or Emotional):
When you’re under significant stress, whether it’s intense training, work stress, or lack of sleep, your adrenal glands churn out more cortisol and adrenaline.
These hormones influence electrolyte balance. Acute stress can cause you to excrete more sodium (cortisol has some aldosterone-like effects), and it also increases your need for specific minerals.
There’s an old idea in naturopathic circles that during stress, people crave salt as a way to support the adrenal glands (“adrenal fatigue” concept). While not an officially recognised condition, it is true that being under chronic stress can make low sodium even harder for the body to tolerate.
One interesting tidbit: studies have shown that sodium intake can affect stress response and mood. Low-sodium diets are linked to higher levels of anxiety and stress hormones, whereas adequate sodium can have an anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing) effect [8].
If you’re often anxious or during times of pressure, you find yourself reaching for salty snacks, that’s your body trying to self-medicate! So, men dealing with a high-pressure job or lifestyle might find they feel more stable by not skimping on salt. In fact, sodium is involved in brain function, and low salt is associated with cognitive impairment and mood disturbances if severe [8].
Bottom line: during stressful periods (not chronic illness, but day-to-day stress), don’t compound things by depriving your body of salt. You likely need slightly more to meet the increased physiological demands. Many people notice that they crave salty foods when they are stressed. Go ahead and have a healthy salty snack; it might help you cope better.
5. High Coffee or Fluid Intake / Intermittent Fasters:
If you’re someone who drinks a lot of coffee or water, or you practice intermittent fasting (skipping meals but still drinking fluids), you may need more salt.
Caffeine is a diuretic; it causes your kidneys to excrete sodium and water [8]. Each cup of coffee you drink makes you pee out some extra salt. So the more coffee, the more you should be mindful of replacing sodium (and potassium).
A rule of thumb some nutritionists suggest: for every 1–2 cups of coffee, have a pinch of salt or some salty food to offset the losses [8]. Similarly, if you’re fasting (say you skip breakfast and only have black coffee or plain water), you’re going a long period without any dietary sodium. Meanwhile, your body may still be excreting it. Many intermittent fasters report feeling lightheaded or weak, which is often remedied by adding electrolytes during the fast (for example, putting a pinch of unrefined salt in water or using an electrolyte powder that has sodium).
If you fast and notice dizziness by late afternoon, try salting your water; it’s essentially zero calories but can make a world of difference in how you feel. The same goes if you’re drinking gallons of water a day because you heard it’s healthy; overhydration without salt can dilute your electrolytes.
You don’t need to go crazy; ensure some of your water intake includes minerals (like a squeeze of lemon and salt, or an electrolyte tablet).
6. Sweat-heavy Professions or Environments:
Are you a construction worker, landscaper, or do you work in a hot factory? Or perhaps you love hot yoga or long stints in the sauna? Any environment where you’re sweating buckets regularly means you have higher sodium requirements.
Historically, before air conditioning, workers would actually take salt tablets to ward off heat exhaustion. This isn’t antiquated,even today, military personnel in desert climates up their salt. If your shirt has white salt rings after sweating, that’s a clear sign you’re a “salty sweater” and likely need to replenish more.
The general advice: include salty snacks (like nuts, olives, pickles) in your work meals and consider an electrolyte drink on very hot days. Do not just chug plain water, as that could lead to hyponatremia. For men in such jobs, the standard RDA doesn’t apply; you might need 2-3x that amount of salt due to losses.
Always listen to thirst and cravings; they tend to be good guides when you’re physically active in the heat. And importantly, if you’ve been conditioned to think “salt is bad,” you may ignore those signals, to your detriment.
7. Individuals on Low-Sodium Medical Diets Unnecessarily:
There are some cases where doctors put patients on low-salt diets for conditions like kidney disease, liver cirrhosis, or heart failure. Those are specialised situations where fluid retention is a big risk, and yes, salt needs to be controlled medically. But many relatively healthy men were told by their doctors, “cut down on salt,” just because their blood pressure was borderline or they had some protein in urine, etc.
If you fit that scenario but have since improved your health (lost weight, started exercising, or cleaned up your diet), you might no longer need to be as strict. For instance, weight loss and exercise can reduce blood pressure significantly, independent of salt. If you’ve done those and your BP is better, reintroducing moderate salt might not raise it much at all.
Many physicians, when presented with newer data, will agree that moderate salt isn’t harmful if you’re otherwise healthy and balanced in diet. The key is context: if you have a specific medical condition requiring low sodium, follow that guidance. But if not, and you were only doing it “just in case,” you likely don’t have to.
To sum up, men who are active, eating low-carb, under stress, heavy coffee drinkers, or who sweat a lot absolutely need more salt than the average person. And “more” means not being limited to the 2,300 mg threshold – it could mean 3,000, 4,000, even 5,000+ mg of sodium daily (which, remember, is still just in the 1.5-2.5 teaspoons of salt range) to feel their best. These needs are well-recognised in athletic and nutrition circles [9] [10]. It’s time mainstream health advice recognised them too, instead of blanket recommendations.
As a midlife man, assess which of these categories you fall into. If you identify with any, consider this permission to season your food liberally and perhaps supplement electrolytes without guilt. Your body likely requires it.
