Salt in my Years
Heading into 2025 with a taste for something new?
Walking toward the kitchen suddenly felt like walking through molasses. I had just finished editing a document in my home office and was ready for lunch so left my desk for a bathroom break, then some food. Just three feet from the refrigerator, a numbness traveled down my left arm and my entire body broke into a cold sweat. My soaked tank top stuck to my skin.
“I just need something to drink,” I thought, but when I grabbed the water pitcher, my hand shook so much I knew I could not maintain a steady pour. I tried peeling open a tangerine but couldn’t get a good grip. I managed to get a rice cracker from the counter into my mouth. I sat down for a bit, reached for my phone on the desk, wondering whether I should call 911. “But that’s for emergencies,” I thought. “I’ll call my husband at work instead.” You never want to think that you are the emergency.
Soon there was a slow downward motion—my body, falling. Please don’t let this be what I think it is. My thoughts seemed audible. Am I talking? Despite years of a vegan diet, yoga, biking and hiking, I feared the ghost of family heart disease had finally caught up with me. My dad had his first heart attack and a quadruple bypass at 48. His brothers both had heart attacks by 50. Their mother died of one at 56. I’d just turned 52.
My thoughts jumbled as I passed out. I am not done, I have things left to do, books I need to write, I love my life…
I woke up who-knows-how-long later with my face on the hardwood floor, phone in hand. Disoriented, I got up and sat back my computer and put my glasses back on as if I were going back to work, like the zombies of Jim Jarmusch’s movie, The Dead Don’t Die, drawn to whatever they consumed (or consumed them?) in their previously human lives. Then I realized my head—no, whole left side of my face hurt, and a glance in the mirror showed the beginnings of bruises.
“Are you an athlete?” asked the ER nurse as she took my vitals. I laughed and shook my head no.
“Well your resting blood pressure is perfect and your heart rate is good,” she shrugged. “And you look fit.”
I actually laughed out loud. Who could she be talking to? I thought.
I had not been an active teen or young adult. I started down the road of therapy and better choices in my late 20s. I fell in love with yoga at 30 when I moved to Los Angeles (a pre-requisite?) Then tried bellydancing, mountain biking, and long walks. Movement suddenly felt good. I had been vegetarian in my twenties then chose to be vegan by 40—for the animals, the planet and my health. But still, I would never dare call myself athletic. That word was reserved for gymnasts and marathoners—those people wearing spandex and cycling up mountains on Saturday mornings. Not me, the casual pleasure rider.
A move away from vegan junk food and toward more whole food plant-based diet at age 50 lead to me cooking without oil, avoiding sugar and salt. Resisting diet culture, for decades I stopped weighing myself. I just knew my clothes fit and I felt good.
A few months after my 50th birthday, a 3-day stomach bug followed by a sun-soaked kayaking trip left me depleted, leading up to the fainting incident. After overnight hospital observation, many tests and a trip to the cardiologist, it was determined that my heart is healthy and arteries are clear. Diagnosis: vasovagal syncope. Such episodes are common, with triggers varying from person to person. My husband faints at the sight of a needle. His trigger is emotional, explained the doctor. Mine is physical. Specifically, dehydration. “I don’t say this to many people but add salt to your diet,” said the doc. “And sit down and put your feet up if you ever start feeling woozy again.”
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”
-Isak Dinesen
Salt. That’s all it was? The teeny little substance made up of two elements (sodium and chlorine), which we rarely think about, yet remains essential to all life?
Oh.
This past summer I found myself on the Danish island of Læsø. Unbeknownst to me, the producer of the most expensive salt in the world, which is why they call it white gold. A tour guide explained to us how the ice age left a frozen table of clay beneath the nearby marshlands, making spongey pockets perfect for collecting salty groundwater from the nearby Kattegat Strait.
Monks started seething salt here in the Middle Ages. The process involves heating the water in large flat iron pans over a wood-stoked fire in huts, until the water evaporates, and salt crystallizes on the surface. Then it is shoveled into baskets, to drain and dry. It ain’t pretty but the result is delicious.
I brought some back for a chef friend and she reported back “that is the saltiest salt I have ever tasted.” Agreed.
Weeks later, I rode a bike across the Algarve of Portugal. Part of the trail lead us through salt flats, the pink salt marshes of Tavira and Olhão.
Last night, for New year’s Eve, my husband and I spent an hour in a salt cave—one of those human manufactured rooms covered in Himalayan salt. (I know. Woo! This is how sober straightedge people party!) I questioned the benefits of “halotherapy” but the low lighting and sensory deprivation lulled me into a deep relaxation, similar to how a good svasana feels after a great yoga series. Or maybe it was just nice being away from my phone.
The human body is balance of water and sodium chloride (NaCl). Tip either in the wrong direction, and there will be consequences: high blood pressure or dehydration.
Today I might jump in the ocean.
We need homeostasis.
Saddest day of my life. So glad we got it figured out.
Love it!