Salt-free Sugar-free Diet 23 years
Original human world without hypertension and diabetes
(1) Disease treatment: “causal therapy” and “symptomatic therapy”
There are two ways to treat illness. They are "causal therapy" which cures the root cause of the disease and "symptomatic therapy" which improves the symptoms and the state of the disease rather than curing the cause. If there is a cause therapy for the treatment of the disease, first of all, "causal therapy" is recommended. If there is no causal treatment, we resort to “symptomatic treatment”. The best way to treat a disease is to treat the root cause of the disease.
Do all diseases have a “causative treatment”? There are many diseases for which there is no “causative treatment”. For example, a cold. There is no “causal therapy” to fight off the cold virus that causes it, and treatment is “symptomatic therapy” by taking medicine (antipyretic, analgesic, cough medicine, headache medicine, etc.) to alleviate the symptoms of cold (fever, pain, cough, headache, etc.)
(2) Treatment of hypertension: causal therapy “no salt/low salt” and symptomatic therapy “antihypertensive drugs”
What about high blood pressure? Thankfully, I know the cause. Excessive salt intake raises blood pressure. The Amazon Yanomamo, who do not eat salt, do not have high blood pressure. If your salt intake is less than 2g/day, you will not develop hypertension. On the other hand, Japanese people consume 8g to 15g or more of salt, and their diet tends to lead to high blood pressure.
If you don't do the causal therapy "no salt/reduced salt", you will have to rely on the symptomatic treatment "antihypertensive drugs". When taken internally, the action of the drug lowers blood pressure. But when you stop, your blood pressure rises. For hypertension, “no salt/low salt” causal therapy is recommended.
The good point of causal therapy is that there is another good point besides the fundamental cure. It is preventable. If you do "no salt / reduced salt", you will not get high blood pressure. "Antihypertensive drugs" are symptomatic treatment and cannot be prevented, and should be used after hypertension develops.
(3) Are you on a low salt diet?
Are you able to reduce salt? Haven't you made it? There's an easy way to find out. It's whether or not you feel the salt when you take a bite of the bread. 100g of bread contains 1g of salt. In other words, the salt concentration of bread is 1%. If you eat a bite of bread and feel salty, you have reduced the amount of salt. If you don't feel salt, you haven't reduced the salt.
People who do not know the salt concentration of 1% are those who usually eat salty meals. People who eat light, low-salt foods will know the salt in the bread. Whether you feel 1% salt or not is the turning point of whether you are reducing your salt intake or not. First, let's eat a lightly seasoned meal so that you can feel the 1% salt content.
(4) Opportunity for salt-free and sugar-free diet
At the age of 51, I (Shoichiro Nakao) moved away from home and spent every day eating out and eating out at a restaurant. I had fat on my stomach and my trousers were tight, and my blood pressure gradually increased to over 130/85mmHg.
One day after half a year, I had never cooked for myself and had no seasonings, but I was hungry, so I stir-fried vegetables (bean sprouts, cabbage) in a frying pan. The first time I ate vegetables without seasoning was surprisingly delicious. My body felt soothed and calm. This is how my husband and I started cooking and eating without using seasonings.
(5) What meals do I eat until 51 years old?
Until the age of 51, my family's diet was balanced for the sake of our health, and I ate meat, fish, and vegetables in a well-balanced manner. However, I had no particular interest in salt intake, nor did I reduce his intake of salt, nor did I like salty foods. It was probably the average salty meal in Japan.
My family often enjoyed dining out. Ramen drank all the rich and delicious soup. I didn't feel the salt. The tempura, sushi, and full-course meals of Japanese and Western dishes were so delicious that I never felt salty. So is bread. A fragrant smell led me to the store when I passed in front of the bakery. The bread in the shop was delicious and I didn't feel the salt.
(6) Start of salt-free and sugar-free diet
23 years ago, when I was 51 and my wife was 46, we started cooking without seasonings. Is there a way to avoid using salt, sugar, and soy sauce during the cooking process? I thought. I thought that steamed food might be good, so I had an old deformed steamer in my kitchen that I hardly used, but I bought a new large sturdy steamer at a department store.
In the beginning, the steamed meat and vegetables were too bland to eat as they were, so I ate them with a little ponzu sauce, but gradually I got used to the bland flavor and started eating them as they were. The hot water left in the container under the steamer mixes with the nutrients of the ingredients, making it a nutritious soup. I added chopped green onions and bonito flakes to it because it didn't have much flavor, but once I get used to it, I can enjoy it as it is. All ingredients become sweet when steamed. It's not the sweetness of sugar, but the original sweetness of each ingredient.
In addition to steaming, the ingredients are boiled, stir-fried, grilled, and eaten as they are. Both meat and fish are delicious. Our sukiyaki does not use soy sauce or sugar. It tastes like ingredients and is very delicious.
I also make my own unsalted unsweetened furikake. This is because store-bought furikake is salty. Drain the dried sardines, bonito flakes, kombu seaweed, and sesame seeds in the microwave, and grind them in a mill to finish. Sprinkle it over brown rice, drizzle it over a salad, or put it in a soup. I put in a lot. It makes the taste richer.
The staple food is brown rice. It has a richer flavor than white rice. White rice doesn't taste good to us. When I gave my grandson who came to visit me some brown rice, he unexpectedly said, "It's delicious."
Unsalted, unsweetened bread (Nakao Bread):
We eat bread for breakfast. But the bread contains 1% salt, sugar and butter. I bought a bread machine there. An acquaintance who knows a lot about bread said, "It doesn't rise without salt and sugar." First of all, I removed the salt and put only sugar in it, and when I baked it, it swelled. Next, I baked it with only flour without sugar, but it puffed up. After that, we bake it with only wheat flour at home. It's been 23 years and this is the 4th bread machine.
What is the difference in taste between flour-only bread and store-bought bread? Our bread made with only wheat flour has a fragrant flour taste. However, commercial bread is too salty for me and has a strong taste of sugar and fat, and I can't tell the taste of the main ingredient, flour. It doesn't taste like flour and is not delicious.
(7) Things that changed with salt-free and sugar-free
① Unable to locate the stomach: In the past, the location of the stomach was known by eating. Now I don't know where it got into my stomach. When I eat out, I will feel the "stomach lean" on my stomach. I think the salt and seasonings are probably putting a strain on the mucous membrane of the stomach.
② I stopped chewing the cud: I used to chew the food again after eating. It's gone. My stomach must have hated it.
③ Water intake has decreased: I used to drink two 500cc bottles. Now I only need one 500cc bottle. I don't need to drink a lot of water because I salt intake is low
④ Like the Yanomamo tribe who do not consume salt in the interior of the Amazon even if I sweat in the summer, I no longer produce salt in their sweat and have developed a constitution in which I do not need to consume salt.
⑤ My tongue has become sensitive to salt and sugar: I can now detect small amounts of salt and sugar that I could not detect before.
(8) Trouble with salt-free and sugar-free
Unfortunately, I can no longer eat processed foods. Because it contains more than 1% salt, it is salty. Grocery stores are full of processed foods. Bread is also a processed food.
I can no longer eat store-bought lunches. It's too salty and too sweet to eat. The strong taste remains on the tongue and cannot be removed by drinking water.
Eating out is also a problem. It has a strong salty taste. I always bring my lunch from home. Curry makes me sick to my stomach, and ramen gives me diarrhea. Whether it's Japanese food, Western food, or Chinese food, after eating a full course, my body feels like it's being rubbed with salt, and I'm thirsty and continue drinking tea even after I get home. I am worried about traveling and eating limited food. If I eat out for more than 3 days, my body will become tight.
(9) No salt no nocturia
When I meet my classmates, they all say, "They get up to go to the bathroom once or twice at night to urinate."
I never get up to go to the bathroom at night. I can sleep soundly until morning. My classmate is on a "salt-loaded diet," but I'm on a "salt-free diet." Due to my salt-free diet, my daily urine volume is an average of 869ml (600-1360ml), and my nighttime urine volume is about 300ml from when I go to bed until I wake up. Because I don't have polyuria at night, I don't wake up to urinate, and I sleep for around 7 hours. Just like "no salt no hypertension" is "no salt no nocturia".
It is natural for everyone who takes salt to have nocturia. If the daily salt intake is 10g, the daily urine output will be around 1500ml or more. As a result, nocturnal urination is more than 500 ml, so everyone wakes up once a night and go to the toilet to urinate.
To reduce the frequency of nocturia, the first step is to reduce salt intake. If you want to sleep soundly until morning without waking up at night, there is only salt-free.
Similar to "salt-free diet is the fundamental therapy for hypertension", "salt-free diet is the fundamental therapy for nocturia".
(10)Return from modern life (salt and sugar load) to the original human being (no salt and no sugar)
In fact, we all went through a period of no salt and no sugar for a while after we were born. However, We were put into a salty and sugary world from baby food (without being able to resist).
In my case, it became unsalted and unsweetened from 23 years ago. The average daily salt intake for home meals is 1.2g (0.7-1.9g). I think I was probably taking more than 15 g until I was 51 years old. Blood pressure is 96-106/54-64 mmHg, HbA1c 5.0%.
Why has the salt-free and sugar-free diet continued for 23 years? Because it makes me feel happy and delicious every time I eat it. It's because the ingredients themselves taste delicious. I can feel the sweetness of each ingredient. In previous meals it was the sweetness of sugar. It's delicious enough without salt and sugar.
When I think about it now, the foods I ate up to the age of 51 tasted like seasonings, and I felt that they were delicious, and processed foods were also delicious. It can be said to be "deliciousness of cooking process". Now I feel that the taste of the ingredients themselves is delicious. It can be said that "ingredients are naturally delicious".
Both are delicious, but the delicious contents are different. By all means, please experience the world of humankind's original meal "natural deliciousness of ingredients". As a reward, you feel better, and for the first time in your life, You can feel the natural body that your parents gave you from your current body that has been modified with seasonings. It's a valuable experience.
Become your own original body with no salt and no sugar, use your precious body carefully, and spend the rest of your life.
