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.
The Carb That Makes You Leaner and Healthier
Eating carbohydrates before bed has become a hot topic in nutrition, and some people think its a bad idea. This often comes from the belief that eating carbs before you go to sleep leads to weight gain. There is some evidence to support this argument, but all carbohydrates are not equal, and certain types of carbohydrates can help you lose weight and get a good night sleep.
The KetoDiet can reduce athletes' anaerobic performance
The "Ketogenic diet" (KetoDiet) is a hot topic at the moment due to quick weight loss results and improvements in endurance based sports performance. However, recent studies have found that a KetoDiet is not a great option for strengths, speed and power athlete looking to improve their performance. [1,2]
Many endurance athletes have found success with KetoDiet because fat provides more energy than carbs in an aerobic driven environment. [3] This is not true for the anaerobic energy system because the Krebs cycle, the primary energy generator in the anaerobic energy system, produces significantly less energy when catabolising fat or protein when compared to carbohydrates (CHO).
Understanding Insulin - The key to staying lean
We say insulin and people think: diabetes. And yes, it’s true that insulin is very important to diabetics because their pancreas no longer makes enough of it (and so they must inject it) but in fact, anybody interested in looking good, feeling good and living longer should educate themselves about how insulin functions in the body.
For those who have been following me on Instagram (@stretch_rayner) you might have seen me measuring my blood glucose levels and ketone level during my KetoDiet experiments.