Can we loose the taste for salt from a high sodium diet?

[Pistol]

As most POTS or NCS patients know - we have to increase our salt and water intake. I use salt generously in my diet and have craved it since childhood. Recently I have noticed that I need to use more and more of salt to taste it, and I always used it by taste. Is this something anyone else is experiencing? It may be a different cause for this but I could pour two teaspoons of salt on my food and barely taste it. 

[MikeO]

51 minutes ago, Pistol said:

As most POTS or NCS patients know - we have to increase our salt and water intake. I use salt generously in my diet and have craved it since childhood. Recently I have noticed that I need to use more and more of salt to taste it, and I always used it by taste. Is this something anyone else is experiencing? It may be a different cause for this but I could pour two teaspoons of salt on my food and barely taste it. 

I don't use a ton of salt so i do taste it still. only reason i don't salt up is i get bloated or better said retain fluids to a fault. might try withholding salt for a bit and see what happens. 

[bumpkin]

I've wondered this too, I can still taste it but it occurred to me that getting too used to it may eventually change how I experience salt. There's times where I can sense that I'm craving it and I assume those are the times my body needs it the most. But the rest of the time I just add it to my water throughout the day because I know when I forget to do so my body will feel terrible for it.

How long would you say it's been that way for? Keep in mind other stuff like brain inflammation for example can affect your taste, like the way covid can. I bumped my head the other week, the resulting headache lasted four days, and I swear for those next couple weeks all my usual foods tasted so weird.. I got a specialty coffee one day and politely sent it back because it was way off and I thought the person must not have been trained correctly (lots of locations really aren't), but another worker remade it and it still tasted wrong, and then they both looked at me like I was crazy 😣 and now a few weeks later the same employee made me one the other day and it tasted right again (super grateful for that, eating and finding an appetite is so hard in this condition as it is). 

Mike's got a good idea there, if you can afford to get that salt in a different form where you don't necessarily have to taste it, maybe some time apart will bring it back?

[Water Lover]

I'm pretty sure there's a habituation effect. I'm the main cook in our household, and my spouse frequently comments on how heavily salted some of the things I cook are; I salt to taste, and I've learned that I need to hold back and undersalt according to my palate or others will find it too salty. I have a friend who also has dysautonomia who reports the same experience in regards to cooking.

[Pistol]

@Water Lover @bumpkin @MikeO Thank you all for your feed back. I appreciate it! It sounds as though our taste just gets used to it. I remember being in a restaurant once and complained that the table salt was sugar. My daughter tasted it and said it was just regular salt 🙄!

[GasconAlex]

Yes, you do acclimatise to more salt. The inverse is also true so after a time on a low salt diet salt tastes saltier.

I haven't looked for links but this has been  researched for reducing salt levels. 

[Delta]

That is a good question! What happens if you take a bit of salt on your finger and taste it that way, just the salt? Do you still taste it less? If so, you are probably getting used to it. If not, then I'd guess you are lately eating the types of food that seem to just swallow up your salt and make you want to add more, such as mashed potatoes!

[Karen Elaine]

I can definitely tolerate much more than I used to! It still tastes salty to me, but I like it that way. And it's still possible to oversalt-- sometimes a family member will help make my meals and go a bit heavy on the salt, thinking they can't use too much for me 🤣