Why don't prople get sodium deficiencies?

Answer 1

It's certainly possible to get a sodium deficiency, and in rare cases it can even be fatal. Generally speaking though, sodium is extremely plentiful in almost any food and it is universally well absorbed. In addition, one of the most important jobs of your kidneys is keeping just the right balance of sodium in your blood.

An example of when you can see a true sodium deficiency is water intoxication. If you keep drinking pure water you will slowly wash sodium out of your system since your kidneys cannot excrete water without losing at least a small amount of sodium in the process. If you aren't taking in enough sodium to replace the losses, your serum sodium level will drop and in severe cases this can even lead to death. Fortunately, this takes an enormous amount of water and is pretty rare.

It is correct to point out that almost all cases of hyponatremia are due to too much water being retained and a dilutional effect rather than an actual sodium deficiency. It's also true that you can drink all at one so much water that your kidneys can't keep up, which would cause water intoxication through a dilutional mechanism rather than sodium deficiency.

However, there is also a mechanism whereby someone chronically drinks large amounts of pure water (think beer potomania or psychogenic polydipsia) can end up in the same situation. Suppose a 70kg person drank 15 L of water over the course of a day. That's a lot of water, but the kidneys can certainly produce that volume of urine over 24 hours. At baseline, that person has about 49 l (70% body mass) of H2O in their body, which at an average Na concentration of 140 mM that works out to a total of about 6860 mmoles of Na. The kidney is going try to excrete the excess water, which it does very well. However, due to physiological constraints urine can never contain 0 sodium. Instead, the effective lower limit of sodium concentration is somewhere around 20 mM. 15 liters of 20 mM Na works out to a total of 300 mmoles of Na lost over the course of the day. If the person has no other salt intake, this same person now has a total of 6560 mmoles of Na in their body, which would represent a Na defecit. This is enough of a loss to drop the plasma Na concentration to around 134 mM. Of course these are just estimates, but the basic principle is that if you drink enough pure water without any other Na sources you will eventually become sodium deficient.

If the person continues drinking this much water, their condition will worsen and they will end up with water intoxication because of a sodium deficiency. In this circumstances this is NOT a purely dilutional effect.

Answer 2

Sodium is abundant in most of the foods and drinks people take daily, so normally sodium deficiency is uncommon.

In some diseases and disorders as well as conditions and activities that involve excessive loss of sodium, sodium deficiency can take place. However, not unless some severe physiological disorders are involved, restoring the depleted sodium levels in the body is easy to achieve. So normally if there is any deficiency, restoration is done that quick before the deficiency becomes very obvious. Electrolyte balancing function of the body in normal situations is great, that could also play a great role in keeping sodium balance.

Answer 3

Sodium is extemely common in food, and your daily requirements are only a tiny fraction of what you normally eat. Also, regulation of sodium balance is very robust. If you even get remotely close, for instance, your urinary sodium excretion will go to zip in no time flat, not to mention that you'll get cravings. When hyponatremia is encountered, it's almost always not because of a deficiency in total body sodium but rather a dilutional phenomenon of excess free water, as with SIADH or water intoxication (which, by the way, does NOT "wash out" sodium).

Answer 4

I'm no expert, but I would imagine it's because there is an abundance of sodium in almost everything we eat, especially fast food - that, and people are addicted to salt and put it in everything, even when it's not needed. If anything, people have too much sodium in their system.

Answer 5

They do, but not too often because people not use salt (sodium) and that's why not too many get sodium deficiencies. Salt (sodium) raises blood pressure and too much can be dangerous, but too little isn't too good either. I use very little salt and very little sugar.
I have family with high blood pressure, after learning salt raises blood pressure, I cut down.

Answer 6

They do and often don't know it, tiredness can be a symptom.
But it's difficult to avoid salt as it is in just about all processed foods, unless you don't have any packet, tinned or take away food.

Answer 7

Um, I think they do...all I know is my Dad, who has always been a health nut, was told by his he needed to eat more salt.