@freemo
Many people add boulion to theirs but I just go with siracha, chili powder and red pepper. Trying to cut back on the excessive sodium intake without loss of flavor. I hope to someday soon try and make my own udon noodles!

@lucifargundam Sirarcha is the only important ingredient. Though I do recommend you either make your own salt-free stock or buy some.

Also if your cutting back on sodium salt I highly recommend you buy Potassium salt. You can eat a nearly unlimited amount without water retention or health issues. In fact, it is treated as an essential vitamin so the more you eat the healthier it is. It tastes almost identical to salt, so works as a substitute

@freemo
Thanks for the recommendation! As much as I try to prepare my own food, I still find myself eating a lot of processed food that contains all that sodium. Hopefully substituting with Potassium Salt will help curve potential health problems.

@lucifargundam are you sure your salt santive? If you arent salt sensitive (as in your body doesnt flush it out effectively and thus significantly raises your BP) then salt doesnt cause health problems.

@freemo I have a history of having trouble staying hydrated. On top of that- there's concerns for HBP amongst other similar issues.

So far I've slowly been cutting back on my caffeine intake from the couple gallons(no shit) of espresso I used to drink over a year ago. Now I'm down to just 2-3 pots of coffee a day.

I had Chinese food the other day- which is salty enough as it is, but apparently someone messed up and added too much salt- to the point some of it was still in it's granulated form.

Overall, I'm just taking precautions as life gets unpredictable pretty easily/quickly.

@lucifargundam If you have trouble staying hydrated you likely need more salt not less. Salt causes you to over-hydrate, lack of salt causes you to under-hydrate.

HBP may be salt induced (due to salt sensitivity) or may not. The hydration suggests you may not have HBP due to salt at all. In fact, you can get HBP from too little salt too (dehydration).

The key to telling is to see if your blood pressure swings with salt intake.

@lucifargundam One added detail.. two types of dehydration.

1) low water, normal/high salt... this is what people tend to think of. It induces extreme thirst, so rarely happens naturally unless your thirst response is damaged. Drinking water fixes it.

2) low water, low salt ... this kind is more common as it doesnt induce the thirst response. It can happen from kidneys dumping too much salt, or from over-drinking water. The thing about this sort of dehydration is drinking water and reducing salt makes it worse, you will pee it out and loose even more salt and cant retain water. You address this type by eating salt which will induce thirst and you will then drink water to match and you will actually retain the water now and become hydrated.

Note: The potassium salt I mentioned does not induce thirst or effect your water retention (as it exists inside cells and is minimally in plasma), however it is critical to keep your potassium and salt ratio sane, otherwise salt imbalance causes its own problems. But that is a tangent.

@freemo
1) that was my default suspicion. Don't know if accurate.

2) possible, but again not sure. I wouldn't put it past myself to have a broken system or two. I've put my body through na lot of abuse.

Drinking water doesn't really seem to solve anything- same with salt.

@lucifargundam Send me some of your blood, ill investigate (jk).

@freemo
I'm onto you Dr Dracula!!