79pmooney

The body needs salt in the system as an agent to make things work. (Sorry, no formal background here at all.) Less salt than that amount and the body suffers. Now the body uses salt but it does not break down salt. So the salt you eat must be eliminated. It works to eliminate the excess by adding it to urine and sweat. But the body does not have a "saltometer" (equivalent of thermometer) that works in real time. All it can do is say that since you regularly intake X amount of salt, it needs to add Y percent of salt into urine and sweat. That works fine on most days but that day you sweat 2 gallons of Y% sweat, you have just emptied your body's salt reserve. Crash time! So the bike rider who regularly eats X salt per day needs to replace a lot of salt on the hot day.

But suppose you eat far less salt every day, like say half? X/2. Well, the body adjusts and just puts Y/2 percent salt in your sweat. Same two gallons of sweat? You just lost and need to replace half as much. Now, this reset of our "saltometers" takes a lot of time. I started in the winter of my big racing year. Shot for no more that 1000mg/day. By summer, my sweat no longer stung when it got in my eyes. I never saw traces of salt on my jersey, even on the hottest and driest days. My clothes felt better after riding. The low salt regime was tough at first but it got easier. Salted foods started tasting too salty. I started seeing how incredibly much salt we eat in this country. It is everywhere. I only did this rigorously for one year but the results were striking. And what a boost in hot weather races!

In the third world there are countries where salt is scarce enough and expensive enough that only the wealthy can afford to buy it and salt their food. The rest simply don't. And do just fine. But if one of us goes to visit those of the working class, we'd better bring salt or we're heading for trouble! And the wealthy make it a point not to eat their food. Class, etc. yes, but also they'd keel over like us.