Dude (Neurosurgeon) literally made quinoa + oyster mushrooms, no oil. No spices as far I can tell. The ultimate lazy “trying to be healthy for the 20th time” cooking. I can relate.
I liked his rant towards the end.
Compared to this:
Quinoa + Oyster mushrooms go brrr…
I prefer to keep my meals simple for practical reasons. I’m not a multimillionaire with a team to plan, shop for and prepare my food for starters. I think complicated meals/recipes probably become a hindrance after a point for most average people and it just drives people towards buying packaged/processed foods even if they are supposedly healthier versions.
Most mornings I fill a large mason jar with various vegetables, fruits and some seeds to eat later in the day to make getting at least “5 a day” easy. For meals I often do whole grains and or legumes (brown rice cakes, oats and lentil or chickpea pasta are super convenient) with whatever else appeals like nut butters, a veg or fruit, mushrooms, tofu etc. I’m still omnivorous and personally eat whole eggs a few times per week for nutrients that are otherwise harder for me to get, seafood and dairy like Greek yogurt or Swiss cheese. The animal foods are my highest sodium sources but I still have no problem staying at or under 500 mg/day. I understand that it’s arguable whether those are optimal but it works for me personally and is quite an improvement over the carnivore eating I was doing from 2019-2023. I’m able to be vegetarian at least 1/2 the time now. I also regularly put multiple one ingredient foods in my crockpot with Dash or other no salt seasonings early in the day for our evening meal (which my husband calls cheating hahaha) and freeze the leftovers. I still use some canned foods but just chose the no added salt versions. I also buy no added salt tuna and sardines. Fresh seafood is a challenge where I live so I buy frozen and just check the labels for the sodium content which can vary wildly. I opt for fish that is under 80mg/serving.
My point is I truly believe this doesn’t need to be hard or complicated to pull off. Most of the eggs and meat I consume come from two local family farms that have been in the business >120 years that I trust fwiw.
This is also the basis for my diet : keep it simple (almost no seasoning especially salt, no special baking techniques, few ingredients) and repetitive. It seems that keeps my cravings (and thus my calories intake) under control.
Complicated study but which might go against some of the things said previously and which I didn’t realize.
The researchers used SODIUM MRI on the brain and found that it was more predictive of cognitive decline scores than another method:
Lui & Venkatraman et al. report that normalized hippocampal sodium MRI signal were more predictive of Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale Cognitive subscale and Mini-Mental State Examination scores in a nondemented older adult cohort than hippocampal cortical volumes and conclude that sodium MRI may have applications as an imaging neurocognitive marker.
But that it might simply be a marker of cell death and other dysfunction increasing tissue sodium:
Sodium-MRI is a candidate with potential to fulfill this need. Sodium ion concentrations are compartmentalized and tightly regulated in normal cell homeostasis; the transmembrane gradient is actively maintained by the highly energy-consuming sodium-potassium ATPase. Cell death and resulting loss of cell membrane integrity, sodium-potassium pump dysfunction, sodium channel up/downregulation, other interlinked membrane or ionic/metabolic alterations (such as calcium8), and extracellular changes all affect brain tissue sodium values. Preclinical studies also support a role of these metabolic perturbations in the pathophysiology of AD.9-12 In-vivo human sodium-MRI brain studies have furthermore shown differences between control and Ad groups,13-16 stable sodium values across normal ageing,17 and differences in functional disability metrics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions compared to controls.15,16,18,19 Sodium-MRI has also been shown to be predictive of Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores in AD.15,16
What’s the chicken or the egg here, I don’t know…
May I ask how it might go against some of the things said previously sir?
I meant the sodium MRI studies I posted earlier in the thread. It could be other things causing the sodium showing up on the scans. It’s hard to tell anything about the sodium MRI scans now without know more. So we can go by what we know for sure instead. 
Still don’t know what to make of them.
Well I will be perfectly honest and admit I don’t understand it despite trying my best.
I did run across this interesting science news article in my efforts though.
This is Your Brain on Salt
Professor Javier Stern and colleagues recently uncovered surprising new information about how salt intake affects the brain — findings that could have major implications for how we think about cardiometabolic health.
In recent years, scientists have come to discover that inflammation in the brain, also known as neuroinflammation, plays an important role in the development of health problems like obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol — which are in turn risk factors for major chronic conditions. As the founding director of Georgia State’s Center for Neuroinflammation & Cardiometabolic Diseases, Distinguished University Professor Javier Stern is working to uncover the mechanisms behind these inflammatory processes and how they contribute to diseases ranging from diabetes to Alzheimer’s.
In a first-of-its-kind study published last fall, Stern and his team used a novel technique to uncover how salt intake affects blood flow deep in the brain. Ninety percent of Americans over the age of 2 consume too much sodium, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Your body responds to a high-salt diet with a number of compensatory changes, many of which are poorly understood. These include changes in the brain, which, as Stern has found, may be linked to high blood pressure and even neurocognitive issues.
“This research is an important step in understanding how bodily homeostasis is regulated in the face of salt intake,” says Stern. Here, he shares why the new findings could lead to important breakthroughs in the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases.
https://news.gsu.edu/research-magazine/this-is-your-brain-on-salt-javier-stern
@AnUser
Any further thoughts on this? I’m starting to consider adding one just because eating anything besides my own homemade food is pretty unpleasant (and gives me hideous double eye bags for days afterwards!!!). I know that’s vain but I can’t stand it hahaha. I haven’t been able to find any information on if this class of drug helps people tolerate occasional moderate salt consumption better but it seems like it would.
I haven’t looked into it no, if I were dead set on having a relatively significant amount of sodium consumption then I would. At the same time it’s probably hard to know as I’m unsure how such clinical trials would be like, and if using mechanistic studies or similar then it would end up with experimenting (trial and error) yourself, anyway.
Thanks for replying @AnUser.
November just ended up being a rough one because of two trips out of town where I didn’t have access to a kitchen for 9 of 20 days so I was brain storming for ways of dealing with the unavoidable salt in those situations. It was all ‘hidden’ sodium in the sense that I tried my best to eat low salt. I even ordered a low sodium menu at a convention I attended but could feel my shoes getting tight on the trip. Here’s what the excess sodium did in such a short amount of time. I don’t care about the weight per se but the rapid change obviously isn’t optimal.
I’m on a low salt diet. When I cook for myself I never add salt. I’m used to natural taste of food without salt. I get some salt in breads and cheese that I buy. My sodium level per the most recent labs was 135 pushing toward the lower limit of normal. I’m wondering if it could be too low.
Just got my numbers back today. Normal range for sodium 135-146mmol/L. You’re still in there. I use salt on meat and eggs, eat a lot of cheese, my number was 140.
That’s what mine was on my last labs and I’m personally fine with that result. My doctor is as well fwiw.
