Chapter / Rule 8 – Cut the Salt
When I read this title I was all ready to jump on the contradiction of telling you to reduce your salt (because it will cause you to retain more water) but to also take an electrolyte supplement (of which salt is a key ingredient)
But, to my pleasant surprise, Harper already addresses this:
“Yes you body needs some salt…(which is why you’ll be drinking electrolyte replacements during this program), but too much leads to water retention, which leads nowhere good.”
As we previously noted in the electrolytes section, there is little point in reducing simple water weight when you’re going for an aesthetic change. It just isn’t going to make a big difference for the most part. So while a lot of salt leads nowhere good, it doesn’t lead anywhere particularly bad either.
This is all contingent on you not having an existing blood pressure issue. People who have had their blood pressure checked by a medical professional and found it to be higher than it should could consider reducing their sodium intake. Of course, you should listen to your doctor first before some random chick on the internet.
“…when you’re looking to lose weight over the long haul and then stay thin, you should shoot for less than 2,000 milligrams [of salt] a day.”
Here Harper just used “thin” and “lose weight” interchangeably. Many weight-loss products will do this, since most of us associate weight loss with fat loss. However when talking about water weight, it’s important to make sure you’re using the correct term. If you lose scale weight, say 5 pounds, by dropping 5 pounds of water weight (a very feasible thing to do), then to keep that weight off for the long haul, you would likely need to continue eating less salt. But why bother? It’s meaningless weight that will keep you from enjoying things like bread, french fries or popcorn.
As far as needing to keep sodium below 2,000 to “stay thin,” that is completely baseless. Sodium doesn’t lead people to being un-thin. So don’t worry so much about it.
The end of this chapter is a little bit scary:
A box of how to become a big jerk with an eating disorder.
Goodness just look at some of this advice. When your friend is kind enough to offer to make you dinner, you really need to be sure to let them know you’ve already had 778 milligrams of sodium today – could they make sure to only offer you a portion with 1,222 mg? Oh, your mother-in-law wants to make you and your husband a delicious home-cooked meal? Haha nope, you’ve got a DIET to uphold! What’s more important than that? Instead of eating at the office party, follow around your hot intern. She’ll dig it.
Moral: Unless you have an existing blood pressure issue, don’t worry about your sodium intake. It won’t help you lose fat, and the scale weight you lose is meaningless.
Chapter / Rule 9 – Take advantage of the restorative power of daily fish oil
Want to know a secret?
I’m not particularly knowledgeable about supplements. It’s not a subject that gets me very excited.
There, I admitted it.
So, here’s what I’m going to do with this section: We’ll use this as a little tutorial on how to traverse through a subject you’re unfamiliar with. This is also a great chapter to do so – Harper throws out a bunch of intimidating science-y terms. What fun!
Let’s start with the opening paragraph:
“You may have heard that taking a fish oil supplement every day is good for your heart…[scientists have] come across the benefits of fish oil for people who diet and exercise as well. Fish oil can help with post-exercise soreness and also boost immunity.”
So here we have 3 claims about fish oil:
- Good for your heart
- Help with post-exercise soreness
- Boost immunity
After this, there is a sensationalist paragraph about how soreness means you’re probably going to find an excuse to not work out the next day, so take your fish oil. This is fluff – entertaining fluff that is relevant to your life, to be sure – but it will not give you a better understanding of if you should take fish oil.
Next is a passage that is a bit tough to digest:
“Bear with me: in the human inflammatory cycle, a molecule dubbed E2, or PGE2 (for prostaglandin), signals other cells to become inflamed and, thus, painful. So the research question was: Can we inhibit this process in a healthful way?
To find out, the investigators tested the effects of 8 different dietary oils containing high amounts of the anti-inflammatory molecule called docosahexaenoic acid. Result: “It was identified that fish oil best inhibited the PGE2 signaling…[and] docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found in abundance in fish oil, was identified as a key factor of inhibition of PGE2 signaling.”
Whew, that was a mouthful. Confused yet? Don’t worry, Harper will sum it all up for you:
“In essence: yay fish oil!”
Well, I personally would like a bit of a deeper understanding – something between that difficult-to-comprehend first passage and a simple “yay!” You deserve that too.
First, let’s establish what we’re trying to figure out here:
- Harper is using a study to confirm his assertion that fish oil helps with soreness and inflammation.
- We need to determine if this study actually does confirm that fish oil helps with soreness and inflammation.
So, let’s look up this study. I use PubMed to find almost all of the studies I’ve looked at in these series. You could also just Google the title of the study. (Harper has a works cited section in the back of the book, thankfully.) We lucked out with this study – the full text is available for free. Many journals require you to pay to access more than just the abstract (A brief summary of the study). Sometimes you can miss crucial context without the full text – so it’s best to reserve complete judgement on a piece until you can read and understand the whole thing.
After a cursory glance over this paper I have reached one conclusion:
This is WAY over my head.
I’d say it’s over the head of most non-biologists. I have very little hope of understanding what is going on in this paper – so I will stick with the parts that are generally in English: the “Discussion” and “Conclusion” sections:
“Finally, we conclude that fish oil is a promising dietary oil used to prevent and reduce inflammation-mediated diseases, such as heart diseases, cancers, arthritis, and pain.”
“… taking 500 –1000 mg fish oil daily is recommended based on the findings in this study.”
So we have determined that this study concludes what Harper says it does, and even gives us a recommendation for how much fish oil to take. Sadly, the methods used to gather and analyze this data are way over my head. It could be complete crap – I wouldn’t know the difference.
What do you do when you don’t understand a study?
The further you step away from the root of the study, the more caution you should take. I do have a few trusted sources I turn to for nutrition information. I went to 3 different sources who look at research and give layman’s descriptions of them:
So, in comparing these 3 different sources, there are some common conclusions:
- Fish oil can help with inflammation.
- Enough fish oil can help with muscle soreness.
- Too much fish oil can have a negative effect on your immune system.
This last point makes a sort of sense to me (I could be wrong), since inflammation is a response of your immune system. Reduce inflammation too much, you’re compromising your immune system. Maybe.
Based on this, I would conclude that taking fish oil to help with decreasing inflammation and muscle soreness may be a good idea and perhaps something worth pursuing. 1-6 grams is a wide range of recommendations, and is also a crap ton of pills. The upper doses seem to be the ones that help best with soreness.
That doesn’t sound very conclusive, Kat. This didn’t help at all.
Well, that’s because I haven’t devoted more than about 3 hours to look at all this stuff, compared to a lifetime of some of these researchers. Yeah, 3 hours is how long I’ve spent reading everything above. It probably sounds like a lot. But even if it doesn’t, imagine the fact that you may find yourself needing to do similar research for your multi-vitamin, calcium supplement, creatine, or even if you should eat eggs.
That’s a lot of time.
That’s especially a lot of time for not coming up with a very definitive answer.
If you don’t have the time to devote towards researching a topic thoroughly, that’s fine! Most of us won’t bother to do everything I just did above. The answer then is to just not take yourself super seriously. Don’t take a hard moral stand on something you’re not willing to look at the studies for.
Moral: Fish oil has a ton of positive research around it. It would appear that fish oil is helpful in reducing inflammation and even preventing muscle soreness if you take enough. Too much, however, and you may suppress your immune system. 1-6 grams seems to be the range of recommendations.
Making Sense of Modern Fitness 
I like this piece. Just to make note of, though. There’s a difference between sodium-sensitive hypertension and essential hypertension. For some people, cutting sodium makes a big difference in BP. For others, the effects are negligible. There are a lot of mechanisms contributing to the development of hypertension.
Thanks Greg!
And absolutely, a simple decrease in sodium intake won’t help everyone considering the wide variety of pathways your body can take to increase or decrease blood pressure. This is why reducing sodium could be considered – but bearing in mind to listen to your doctor about medical issues over random internet dudes and chicks. Your comment gives great context to that section!
Who the hell eats raw string beans as a snack?
Or Persian Cucumbers without some sort of dressing for that matter.