Salt of the Earth

Annie spent years picking the salt off her pretzels. She was also a swimmer training four-plus hours a day, getting cramps so violent they pulled her out of the water mid-practice. Nobody connected the two. This was 2010, before anyone said the word "electrolytes" out loud, and her coach's best idea was pickle juice.

It worked. And it started a much longer thought.

This week Ryan and Annie take Matthew 5:13, "you are the salt of the earth," and refuse to treat it as a metaphor. Jesus picked salt on purpose. Salt is second only to water among the things a body cannot live without, it is how every nutrient moves in and out of your cells, and its whole job is to draw the flavor already inside something out to where you can taste it. Every one of those is also true of what he was asking of us.

Along the way: why the white stuff in the blue canister is not really food, what a boomer grandmother's low-sodium diet is actually doing to her, the difference between being unsalty and being far too salty with somebody who was not ready to hear it, and the four-word phrase engraved inside their wedding bands.

Plus the practical version. What to throw away, what to buy instead, how much you actually need, and the trick Ryan uses to kill a headache in twenty minutes.

IN THIS EPISODE

• (01:30) Memento mori, engraved in their wedding bands, and how you turn "remember your death" into something you can actually do on a Tuesday
• (03:30) Annie picked the salt off her pretzels but loved pickles. Nobody has explained this yet
• (05:00) The cramps that ended a swimming career, and the coach who prescribed pickle juice
• (07:00) "Run the race so as to win it." Where 1 Corinthians and a salt shaker met in her head
• (08:30) The salt hierarchy, worst to best, and why the bottom of it is not really food
• (11:00) Second only to water: the sodium-potassium pump, and why 60 to 70 percent of you is not water but fluid
• (12:30) "It's going to hurt my heart." What a generation was told about salt, and what it cost them
• (14:00) Salt draws the flavor out from within. So does Christ. This is the whole episode in one idea
• (17:00) Too salty: when the gospel lands on rocky ground because you oversalted it
• (19:00) Not salty enough gets you trampled underfoot. Annie's read on the back half of the verse
• (21:00) How the disciples stayed salty. Prayer, scripture read again and again, discipline, the sacraments, community
• (23:30) The swap: what to throw out, and the three salts worth buying
• (25:00) Electrolytes without the sugar, including a Catholic company making them
• (27:30) How much you need if you lift, if you are pregnant, and if you sit at a desk all day
• (29:00) Salt in your palm, water, headache gone in twenty minutes
• (30:30) Why electrolytes mean less coffee and steadier energy

THE SWAPS

Throw out the Morton iodized. It has been bleached of everything except sodium chloride. As Ryan puts it, not evil, just useless. Scrub a pan with it.

Buy instead:

• Redmond Real Salt
• Baja Gold Sea Salt
• Celtic sea salt (widely available; look for grey, damp, unrefined)

Pink Himalayan is a step up from table salt, though some of it is colored rather than genuinely mineral-rich.

ELECTROLYTES

• Flight Foods — a Catholic supplement company out of Tampa. Solomon Strawberry and Lauds Lemon
• Redmond Re-Lyte — Ryan's pick for sensitive stomachs
• Buoy — unflavored drops you squeeze into anything

Skip the sugar-based ones. And the simplest version costs nothing extra: a pinch of good salt in your water.

None of the above is sponsored. Nobody paid to be in this episode.

HOW MUCH

• Athlete, manual labor, sweating daily, pregnant or breastfeeding: every day
• Desk job, not moving much: a couple of times a week, and start moving
• Everyone else: good salt on your food, a little more than feels natural

THIS WEEK

Two things. Swap your salt. And when you stir it into your water tomorrow morning, let it ask you the question: how am I going to be salt today, and for whom?

Scripture: Matthew 5:13, 1 Corinthians 9:24

Recorded at the kitchen table under the patronage of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed body and soul without counting the cost.

Want to be on the show, or have a question for Ryan and Annie? There are forms at healthinthespirit.com, or come find us on Instagram and Facebook @healthinthespirit.

New episodes every Tuesday.

This episode discusses general health and nutrition and is not medical advice. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Talk to your own clinician before changing your diet, especially if you have kidney disease, heart failure, or high blood pressure.