Pinch of controversy over salt in diet

I never said we should always trust science. I said the value of science is that it questions and recreates itself regularly, something not true of dogmas like traditional religion and philosophy. This time we must reconsider the issue of salt in the diet. One of the reliable bits of wisdom from ancient cultures are the diets that have sustained us for thousands of years. That is empirical evidence. Whenever a scientific study contradicts a widely held empirical observation, one should have pause. So, for example, advocates of vegetarian and/or raw food diets have little footing in the face of history. Same with those who advise against all use of spices or salt (as some natural health advocates have done in the past). For those who practice natural medicine, it is important to carefully consider what there is actually evidence for (like eating meat as part of a healthy diet, for example) against that which is pure speculation (such as sexual activity harms the body, for example—see my lengthy digression below).

Despite traditional chinese admonitions, a google scholar search for sexual activity and life expectancy plus various other permutations (morbidity, mortality, etc.) revealed not a single peer reviewed journal article that lends credence to the idea that excessive sexual activity (in the absence of STD) has any adverse effect on one's health. Almost all the articles focused on AIDS and other STDs, perhaps lending some indirect credence to my hypothesis that sex-related chronic illness in ancient times was probably due to chronic infection rather than semen loss. Erectile dysfunction also seems to have no correlation with excessive sexual activity and instead correlates strongly with known blood flow issues, such as hypertension, diabetes, and habitual tobacco smoking. Masturbation, traditionally taboo amongst all cultural conservatives including chinese confucians, is now thought to prevent prostate cancer, a leading disease of the elderly.

When I first posted, these thoughts to a listserv, I was met with the most ridiculous pseudoscience from the faithful who resided there. The completely erroneous premise here is that cell division is a zero sum game (i.e, if you do more meiosis—produce more sperm, you do less mitosis—make somatic cells). However this is just not true. One has no effect on the other as far as long term health is concerned. Male laboratory animals who are allowed to mate and reproduce frequently experience no adverse health effects. In fact, the reverse it true. I think the facts are being fudged to fit an a priori assumption here. The lack of evidence to support adverse health effects is overwhelming. This concept clearly has so many layers of cultural baggage, it is next to worthless. For one thing, there is no agreement in chinese culture on what constitutes too much sex anyway, so no way to give clinical advice on this matter even if it were medically reasonable.

Why not assume the matter is unproven and actually produce some evidence to support one's case. I came to my hypothesis after the preponderance of evidence seemed to contradict what I had long accepted as dogma. No mental machinations will convince me otherwise. For those of us who are proponents of integrative medicine rather than TCM, per se, we must be willing to dispense with bogus ideas. TCM doctors no longer prescribe used menstrual rags or hangmen's nooses. There is no gospel. Just ideas which must withstand scrutiny and the test of empiricism. Each generation is charged with letting go of that part of the past that was mistaken and embracing that which was correct.