Marla Ahlgrimm: Skip the Added Salt

Salt is used to both stabilize foods and to improve taste. And it’s impossible to avoid short of raising your own food and cooking each meal yourself. However, according to Marla Ahlgrimm, women especially should pay attention to their salt intake as it can affect the body in surprising ways.

Marla Ahlgrimm explains that sodium is an element essential to the human body. In fact, we need around 200 mg each day to support healthy system operations. But the average American consumes more than 3400 mg of salt each day of the week. The problem is not in the salt we add after cooking. The vast majority of our sodium overload comes from processed foods and those preserved with salt.

Fluid imbalance

The human body is naturally designed to maintain a balance of fluids, sodium, and potassium. Marla Ahlgrimm explains that when it has too much water, the body uses a process called osmosis to remove the excess fluid. These fluids are then transported to the kidneys and then bladder. When you eat too much salt, your body naturally keeps water in the blood to help dilute the excess of sodium. The most significant problem that can arise from an abnormal increase in blood volume is high blood pressure.

Minerals are Magnificent | Marla Ahlgrimm

We hear a lot about vitamins and minerals, says Marla Ahlgrimm, but how much do you know about the latter? While many minerals, such as calcium, are fairly well known others, including sodium, copper, and phosphorous remain a mystery to most. Considering that the body needs minerals to work properly, it’s important to have a basic understanding of what they do and how they work. Keep reading his Ahlgrimm answers a few common questions about minerals.

Q: What are the different kinds of minerals?

Marla Ahlgrimm: There are trace minerals, which are those you need in very small amounts, and macrominerals, those the body requires a higher volume. Calcium, potassium, and magnesium are examples of macrominerals. Cobalt, iron, manganese, and iodine are essential trace minerals.

Marla Ahlgrimm | Men Vs. Women: The Difference is in the Details

Human males and females are remarkably similar, says Marla Ahlgrimm. But there are a few distinctions that separate the sexes, and the reasons behind them aren’t always clear.

According to Marla Ahlgrimm, human women have full breasts continually from puberty until death. This is vastly different than most species, where the female only has large breasts when pregnant and nursing. Men, however, are flat at the sternum. It’s theorized that women remain chesty to attract a mate ready to reproduce. Men still have nipples because the gene that decides if an embryo is male or female doesn’t kick in until later in prenatal development. Essentially, we are all the same until a few weeks into gestation.

Marla Ahlgrimm | Family History Matters

When you talk with your doctor for the first time, the office will likely ask you about your family health history. If you can’t answer these questions, you may be putting yourself at risk, says retired pharmacist Marla Ahlgrimm. Your family history is an integral part of who you are and can tell a lot about your health.

Q: How does my family history play a part in my health?

Marla Ahlgrimm: You inherit genes from both your mother and father, who inherited their genes from their mother and father and so on until the beginning of time. You can think of yourself as a puzzle made up of pieces from dozens of other people, including your parents and grandparents. You inherit physical traits, such as height and skin color, but you can also inherit diseases. Knowing your family history up to about your great-grandparents can help you gauge your risk for hemophilia, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and much more.

Marla Ahlgrimm | Hormones and Arthritis

Your hormones play a role in everything you do, says Marla Ahlgrimm. That includes how you feel when you get sick or begin to experience the discomfort of certain conditions, such as arthritis. Here, the women’s health author and hormone expert explains how these invisible chemicals can contribute to pain.

Q: Is arthritis common in women?

Marla Ahlgrimm: Yes, it is. And rheumatoid arthritis is even more common. It’s estimated that for every man that experiences rheumatoid arthritis, three women will also suffer. Hormones may be the reason that the fairer sex is more affected.

Marla Ahlgrimm: Health is More than Your Body

Marla Ahlgrimm has been in the women’s healthcare industry for more than four decades. She is a retired pharmacist, self-help author, and hormone expert who believes that a healthy body is often a matter of choice. However, she also stresses that mental health plays a role in your body’s overall function.

According to Marla Ahlgrimm, women should pay attention to factors that affect their emotional well-being. Stress, poor relationships, and even a lack of sleep can throw your brain out of whack and strain your emotions.

Marla Ahlgrimm: Weight Gain and Hormones

It has been long asserted that weight gain is the result of eating too much and moving too little. However, according to Marla Ahlgrimm, there is much more to it than that.

The human body, specifically a woman’s body, is designed to have a body mass index of between 18% and 25%. This means that approximately that percentage of a woman’s weight is fat, which is necessary, especially during the reproductive years. But, as Marla Ahlgrimm explains, the United States is plagued by rampant obesity, which is defined as having a body mass index of greater than 30.

While traditionally doctors have treated weight gain as the cause of medical problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, it’s now being researched that weight gain may be a side effect of improper metabolic function. Specifically, some theorize that the endocrine system, the system which creates and routes hormones, may be to blame. Marla Ahlgrimm notes that the hormone cortisol, which is associated with stress, can affect the way the human body utilizes food as fuel.

When the body is unable to utilize food correctly, it turns the calories consumed into fat. For some individuals, understanding how they react to stress may lead to long-term weight loss and weight management.