Salty foods increase thirst but only in the short term: in reality they also push us to eat more and can trigger rather serious pathologies. An important one tells it research that simulated the journey of a human being to Mars and which was conducted by an international team composed of scientists from Vanderbilt University (United States), the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and the German Space Agency (DLR).
Do salty foods make you eat more?
The study overturns previous research and establishes some important concepts that are also useful in our daily behavior. If we have always had the feeling that chips, pretzels and peanuts, however tasty, cause thirst, things are not exactly like that (and they are actually much more complex). In conducting the tests of the flight simulation on Mars, the research group focused on the problems of astronaut nutrition, the first of which is the management of water reserves, which are invaluable during the long journey to the red planet .
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The researchers subjected 10 male volunteers to an experience in a capsule that simulated space travel. One group remained in the small spaceship for 105 days, another for 205, both following the same diet, except for a few weeks in which the quantities of salt were changed (6, 9 or 12 grams per day). And here’s the surprise: the cosmonauts whose salt dose had been increased (from 6 to 12 grams per day) had unexpected behavior, that is, they drank less and ate more than others. The same mechanism then occurred in a similar experiment on mice. In essence, it emerged that a diet rich in salt causes the body to save water but increases hunger.
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Too much salt is bad for your muscles
The reason for this mechanism is due to some molecules, i glucocorticoids, which break down muscle proteins to turn them into urea, which in turn helps the body reabsorb water in the kidneys. While on the one hand the sensation of thirst induced by salty food increases, on the other it seems that it only lasts a short time, and that it actually helps to save water over 24 hours, which is useful in extreme conditions such as a trip to Mars. The other aspect is that this adaptive dynamic of our body in avoiding dehydration has as a consequence that of a muscle degeneration, which are deprived of their proteins. The consequences are serious: to conserve water the body squeezes its muscles and draws on its energy reserve, exposing us to high risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
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Is hunger or thirst better?
The paper, published on Journal of Clinical Investigation, explains that to survive, the organism adapts again: to avoid the destruction of our body, the sensation of hunger is induced, precisely to maintain muscle tone and conserve energy. This pushes us to eat more (and not drink more) after consuming salty foods. In short, the study makes it clear that salt influences the body’s energy consumption and explains that a diet too rich in salt has negative consequences beyond what we imagined and beyond what science has revealed so far.
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2024-05-31 08:03:09
#salty #foods #eat #salt #bad #muscles
