I went to the website but I won't be making any Hello Kitty food!

Yeah, I like food to be tasty and cute . Feast for the eyes, stomach and soul. Another reason why losing salt is such a low blow, I have a cabinet full of designer sea salts for dressing up dishes with just the right sparkling little crystals. Pink, black, white, rust, grey, green... All natural sea salts, now going to waste and they were sooo pretty....

Okay starting to grow concerned with the lower sodium diet.... Muscle spasms are increasing, ringing in the ears has started along with a slight feeling of lightheaded, occasional stars before the eyes when the 'ringing' becomes more like a dog whistle being blown directly in my ear, and a weird almost cold sensation like an injection of fluids randomly running through the limbs as they suddenly feel weak and deadened.

My husband thinks I might just be coming down with a bit of a cold, I have been more cross than usual, but then not able to find any kind of relief from the pain and spasms and alternately feeling like I'm going to pass out or just turn to jello to me seems like the bigger culprit.

I'm thinking its time to get on the horn with the neuro and prolly the pain mgmt doc as well since the copaxone could take upwards of another month to come in. It either has to be a deficiency of salt or simply too much pain, or both. I know I get shocky from pain and this is a bit similar to the feeling, but seems too random in occurrence to be explained away by just pain.

That and I'm not breaking out in a cold sweat, turning a whiter shade of pale and eyes dilating as what normally happens. Though the pulse rate is still rising through the roof while BP crashes so not sure if my body has just readjusted to 'shock' from pain since it's happened so many times now that it's given up on half the signs. But then my usual trick of sugar, water, sugar, water, pill, water, sugar... Isn't working either, of course I also don't have any pain meds anymore just the muscle relaxants.


Ugh this is annoying

Some drugs may cause hyponatremia..
So now is the time to look up what you
Take..
SSRIs
Carbamazepine
Diuretics
Some high dose long term opiates

Are some that do this.

Hyponatremia is a very rare side effect of the only three medications I take. Zyrtec OTC, baclofen and zanaflex. Which unfortunately are also the only three medications prevent me from taking a nap on the railroad tracks, or seeking the nearest cliff in SE GA to throw myself off of, or testing whether plastic bags maybe do make great dust masks!... Well you get the idea.

I mean, while yes my diet before was fairly healthy for all it was laden with sodium, but would my sodium levels come back as normal if I was eating too much? Is it something that the body self-regulates? Or if not am I creating the problems by taking in a small fraction of the sodium I used to?

I figure before I could average probably around 10,000mg of sodium in a day. Between a couple of sodas, cereals, copious amounts of milk, bread (some of my favorite breads run about 300-400 mg a serving) and still applying salt to my foods. Salted melons for sure did me in.... But my sodium level was 140 mmol/L test says it should be between 135-145. So I was pretty much dead center.

Now I'm riding between 1000-2000 mg as per doctor's directions before she got the blood test results. And where I was hoping it would make me feel better, sodium is inflammatory to the body, instead I'm feeling sooooo much worse. Cranky and depressed barely touch my attitude as far as emotional state, pain levels are riding much higher, insomnia is kicking in really bad too thanks to pain and attitude...

I'm wondering how long it will be before I'm sleep-walking and just eating the salt out of the cabinet. This is also the first time I have ever denied my body something it is screaming for. And it has forced me to eat tomatoes! I hate and despise tomatoes, weird little identity-crisis suffering 'food', with its icky texture sweetly sourly bitter taste (yuck, yuck, yuck!) but I do end up eating them because the body says so, and won't take an orange, blueberries or cranberries in substitute.

Which again could be a portion of the problem... Starvation.... I am still eating, but very little, I always have struggled to eat enough despite being quite roly-poly or possibly causing me to be so.... It's not anorexia or bulimia.. More laziness and too picky an eater??... Hard to explain, since I eat most anything aside from shellfish because of allergies and tomatoes and mushrooms because... I just don't like them, but while I eat pretty much everything at the same time I can only eat what the body wants.

I like steak, love a nicely grilled med. well lean steak... For about two bites and only if I want steak.... Chicken I can manage about three bites before the body sighs and says well that was good, we're done now. And the same for everything else, except milk. I could drink a gallon of milk a day quite happily if not for the fact that then I really wouldn't eat or drink anything else for the day.

But right now with the body screaming for salt, and throwing a downright temper tantrum over it, like a two-year old it's shouting NO! To any and all attempts to feed it something that doesn't contain sodium, it was appeased initially with reduced sodium offerings, but now it won't be fooled, and is just shutting down the appetite completely, while upping the thirst.

I know regardless I need to call the doctor first thing Monday. I can't wait just under 4 months to get an answer. But I think for the rest of the weekend till I can call her, I'm going back to eating salt and seeing if I don't feel a bit better. If I do, then I'll know it's not enough sodium, if I don't... Then maybe hubby was right and I'm just getting sick.

After two days of upping my salt intake once more this time to a slightly more reasonable 3000-4000mg I'm already feeling much much better. Gone is the racing heart, ringing in ears went away almost immediately, still having a few bouts of sudden weakness, and the muscles haven't quite completely forgiven me yet, but for two days intake the difference is night and day.