In this fascinating episode, join me as I sit down with Darryl Bosshardt, an advocate for natural wellness and an expert in the ancient, yet ever-relevant world of salt. Born and bred in the heart of Utah's mineral-rich landscapes, Darryl has cultivated a deep-seated passion for natural health solutions, drawing from his extensive background with Redmond Salt, a family business dedicated to harvesting the purest forms of salt found deep within the earth.
Our conversation with Darryl delves into the pivotal role salt plays in our health, hydration, and heritage, challenging long-held beliefs and opening new avenues for understanding our relationship with this essential mineral. Through his insightful narrative, Darryl unravels the history, science, and health benefits of salt, emphasizing its critical role in not just our diets but in the fabric of civilization itself.
This episode is a treasure trove for anyone curious about the real impact of salt on our wellbeing, the myths surrounding its consumption, and the art of integrating it mindfully into our daily lives. Join us on this enlightening journey to discover the essence of life through the lens of salt.
Key Points From This Episode:
The fascinating world of salt. [00:04:59]
The power of real salt. [00:09:12]
Ancient seabed salt deposits. [00:15:28]
Real essence of life in salt. [00:18:20]
Salt production techniques. [00:25:25]
Hydration and electrolyte importance. [00:38:25]
Hydrating with electrolytes for workouts. [00:41:22]
Electrolytes in fasting diets. [00:44:41]
High altitude training and sickness. [00:50:27]
Beetroot powder for healthitude. [00:53:14]
VO2 max and longevity. [00:55:04]
Salting food for optimal health. [01:02:15]
Living a primal lifestyle. [01:08:05]
Salt mineral transparency. [01:15:37]
The truth about salt minerals. [01:20:03]
Avoiding being too salty. [01:22:39]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Click HERE to save on BiOptimizers Magnesium
People
Places
Books and References
Products
In this fascinating episode, join me as I sit down with Darryl Bosshardt, an advocate for natural wellness and an expert in the ancient, yet ever-relevant world of salt. Born and bred in the heart of Utah's mineral-rich landscapes, Darryl has cultivated a deep-seated passion for natural health solutions, drawing from his extensive background with Redmond Salt, a family business dedicated to harvesting the purest forms of salt found deep within the earth.
Our conversation with Darryl delves into the pivotal role salt plays in our health, hydration, and heritage, challenging long-held beliefs and opening new avenues for understanding our relationship with this essential mineral. Through his insightful narrative, Darryl unravels the history, science, and health benefits of salt, emphasizing its critical role in not just our diets but in the fabric of civilization itself.
This episode is a treasure trove for anyone curious about the real impact of salt on our wellbeing, the myths surrounding its consumption, and the art of integrating it mindfully into our daily lives. Join us on this enlightening journey to discover the essence of life through the lens of salt.
Key Points From This Episode:
The fascinating world of salt. [00:04:59]
The power of real salt. [00:09:12]
Ancient seabed salt deposits. [00:15:28]
Real essence of life in salt. [00:18:20]
Salt production techniques. [00:25:25]
Hydration and electrolyte importance. [00:38:25]
Hydrating with electrolytes for workouts. [00:41:22]
Electrolytes in fasting diets. [00:44:41]
High altitude training and sickness. [00:50:27]
Beetroot powder for healthitude. [00:53:14]
VO2 max and longevity. [00:55:04]
Salting food for optimal health. [01:02:15]
Living a primal lifestyle. [01:08:05]
Salt mineral transparency. [01:15:37]
The truth about salt minerals. [01:20:03]
Avoiding being too salty. [01:22:39]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Click HERE to save on BiOptimizers Magnesium
People
Places
Books and References
Products
Darryl Bosshardt: Our bodies need salt, but it manifests to us like it's sugar. And so we might be thinking, oh, what sounds really good is a big dish of ice cream, or what sounds really good right now is a big candy bar. But if you were to go over to your kitchen table and put just a pinch of salt under your tongue with a big glass of water, that will cut cratings like that. So if somebody is trying to do some intermittent fasting, or they're just trying to last a little bit longer before mealtime, or if you're craving a whole package of cookies, start with a little bit of salt and water and see how far that gets you. And most people are amazed at how satisfying and craving fulfilling a little bit of salt and good clean water can be.
Andres Preschel: There is only one supplement that I think almost everyone on this planet should be taking and that's a full spectrum and highly bioavailable magnesium supplement because, well, let's face it, ever since the industrial revolution, our soil has been depleted. of magnesium and therefore our food is depleted of magnesium and on top of that our modern environments which are inherently overstimulating and stressful are constantly depleting our body of magnesium and unlike other nutrients this is not something your body can produce on its own it literally needs to get it from the diet. And one individual kind of magnesium alone is not enough. You actually need seven different kinds to support over 300 biochemical reactions that help regulate your nervous system, red blood cell production, energy production, managing stress and emotions, etc. And so the folks at Bioptimizers have made it very easy and convenient to add back in what the modern world leaves out. They've created Magnesium Breakthrough. Now I've been taking this for the past two years and the biggest benefits that I've seen are related to my evening wind down sessions and my sleep. I tend to be pretty overactive in the evenings, just totally overthinking everything that I do. And this has helped me wind down and get more restorative, more efficient to sleep. So I wake up feeling way more refreshed, more energized, more clear, more ready for the day. And the way that I see it, sleep is upstream of essentially every other health and wellness related habit and decision. Because if you're sleeping better automatically, you're gonna have more regular cravings. You're gonna have higher insulin sensitivity You can derive more of all these inputs like fitness, right? You make more gains you gain more muscle you burn more calories and you wake up feeling refreshed so that you can do it again and again and again and And then beyond the fitness, you have more energy to go for a walk, to do fun activities with friends. You are less stressed, so you can socialize anxiety-free. And you're also going to be retaining, refreshing, and refining your skills and information much, much better. So you won't forget any names. And, yeah, I mean, like I said, over 300 chemical processes that you're supporting with magnesium. And sleep, I mean, wow. Better sleep is just a better life in general. So, I found that extremely helpful on a personal level, and I'm sure that you guys will find it helpful, too. Your mind and body, and maybe even your spirit, will thank you. So anyway, if you want to get a sweet little discount off of this amazing, amazing magnesium supplement from Bioptimizers, all you have to do is visit the show notes. So you scroll down right now, takes just a couple seconds and boom, you'll have access to all seven different kinds of magnesium that your body needs. All you have to do is hit the link and use code KYP from Know Your Physio. KYP. That's all. Enjoy 10 to 22% off depending on the package you choose, whether or not you subscribe. I'm obviously subscribed because I don't even want to think about whether or not I'm going to get this essential supplement in the mail. And yeah, hope you guys enjoy that awesome stuff. And that's all for now. I'll see you guys on the show. All right, Daryl, here we are in the NeuroPhysio podcast. It's an honor to have you here on the show. I'm a huge fan of your product, Redmond RealSalt, and I'm excited to dig in with you today into a delicious conversation about what's been making my food as delicious as it is past few months and weeks. having my Redmond Real Salt and my hydration and all my steaks and all my good stuff. So I'm excited to dig in with you men and really understand what it is that makes your salt so damn good.
Darryl Bosshardt: So welcome. Thank you, Andres. I'm so excited to be on the program today. Hopefully we can cover some things that are interesting to your listeners. I know sometimes people think that salt is boring or there couldn't be a lot to talk about when it comes to salt. And I hope that today we can show that's not the case, because salt is a fascinating topic. It's changed the world. It's changed the world landscape. And as you point out, it's essential for life. And so hopefully we get into some of that fun stuff today.
Andres Preschel: Awesome. So why don't we start before we dig into the salt itself? Why don't we start with? With Daryl Daryl, why you do what you do man? What got you into salt?
Darryl Bosshardt: So proximity is actually probably how I got started originally. I grew up in a little town in central Utah called Redmond, and the town is named after these three red mounds that are behind the town. Hence the name Redmound or Redmond is where I grew up. And it so happened that my grandfather and his brother had a farm just north of town that back in the 1950s, that farm wasn't doing very well. There was a big drought that year. And during World War II, my grandfather was a riveter and then a business manager at McDonnell Douglas in California. And his brother was a miner during the war at Kennecott, the really big copper mine here in Utah. So after the war, they wanted to move back together and kind of raise their kids near each other on their dad's farm. And so they started this farm and north and south of their farm, there was a little outcropping of salt. that the Native Americans had actually harvested long before the settlers had moved west. And so these little outcroppings of salt north and south of their farm that the livestock and the deer had pawed at and eaten at, so they knew there was salt there. And then when this drought hit in the 1950s, they figured there's salt north and south of their farm. there's got to be salt underneath. And so they took a big steel rod and pounded it down through the field. And lo and behold, about 30 feet from the surface, which is probably part of the reason the farm didn't do all that well, there was this massive ancient sea deposit that was just there under the farm and so back in the 1950s they started to sell this salt initially for road salt to keep the roads safe because it melts the ice off the roads and they sold it for farmers and what the farmers noticed was the livestock not only seemed to prefer this ancient sea salt from under the farm as opposed to the big white blocks you'd buy down at the feed store but the animals seem to do better on it. And then in the 1970s, when the health food movement started to really gain some momentum in the US, there was a group of health food stores that asked to start selling this salt in their stores. Now, my family had used it on our kitchen table since they started mining back in the 1950s. But we really didn't sell it into the health food markets because at the time, the family thought it must be kind of dirty salt, you know, because it's rose quartz, it's pink, it doesn't look like the white flower and the white sugar of the 1950s. And so they thought it was maybe inferior. And then a nutritionist corrected him and said, no, actually, you want ancient sea salt. You want this seabed that's rich in potassium, magnesium, calcium, selenium, iodine. And this is actually a great salt, not an inferior salt because of the way it was protected and laid down. And so as a kid, I grew up in the salt mine. If I was bad and my dad said, hey, if you don't straighten up, I'm going to send you to the salt mine. He wasn't kidding. So growing up, I always loved being around salt. As a kid, I'd ride my bike down after school and fill shakers and put stickers on. Not all of my siblings are in the salt business, but ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I've always wanted to be in the salt business. And that's where I am today.
Andres Preschel: That's incredible, man. That's incredible. What a great story. And, I mean, I hope that that nutritionist that changed the game for you guys got equity or something. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't have been healthy. They changed the business around, man.
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah, there was actually, the way that happened, he was a writer from California. And I think he came through, got a tour of the Grand Canyon and probably saw, you know, parts of the West and then went back to California and wrote this article. And this article said that the best, healthiest, tastiest salt was from this deposit in Utah. And so he started getting phone calls based on that article. And that's kind of what launched us into the food salt industry. And at the time, it was just called Redmond Salt or Salt from Redmond or Bechard Salt or something. And we wanted to come up with a better name. And so the family sat around and said, what do we call this stuff? It's not half salt. It's not no salt. It's It's just real salt and that's how the brand was born, real salt, because it wasn't like all the processed salts of the day.
Andres Preschel: And so, I think I know the answer to this question, but why is there sea salt in Utah?
Darryl Bosshardt: Great question. And the term sea salt is a little interesting because if we went back in the 1970s and you went to the store and you bought a brand that said sea salt, chances are that was going to be a little better product than maybe a canister that said table salt. marketing kind of took on that and just ran with it. And now you can walk into a health food store or a grocery store and there might be a product that says sea salt on it, but that sea salt can be completely processed, completely demineralized. It can come from any body of water that is sea-based because salt At least when we say salt today, let's agree that we're going to talk about sodium and chloride. The definition of salt in chemistry is an acid and a base that are bound together. So salts are magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride. So when we say salt, we're going to talk about sodium and chloride. Lucas? So, in salt, which is our bodies are based, our bodies are based in sodium and chloride, and all of the seawater occurs as sodium and chloride. Now, there's other trace minerals there, but it's predominantly sodium and chloride. So, if we went back 150 million years ago, geologists tell us that this was during the Jurassic era, and this was when Pangea was all together, and Utah was actually down at sea level. Utah now is at 5,000 feet or more, but then it was at sea level. And there was a depression that occurred that allowed the Arctic Ocean to flood in through Canada and left this massive inland sea as this prehistoric sea flooded the central part of the United States. And it covered all of Utah, parts of Colorado, parts of Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, covered this massive area. If you go to Wikipedia and you look for the Sundance Sea, this is the sea that geologists say was the original seabed that this salt from Utah comes from. And so as the seawater would come in and leave layer upon layer, our oceans today are two to three percent salt, and the other, you know, 98, 99 percent is water and other trace minerals. And so, as the sea water was brought into this massive inland sea, and then it was cut off, and the water started to evaporate, it left layer upon layer of salt, just like this stack of pages. So, over time, this seabed is now quarter mile thick of just salt that's been pushed down. Now Utah was also about 50 miles wider apart back then and if you look at Utah there's all these beautiful mountain ranges that run north and south and the plates have all been pushed together which buckled the Wasatch Mountain Range, this big Wasatch Fault, the big earthquake fault line that runs through Utah. So underground, as this pressure is pushing these plates together, this seabed that was laid down 150 million years ago gets pushed and buckled up as well. So under my grandfather's farm, there's this salt deposit that's about a quarter mile wide, three miles long, and then at 5,000 feet, it turns and goes horizontal again. And it just so happened that this occurred right underneath where my grandfather eventually had his farm. And so salt today can all be called sea salt because it comes from a seabed. It might be a current ocean, like the San Francisco Bay or the Gulf of Mexico or the Sea of Japan or the Mediterranean. It might be a dead sea, like the Dead Sea in Israel or the Dead Sea here in Utah called the Great Salt Lake, or it can come from an ancient seabed, a seabed like this Jurassic-aged Sundance Sea And there's these dead seas and ancient seas and current seas all across the globe. The Himalayan deposit that comes up in the Pakistan and the Nepal region is a prehistoric seed as well that's been pushed up. If we went down to Bolivia, there's a beautiful salt deposit in Bolivia called the Bolivian Pink Salt, geologically very similar to the Himalayan or to the Redmond Rill Salt from Utah, and it just depends on where these ancient seas were pushed back up. And so that's how this sea salt ended up in Utah, was this ancient seabed that was laid down long before we knew some of the challenges that we have today, whether it be Exxon Valdez or BP or the Japanese nuclear disaster. So, there's a lot of things that have happened to our current oceans that our early ancestors and early, you know, civilization never had to deal with.
Andres Preschel: Right. So, I mean, it's like, it's a nice play on the idiom that's like sitting on a gold mine, they were sitting on a salt mine. And now they've really capitalized and it turned to gold. I mean, it's unbelievable. I want a chance to… What's that? No, go ahead. I've had the chance to follow you guys on Instagram and such and take a look at your website. It's unbelievable how large these salt mines are, or the salt mine is. It's huge. There's no way your dad sent you there all alone. It's massive.
Darryl Bosshardt: Terrifying. When people think of mining, they think of these cold, dark, like a coal mine where you've got a low ceiling and you've got cribbing for support and they're very dangerous. There could be methane. There's all kinds of challenges with mining. In salt, especially our deposit, it's one that we don't have to deal with a lot of those challenges. So if you were to come out and visit sometime and we take you down into the mine, you'll see no cribbing, there's no structure. It's like driving into the Manhattan Tunnel. It's massive. And the mine or the tunnels have ceilings that are 30, 40 feet tall by 60 or 80 feet wide. And it's completely structurally sound. You know, if we were to have a two by four, and we put it between two buckets and we jumped on the middle, we could snap that pretty easily. If you put that up on its end, you can jump all day long and you're not going to break that two by four. In sedimentary deposits like coal, typically they're laid down horizontally, which makes them quite weak structurally. Because this was buckled and pushed up, if you come underground into the salt mine, the strata all runs vertical. which makes it an incredibly safe deposit and it's a non-gaseous mine. So we don't have to deal with methane and some of the problems that a lot of these other mines do. And so it's a neat experience. We do have some videos and some some pictures online for any of your listeners that want to see what it's like underground. But we don't do open tours to the public, but we do have a couple of exceptions for, you know, podcasters. So if you're ever out this way, let me know and we'll see if we can get you underground.
Andres Preschel: Well, I'd love to, but I'm sure a lot of my listeners are going to be very salty about that. I'm going to have to keep using that joke throughout the podcast, I'm sorry, ahead of time for you and for the listeners. What's unbelievable, I just looked up the Sundance Sea here on Wikipedia. So this took place during the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic era. So this was This was 66 to 252 million years ago. So basically, there's no trace of human beings, pollution, BPAs, microplastics, heavy metals. It's as clean as salt gets. And I think, honestly, I mean, I know, I guess this is why you guys call it real salt, because there's no, none of this crap. It's salt the way that salt is meant to be. It has that real essence of life in it.
Darryl Bosshardt: You know, it's funny that you should use that word because one of our taglines that we like to use is salt, the way salt was meant to be savored. Today, and we can talk about the, there's really two big processes that happened to salt to change it. The third would be, you know, possible human contamination. Now you're right. Like if you went back, you know, to this, you know, primordial 150 million year old seabed, we wouldn't have I mean the pollution might be a dinosaur walking through it you know we're not going to have any of the big challenges that our our system has today because you know we humans have not been the best stewards of this planet that we live on and fortunately there's more awareness and we're getting better and we've taken out some of the you know we've outlawed microbeads that were in soaps and triclosans and some of this other stuff that we were dumping into our oceans for so long But plastic is still an issue. And even if you look at our shaker here, this lid is a plastic lid. And this dial turns at the top. Anytime you have friction, you are creating ultramicroscopic plastic. And so there's a lot of things that we can still do better. Even on our pouch here, you know, if you open this pouch, there are little tabs that will break away when you, because it's tamper evident. And so there are things that still, like if we did an assay on this salt, there could be a little, Maybe a piece of blue after we've opened that lid because we're turning this dial. If we took the salt crystal from the 150 million year old seabed, there is absolutely no contaminants in this. It's just like it was when it was laid down. somewhere between 150 million years ago, give or take a few billion years. So I think it's a great question of what can we do to make the world better for ourselves and our future generations. And I think we can continue to get better on packaging and get better on the footprint that we're leaving, you know, for our posterity.
Andres Preschel: That's amazing, and I really appreciate the full disclosure, transparency, and the commitment to continue to offer other people the best product, period. You know, because the packaging matters too. You guys are going to those raw, are you?
Darryl Bosshardt: Actually, you know, we used to put these out and say 25 cents a lick and you know, and you know, you could Well, but but packaging I think is a good a good place to start to kind of interlude into The two things that can go wrong when it comes to salt so salt Well If we went back to the turn of the century long before Well, even further than that, let's say we went back to a thousand years ago, and the way we would get salt, because salt is essential for life, if we go to the hospital, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to give us an IV of saline solution, which is salt water. They won't give us an IV of tap water. They won't give us an IV of distilled water. They won't give us an IV of coffee. That might sound great in the morning. It's going to be an IV of 0.9% saline, or it will be a bag of lactated ringers, which is an electrolyte solution, mostly sodium chloride with a little bit of potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and some magnesium in it. because our bodies are saline solution in motion. Our tears are salt, our sweat is salt, our urine is salt, and no matter how much distilled water we drink, we're still going to cry and urinate and sweat out salt water because that's how our bodies function. They have to have salt to live. Because of that, at one point, salt was as valuable as gold. If we went back to the salt Traders and the spice traders even the roman soldiers were paid in salt because it was a universal currency Because it kept people alive. It kept animals alive and there's an old saying Is a man worth his salt? That saying comes because you were getting paid in salt and if you weren't earning your keep if you weren't you know, pulling your weight, you weren't worth the salt that you were getting paid. Because of that, almost every religious text Bible, the Quran, whatever, talks about the importance of salt, because since the dawn of time and recorded human history, salt was essential for life. Without salt, everything dies. If you and I don't have access to salt, pretty soon we're going to die of something called hyponatremia. If our animals don't have salt, birth defects, spike, and calf, and I mean, all kinds of things go wrong without access to salt, which is why when you go to the hospital, they give you an IV of saline solution, which is salt water. And so our bodies need salt, thrive on salt, absolutely have to have salt. And so as early our early ancestors, they would have either found an ancient deposit like this by watching the animals, and they would have followed the animals to the source of salt, or they would have gone to the ocean. And you can go to the ocean, and the ocean is seawater, mostly sodium and chloride, but it also has potassium chloride, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, selenium, zinc, copper, phosphorus, iodine, all of these in seawater. One of the reasons that fish is a great source of iodine, and we can talk about iodine later, and why seafood and seaweed is some of the best sources of iodine is because it's from the ocean, which is naturally rich in iodine levels. So if we were to go to the ocean, we could take bucket of seawater. It's going to be, you know, 2% salt. It's going to be everything else is water. Take it back to our house. We put it in a pot, throw it over some, you know, some coals, boil the water off, and eventually we'll be left with a layer of salt. And when we do that, we're getting all of the sodium and chloride, but we're also getting all of those other trace elements with the salt. That's option one. When we do it that way, we get all of that, all of the whole column, the whole complex chloride with us, which is important. because our bodies need more than sodium chloride. They also need potassium, magnesium. Those are the things found in seawater. The other option, if we didn't want to take it back to our house and boil it, we could take the water and put it in a pond. And if we lived, let's say, near Brittany, France, there is a rich gray clay there in France called a French green clay, but it's actually gray. And we could line that pond with grey clay. And we do that because if we take seawater and pour it on the sand, the salt just disappears. But if we line that pond with a grey clay, the clay won't let the seawater out. So we put the seawater in this grey clay lined pond, the evaporation happens, eventually that salt goes from 98% seawater to 50% down to 30%. At 26%, the water can't hold any more salt. We call that max salinity. And max salinity is 26% give or take some decimals. So what happens is once that water evaporates at 26%, the water can't hold any more salt and so the salt will start to fall out of suspension onto the bottom of the pond. So if we take a rake and then rake up those salt crystals, it's like it precipitates. Exactly. It precipitates out a solution. We rake that salt crystal up with the gray clay. Now we have gray salt. We call it French gray or Celtic salt is a very common.
Andres Preschel: Oh, wow. That's the Celtic salt. No wonder. I was just thinking, oh, why is Celtic salt? Wow. That's okay. I didn't know that.
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah. And it's a beautiful salt and it's all captured together. It's one of my favorite brands, Selena, a great business woman. She's the owner of the Celtic Salt Company. And that's how they produce their salt today. One single process, beautiful system. If we went to Hawaii, instead of a gray clay, Hawaii would use a red clay that's there. And so you get this red Hawaiian salt that's red because of that red clay that's coming off as they rake up those salt crystals. So salt, if you look at it in nature, should look more like a snowflake, where every crystal should look different. If you look at salt and it's 100% of these beady, looks like manufactured pebbles, that's an indication that you may want to change your salt. So that's the first step. So salt companies around the turn of the century realized that seawater has potassium chloride in it. and magnesium chloride in it and calcium chloride in it, which are very valuable minerals that we all need. And so they came up with a process that they could, instead of lining that pond with a gray clay like our ancestors would have, they found they could put a different membrane or a liner in the pond and they could pull off just the potassium chloride. Then they can move the water to the next pond and pull off the magnesium chloride. move it to the next pond, pull off the calcium chloride, then move it over and then dissolve whatever's left, including some of those micro elements and sell that as salt. Similar, if you and I were orange or citrus farmers and we came up with a process that we could take an orange and we could extract the ascorbic acid and sell it in a tablet, and then we could still sell the orange that's left over. I mean, we're going to double, triple our revenue. Great idea. other than if you're the guy buying the orange after the ascorbic acid's been taken out. And salt companies started doing that. So many of your salts today have gone through this process of elimination, where they have taken off some of those key elements besides the sodium and chloride. That's problem one. Problem two, which I think is the bigger problem, is salt in nature is hygroscopic. hygro-hygroscopic, which means it sucks water out of the air, which is important because one of the jobs of salt in the body is to help regulate the intracellular and the extracellular fluids. Through the sodium potassium pump, it brings in and releases fluids, cleans the cells, and that salts one of its main jobs in the body, outside of helping the body conduct electricity, which is also important, it's to regulate that fluid. And so salt, because of that, is hygroscopic. If we put this on your table in Florida on a really humid day, it'll actually suck water out of the air. It's that effective. Because of that, if you have a shaker of salt and the lid's off, or even if the lid's on, the salt crystals are sucking water out of the air, which makes the salt stick in the shaker. So around the turn of the century, salt companies got together and said, what chemical could we coat this crystal with to stop its ability to interact with moisture in the air? And by doing so, your salt won't clump in the shaker. The problem, and they came up with a whole list of chemicals, things like sodium ferrocyanide, Sodium, ferrous is iron, and cyanide is poison. Things like sodium silico aluminate, similar to the antiperspirant chemical. There's one called propylene glycol 400. And these chemicals can effectively stop salt's ability to interact with moisture in the air. But why in the world would you want to take a lick of your antiperspirant every morning, if you're even using antiperspirant at all? And why would you want to take- Look at your salt. Right. And yet so many salts. If you go to the grocery store and pick up a shaker of salt and look at the back of it, you'll see a whole ingredient list. And often these ingredients are added to stop salt's ability to interact with moisture, which is what salt's job is to do. And then salt is a really great cheap preservative. That's why our ancestors used salt in the spice trade, because outside of season, if you need to want to take this steak and you want to take it with you and you don't want to bring the hoof with you, you have to preserve this piece of meat and you would do that with salt. And so salt was always incredibly important to society. You know, before the turn of the century, we would have eaten more salt because our kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, fermented vegetables, jerkies, meats, dried fish, all of that, we would have used salt to preserve. But now we take this highly processed salt that's been demineralized, full of anti-caking agents, and then we put that on cheap processed food to make it last longer than it should. And we wonder why we get sick and we're feeling crappy. It's not the salt that our ancestors created. It's this processed salt on this processed food in incredibly high quantities. And then, yeah, we have a recipe for disaster, but it's not the salt. It's what we do to the salt and then what crack we put the salt on.
Andres Preschel: Right, so inevitably salt becomes a scapegoat.
Darryl Bosshardt: You know, there's the first research on how salt was bad actually came from a French researcher back in, it was there 1904 or 1905. Early on noticed that if they took high amounts of salt and force-fed these animals, it caused serious trouble. And then this other researcher in 1954, his name was Dahl, did this same research where they would take mice and inject them with super high amounts of salt, which caused all kinds of problems. But it wasn't it wasn't a study that was based on science. Because you can go to the hospital and get an IV of saline solution, which is salt water, and you can get liters of saline without any problem at all, as long as you have a healthy kidney. Now, if you're a kidney failure or dialysis, forget everything I've said today. But healthy kidneys can process about four ounces of salt a day. That's a massive amount of salt. And the kidneys, that's what they're designed to do, which is why you can get liters of saline without trouble.
Andres Preschel: I'm curious if you guys had the chance to do any kind of research with your specific salt on, is there any human trials or any testing that you've done on any living creature? I don't know if there's any kind of research that you've looked into with your salt specifically.
Darryl Bosshardt: The short answer is no, especially not on the food side. We do have a lot of incredibly interesting anecdotal stories. We've got a lot of doctors, health practitioners. Before we started recording today, we talked about Dr. James D. Nickel Antonio and his book, The Salt Fix. So there are a lot of people who, and healthcare professionals, who recommend R-Salt by brand and just natural salts by brand generally, which are great. Now in the animal side, we actually do have more studies that universities have done and farmers have done on feeding their animals R-Salt versus a processed salt block, and there are some great great stories there. I'm not as familiar with the agricultural side of the business, but I know on our website, which is redmondagriculture.com, we do have some of those studies on some of the mineral supplementation studies that universities have done on our product. But more for the livestock industry and dairy industries, not for human industry.
Andres Preschel: And what would you have to say with regards to the amount of salt that people should be consuming every day?
Darryl Bosshardt: That's a really good question. So the American Journal of Medicine, or actually the recommended daily allowance is still 2,300 milligrams, which isn't that much. And in fact, there was some recent articles, this was from Open Heart Magazine, and I can send you copies to all of these, but it shows that those with the sodium intake of less than 2,300 milligrams actually have the highest level of myocardial infarction, which is heart attack, as opposed to those having the highest amounts. And it's based on whether they have adequate amounts of potassium and magnesium, which are critical to work against that sodium. And so the article, the articles today say rather than focusing on just salt or just not, I mean, just sodium or just potassium or just magnesium, it's important to keep all of those in balance. And if somebody's eating a bunch of processed foods, you know, if you're eating 90% of your diet out of boxes and cans and things like that, yeah, you probably are getting too much salt because salt is a very cheap preservative. But worse than that, the salt that you're getting, is this processed salt that has all these additives and demineralization that we just talked about. So once somebody switches over to a natural diet, and they're cooking their own food at home, or they're seeking out raw foods, you'll actually have to go out of your way to add salt back into your diet. Because if you don't, you just like our ancestors will find that your sodium levels are too low which result in headaches, nauseousness, lack of sleep. There's all kinds of functions that are really essential for salt and when somebody starts to make some lifestyle changes and start eating naturally you really have to go out of your way to eat too much salt. In fact, Dr. James D. Nicolantonio, in his book, The Salt Fix, or Dr. David Brownstein, in his book, Salt Your Way to Health, and in this book by Dr. Batman Gellie, Your Body's Many Cries for Water, they all suggest that you can salt your food liberally. If you're making your own food and you're not eating out of boxes and cans and refined foods, you can salt your food liberally and you also should go out of your way to add salt to your water. Because if you're a very active athlete like you are, I'm an avid mountain biker, You know, when I'm on a mountain bike for several hours, I am burning through a high amounts of fluid, much more than if I'm sitting in a temperature controlled office, you know, chatting on a podcast. So on those days, my salt consumption will jump three or four times pretty easily. Because if I don't and I'm on my mountain bike and I'm not rehydrating with electrolytes, my legs are cramping up, I feel nauseous, I feel my mind is clouded, my vision gets blurred, all kinds of things go wrong. And so I like to suggest we start listening to our bodies a little better. You know, we know when we're thirsty, or we should know. And most of us drink way too little, or we wait too long, or it's close to bed, and I don't want to get up and use the bathroom, so I'm not going to drink for the last couple hours of the day. And we have all these excuses. And so most of us are dehydrated. And then we feel bad about it, and so we'll drink a gallon of water or something, and we're just flushing electrolytes unless we're going out of our way to intentionally, you know, listen to our body and our cravings.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, in my case, I start my day with a good amount of hydration and electrolytes. I know, for example, while we sleep, just by breathing in a little bit of sweat, but mostly breathing, we can lose five, six pounds of water. It's all water weight, it's not fat, it's water weight. So the first thing I do in the morning is I take 32 ounces of water, either spring water, I just got a Greenfield Water Solutions five-stage filter. It structures it, it harmonizes it, it's all this crazy stuff. And then I'll add one scoop of the Re-Lite hydration formula that uses your salt. and this group of creatine. And so I start the day, I have that while I'm out in the sun to Prime Mr. Kitten Rhythm. And it's like, seriously, one of the best health upgrades that I've got in my tool belt. And I really can't recommend this enough. You know, most people start their day, they don't hydrate, they just go straight for coffee. And so they're getting some liquid, but it's a diuretic. It only continues to dehydrate you. And I can't recommend it enough. Try hydrating with water and plenty of electrolytes in the morning and just see how energized you become. You become, you feel electric, as you said.
Darryl Bosshardt: You know, I love how you start the day with that because people, I think generally, you know, life coaches and health coaches, even medical professionals are helping people know the importance of breathing, right? It seems silly that we have to have these classes on de-breathing and how good de-breathing and intentional breath work is. And if you look at our physiology, the most important thing that keeps us alive is oxygen and the air mixture. If the air was sucked out of the room immediately, you and I, we're not going to last very long. And so in order of importance, we have oxygen, and then we have water, and then we have salt. And those three things are the primary building blocks that keep us alive. And yes, there's a lot of nuance, and there's a lot of other things that are important. But those three things, if we started every day with resetting the Arcadian rhythm, with having a big glass of water and salt, we can't get a better way to start the day because that is the essence of life is air, water, and then salt.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, absolutely. And if I'm going to go outside, you know, I'm in Miami, it's hot, it's humid. If I'm going to go and do, let's say, a morning workout, instead of having 30 tons of water, I'll go down to like 24 ounces with one scoop. So the concentration is a little higher, and I'm a little more electric for the workout. But seriously, like that, this has totally changed the game. It's so much better than just plain water.
Darryl Bosshardt: You know, I like that terminology you said with electric because distilled water is a very poor conductor of electricity. And if we had a dish that had distilled water in it and a wire in one side and a wire in other, we can't push that electric current through that water. But as soon as we add salt, we can. So it is electric and it is what, you know, my hand moves because of electric current. And we have to be conductive And if it's good, clean salt and good, clean water, it's really hard to overdose on it. Animals don't overdose on salt in nature, just like you don't see an obese tiger. You know, they don't do that. We as humans, over time, we've lost our ability to really listen to cravings. And we might think, oh man, I'm really craving a big bag of potato chips right now. That's not what your body's really needing. And when you have a headache, you might think, oh, I'm really low on ibuprofen. No, you're not. Oftentimes a headache is lack of water because our brains are so much fluid. And as our, you know, our first response for a headache, if it was a great big glass of water with a little bit of salt under your tongue, for many people that will cut that headache because it's the water and the salt that's lacking, it's not the vitamin I that we sometimes turn to. Just like when we're craving a bag of potato chips, you know, if we were to get some good clean fat and some good clean salt, we're going to be way better than, you know, going to that bag of potato chips. And our bodies oftentimes associate a sugar craving or actually our bodies need salt but it manifests to us like it's sugar and so we might be thinking oh what sounds really good is a big dish of ice cream or what sounds really good right now is a big candy bar but if you were to go over to your kitchen table and put just a pinch of salt under your tongue with the big glass of water, that will cut cratings like that. So if somebody's trying to do some intermittent fasting or they're just trying to last a little bit longer before mealtime, or if you're craving a whole package of cookies, start with a little bit of salt and water and see how far that gets you. And most people are amazed at how satisfying and craving fulfilling a little bit of salt and good clean water can be.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, absolutely, and naturally when you're fasting, I believe it has to do with increasing cortisol and epinephrine, you will deplete water, it has a diuretic effect, you deplete water, you deplete electrolytes. And I've also been noticing, so when I fast, I'm especially considerate of my electrolytes. I've been noticing a trend, and I don't know if you've noticed this too, but a lot of people have been transitioning over to reverse osmosis water, RO water for their homes. Or like distilled water. And honestly, man, between me and the listeners, it pisses me off. It frustrates me. Because I guess you're getting pure H2O, but that's all you're getting. So there's reverse osmosis that happens in your own body. In order for that to support gastric emptying, you lose electrolytes so that the intracellular environment matches what you're consuming. And you also lose minerals. And so, it's like you said, it's making the solution less conductive and making you lazier and hazier, giving you brain fog. And it's like, sure, if you're going to get RO water, you have to make sure to remineralize it, add minerals back in and add electrolytes back in. Otherwise, it's going to slow you down. Pure water is not enough.
Darryl Bosshardt: know one of the challenges with water it's kind of interesting if anybody has an ro system they actually do that ro system what they call point of use meaning they would put that ro system at their kitchen faucet you would not you would never put an ro system right as it comes into your house and the reason you don't do that is ro water is hungry water because it is stripped of all of those minerals, devoid of those. When it's coming through your pipe, especially you have copper pipes or anything like that, that water is now actually corrosive because distilled water or RO water is so lack of minerals that the water itself is hungry. And so they won't put that system right at the point of the house because it will actually cause problems to your pipes. They'll only put that right at the point of use. And in your body, it's the same way. Like you said before, if you're drinking distilled water or RO water, the benefit, especially if you're on a municipal facility and you've got all kinds of additives they're putting into the water and maybe your neighbor flushed a bunch of pharmaceuticals in the water and now they can't get them out in the city filtration system, there are some benefits to a good filtration system. if your option is to have, it's either that or city water. But if you are going to go with that RO or reverse osmosis or distilled, it's even more important to go in and add those minerals back. If you were on a clean well up in the mountains, that well water probably has potassium in it, some calcium in it, some magnesium in it, all things that are good. But if you're on, yes, super distilled, super filter, you've got to really go out of your way now to add. And we see that actually every year or so. We'll see the football teams in Texas or maybe the military in California, where they're out there running super hard all day long with their full gear and packs, drinking plenty of water, and yet one of them will pass out and sometimes, unfortunately, even die of hyponatremia, even though they were drinking tons of water. Because that water, you can flush, especially if it's distilled or reverse osmosis. That's hungry water, and it will be accelerating the loss of minerals even faster.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, and so a little bit about hyponatremia. So for those who don't understand the context clues or have never heard of hyponatremia, low sodium, low NA, low sodium, and it can be deadly. And we've actually, we actually looked at this extensively when I was doing my, getting my degree in exercise physiology. We actually looked at groups of athletes throughout the course of a marathon that were either Getting too much salt in their water, just enough or too little, and those that were hyponatremic had by far the worst performance. By far the worst. They cramped up, they slowed down, they had to call it quits. You know, it was the worst by far. And so I want people to be, and especially athletes, to be especially mindful of their hydration. And especially mindful of the environment that they're in, where they're training. Because like you said, you know, for example, over here in Florida, with this heat and humidity that we have, you just lose so, so, so, so much. If you're spending a lot of time in the sauna, you're losing so, so, so, so, so much. So yeah, it's… I really… So be especially mindful.
Darryl Bosshardt: I really feel that when I go down to Florida, because I train mostly up here at 5, 6, 7,000 feet here in the mountains of Utah. Um, I went to a trade show once I was in Florida before the show, I got out and went running. Um, and I felt, I felt amazing, like to go from, from 5,000 feet down to five feet. I mean, but what I didn't notice was how, how much easier it was and how much longer I went than normal, but yet didn't take into the salt into consideration. So I got back to the trade show, came into the booth. And I had this wave of like nauseous, like post-workout fatigue that I, it had been a long time since I'd felt that. And I think what it was, was I felt so good because of the oxygen concentration, but didn't take into account the loss of salt, um, in the hot, humid and longer period workout than I normally would have done before, you know, going to the trade show.
Andres Preschel: Well, look, I'm a little envious because that's a relatively easy fix compared to what I'm about to engage in, which is tomorrow I'm going to Colorado for a ski trip. You're living high, training low, so you get that benefit. I'm doing the opposite. I have to go from low to high. I'm not going to have enough time to fully adapt and build up my hemoglobin and oxygen carrying capacity. You are complaining, my friend, but it's not fair. You can just get some salt. You don't have to spend Two weeks to acclimate.
Darryl Bosshardt: But with high altitude sickness, actually, water and salt, one of the best ways to overcome it. Like dehydration is huge at high elevations because when you think about water, you know, water boils at a vacuum at a lower temp than it does at sea level. And so as the air gets thinner, the temperature of losing fluids actually increases. I went to Everest Base Camp a couple years ago, and you have to drink an exponential amount of additional water because you're actually, just through respiration, you're burning off way more water than you would at a lower altitude.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, and I mean, if you're not acclimated, the increased breath rate to compensate for laxation saturation is also going to deplete you.
Darryl Bosshardt: I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, that's probably even as big or even bigger than the actual elevation.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, and that's something else I'm a little worried about. It's like, you know, my sleep scores on my Whoop are going to be all messed up because my breathing rate is an increase and therefore I'm going to be in a more sympathetic state and it's going to take away from the recovery I need to wake up feeling great and get some sleep. But even that, I mean, just the joy of skiing is enough to get you, you know, up and ready for the day and pushing forward.
Darryl Bosshardt: This is a complete tangent, but I had the best day skiing I've had in, Oh, probably six or eight years, two days ago up at Powder Mountain. My buddy from Pennsylvania was coming into town and we do this little once a year friend trip and it just happened to be that day and there was this unusual 12 inches of snow. It wasn't called for in the forecast and
Andres Preschel: about powder mountain was just not to make you jealous or to make you excited for your trip next week but it was a really good trip i'll tell you why i'm excited is because i mean skiing in general is fun but i'll tell you why i'm excited about this is because i grew up skiing vermont which is super freaking icy They say if you can ski Vermont, you can ski anywhere in the world, and this is my first time going to the West Coast for some real powder. And so, you know, it's almost like at this point, getting to, like, yeah, Powder Mountain, and it's just, to me, it's all the same, because it's the relative change is tremendous, you know?
Darryl Bosshardt: You're gonna have a great time, man.
Andres Preschel: Yeah. And I'll tell you what, I do have a secret weapon for healthitude, which is beetroot powder. Yeah, because it vasodilates and just simply improves the flow of oxygen.
Darryl Bosshardt: Is there a favorite form you like it in? Is there a brand of beetroot powder? Do you mix it in?
Andres Preschel: Yeah, so I actually had Dr. Nathan Bryan, who has a PhD in nitric oxide. And he's probably the number one, I believe he's the number one leading expert in nitric oxide. And he's developed a variety of beetroot, you know, derived products over the years for nitric oxide and blood flow. And he's got a company called NO2U. And so I ordered these like lozenges. that increase nitric oxide and then I also have like a beetroot powder that he makes and I mean this stuff is, it increases endurance, it increases VO2 max, but it's not going to energize, it's not energizing like caffeine or nicotine, it's not energizing, it's not a stimulant. it actually lowers your blood pressure and can make you technically lazier. But as such, it promotes endurance and increases VO2max, so you can go harder longer.
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah, VO2max is huge. I was listening to the Diary of a CEO podcast and they were talking about VO2max and how It's kind of an underrated or underappreciated indicator of health.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, it's the number one most highly correlated metric with longevity because it assumes so much more about your health and fitness status. So, if you actually look down and break it, like if you were to break down what's called the Fick equation of VO2 max. VO2max is equal to your cardiac output, which is a combination of stroke volume, so the heart, the blood that leaves the heart with every heartbeat, multiplied by your beats per minute, so it's the amount of blood, the volume of blood leaving your heart every minute. Then you multiply that by your AVO2 difference, the difference in oxygen saturation between atrial and venous blood, so basically how much oxygen your tissue has absorbed. And so, a high VO2max indicates that you have high stroke volume, that's the number one component for increased VO2max. Basically, the size of your left ventricle, the heart's main pump chamber, is larger and it can contract harder, which is really healthy. And then, if you have a high AVO2 difference, that means that you can assume that you have a very good compliance in your arteries and veins so they can expand and contract nicely. So, therefore, they probably don't have very much or very little plaque. in the artery and then you also are assuming high like capillary density. So, basically, as this oxygen is being supplied, your tissues can readily, you know, use it. So, essentially, if you look at the body as a system that delivers and absorbs oxygen and you have a high VO2 max, then you have a better system, a more efficient machine and that kind of efficiency translates to better quality of life and therefore promotes longevity. So, most people don't know how to appreciate VO2 max in that sense. It is the most highly correlated metric with longevity. You have to isolate one because it assumes so much about everything else.
Darryl Bosshardt: Well, thanks for explaining that. I mean, I've heard bits about that, but that was the best version of that I think I've ever heard. So thank you for sharing that with me.
Andres Preschel: Directly from an exercise physiologist. Yeah.
Darryl Bosshardt: And so, yeah, I'll have to look at that NO2U. That sounds… NO2U. Yeah, I'll pull that up.
Andres Preschel: Well, I'll do a combination. What I'm going to take with me, I'm going to have a little camelback, and I'm going to take a combination of spring water with Redmond Real Salt or Re-Lite Boost and some beetroot powder. That's going to be my formula while I'm skiing.
Darryl Bosshardt: That sounds like a good one. And on a future trip, you'll have to come to Utah, and we'll go hit a couple of slopes together.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, I mean, I'd love to come by the salt mine and just explore it. Hopefully, I don't have to piss you off, so you send me to the salt mine, so hopefully I get a good tour. But I'm sure it'll be a great time. Yeah, it's unbelievable how much salt you guys have got. I was watching a video yesterday on your Instagram and I think you guys are making anywhere between 20 to 25 packets a minute. That being said, what is the lifespan of the salt mine at this rate?
Darryl Bosshardt: Oh yeah, that's a great question. So the deposit, it's about a quarter mile wide, like I mentioned, three miles long, about 5,000 feet deep. And we've gone down about 700 feet or so into that deposit, taking about And only taking about 35% of the material. So we could, because we're rumen pilloring it, if we open pitted, we could take a lot more. So geologists figure that somewhere in the 900 years or so, we'd have to start being a little more worried about that. So you can salt your food liberally, you can put it in your camel bag when you go skiing, and you don't have to worry about using too much of it.
Andres Preschel: Well, unless this kind of approach and really, you know, if everyone in the world starts to savor this flavor of life, you know, Redmond Real Salt, and it goes absolutely viral, it just becomes the norm, then you're going to have a real problem because it's going to be a lot less than 900 years.
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah, it might drop down to 700, so. Yeah, or we're going to have to make the salt much more expensive, you know?
Andres Preschel: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, man. Cool. Well, where can people learn more about you guys and where can they find your salt?
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah, great question. So, web is all the rage these days if you haven't noticed that yet. But yeah, so the website's a great place to start. You can go to realsalt.com as opposed to fake salt. It's just realsalt.com. Our main website for all of our kind of our food products division is redmond.life, R-E-D-M-O-N-D dot life. And that has our Relife that you mentioned. We also have a kind of a cosmetic line with some clay and salt-based skincare and toothpaste, which is another, you know, fun topic in and of itself. But yeah, those are two great places to start. Some of my favorite books, there's a great book called salt a world history and even if you have never been a history buff or world history has always been boring there's a book called salt a world history it is so fun it talks about how every war and civilization up through the current times were won and lost based on who had access to the salt deposits talked about the importance of salt in human trade and in and spiritual ceremonies, and in wars, and even the Revolutionary War. If you don't have a refrigerator, you can't keep food. And so in a war situation, you've got this massive military, and they're sweating, and they're running, and they're working hard, and they're losing all of this salt. One, they have to have salt to preserve any food if they didn't have refrigeration or, you know, our current food preservation technology. But two, you're losing all of this salt. So in the Revolutionary War, the states took out Britain's source of salt. And so your food spoils. And if you don't have good food, then you're going to struggle. In the Civil War, same thing. The North took out the South Saltworks in Carolinas, and it made a huge impact on the war. If you look at the wars in China and in Europe, salt historically was a fascinating part of our world history, so that book covers that. The other favorite books you mentioned already is Dr. James D. Nicolantonio, his book, The Salt Fix, excellent book. I really enjoy Dr. David Brownstein's work called Salt, Your Way to Health. There's a book by Dr. Robert Thompson called The Calcium Lie, which is pretty interesting, that talks about the importance of salt in a healthy diet. And I just really appreciate you taking the time. I have learned a lot. I'm excited to do some more research into that beet powder. And hopefully we've given your listeners something to think about when it comes to salt in a healthy diet.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, absolutely, but you know what? If you have a few more minutes, you just opened up a whole can of worms, if that's all right. You bet. Yeah? Yeah. So, one thing that I'm thinking about is, you know, when it comes to salting your food, you know how typically, intuitively, you know, we know when there's, things are a little too salty or they're lacking salt. the correlation between, what the correlation is between what we perceive as the adequate amount of salt and how much salt and electrolytes our body actually needs to function optimally in that moment in time. Have you explored that at all?
Darryl Bosshardt: Not in the depths of the science. The cravings alone, we do know that that is a really good indication. Water is an easy example. After, let's say you and I go for a big day on the ski slopes, we forget our backpacks or we forget our hydration, we come off the slopes, that first glass of water is going to taste amazing. By the time we drink a gallon of water, that last few sips is going to be nauseating. because our body's starting to feel saturated. And salt's the same way. If you come off a long run, and earlier I put some salt under my tongue, and even right now that salt doesn't taste salty. For me, that salt is very sweet, and I want to put another piece in my mouth, which means I am low on salt right now, probably from my workout this morning. I've sat here in the office most today, or actually I usually stand at my desk, but I have lost a lot of water today. I've lost a lot of salt today. And so that salt tastes really good. At some point, as I ate more and more pieces, it's going to start tasting not good. And animals know that. That's why you can put a salt lick out for your animals, and they will lick the salt. The horse will lick the salt lick until it's satisfied. And then it won't. You know, horses are fun to watch. They'll eat tree bark. They'll eat dirt off the ground. They'll eat salt. They're so more in tune with their bodies than we are today. And I think something that I would like to continue to do better is just try to live a little more intentionally and be a little more aware of my cravings. And when I start feeling maybe worn out or tired, is it because I didn't get enough caffeine pills or I didn't drink enough coffee? Or is it because, man, my sleep score on my sleep tracker is trending down. And so rather than trying to just find a quick fix, whether it's a pill or a drink, trying to be a little more intentional, like even tracking v2 max, right? If we track those things and we see what happens when we go skiing at 7,000 feet, you know, or if I go out and I stay up too late or I eat a huge meal or I eat a bunch of sugar or whatever, I think if we got a little better at listening to our bodies, I don't think we would overdose. Humans have not ever overdosed on salt. You don't do that in nature. Now, humans today, if you're eating out of boxes and cans and processed foods, yeah, you probably could get too much, just like you can get way too many processed carbs if you're not careful. But if you were to live without any processed foods and you're out scavenging or raising your own garden, you're going to have a lot tougher time struggling with obesity if you're the one that has to gather and raise all of your food. It's when we have this and never-ending access to highly processed carbs, sugars, processed fats, processed salts, I think that we invite the challenges where if you're eating natural foods, you're going to have a lot tougher time overdosing on salt, overdosing on protein, overdosing on good fat. or even berries. There's a lot of good nutrition in berries, and you'd have a tougher time if you were just gathering all of your own berries to overdose on them. But if every morning you take this massive cartload of berries, throw it in a juicer, and break down all the fiber, and then drink it every single day, I'm not a nutritionist, and you probably would be able to explain it better, but that's a lot of sugar. Even if it's natural berries, if you're just putting all of this sugars into a jar blending it up, breaking down the fibers, and then pounding. That is very different from hitting a raspberry bush as a kid and going over and helping yourself to your grandmother's strawberry and raspberry bush. Very different.
Andres Preschel: Yeah, so I think in a nutshell what you're saying, which I absolutely couldn't agree more with, is the more biologically consistent our lifestyle is, the more in tune we are with our cravings and the things that we need for our body to function optimally. And if we pursue instead these hyper-palatable foods that are laced with crap, then our body thinks in a way it's getting what it needs, but it's not. It's exploiting certain reward mechanisms, but it's totally, it's taking us further and further from the quality of life that we deserve to enjoy.
Darryl Bosshardt: You explained that way better than I did and in half the time.
Andres Preschel: I'm just, I'm paraphrasing here, I'm just, but I mean, I think it's, yeah, I think that a lot of this intuition has to do with, in a way, living like primals in the modern day. But I really want to emphasize that because you just really gave me this sort of like, you know, eureka moment. I think together we stumble upon this clear and concise definition of the way people should probably live their life. It's like if you eat the way that you're designed to eat, whole foods, nutrient density, and you spend more energy getting that food or simulating it, so going to the gym, you're not going to hunt in the grocery store. then it's easier to understand how much of what your body needs.
Darryl Bosshardt: And I love that. I know I'm not the best at it. I mean, there are times when I am really glad that I can just go grab something. There's some great protein bars out there. There's some great supplements out there. And I'm all for that. But I think as much as possible in our busy lives, if we can stop, pause, do some breath work. Stop, pause, and maybe just eat a little more intentionally this week than I did last week. And if I eat out a lot, maybe I should, you know, maybe I could try to do three or four cooked meals this week. And I think as we all just work on being a little more intentional in our lives, I think the world would be a better place. I think we'd be healthier. And I think the world would be a little better place if we could all be a little more intentional with where we shopped, how we shopped, how we ate. At least something, you know, I remind myself every day that I could continue to do better at.
Andres Preschel: Yeah. Great. I do have one more question for you. Actually, two little questions for you. What's your take on pink Himalayan salt? I forgot to ask you this way back when you mentioned Celtic sea salt. What's your take on pink Himalayan? And then I have my final question.
Darryl Bosshardt: So I think it's a great, potentially, it's a great product. I am all for eating locally as much as possible. I think there's great product all around the world. And I think there'd be little reason to take a great product from California and ship it all the way across to China if China has a great source of an avocado, for instance. With the caveat that there's a lot of things that people can do wrong, I think there are, when it comes to salt, there's three questions to ask. What's the source? Actually, before that, I think the first question is who's producing it? Because if we know who actually is producing the product, then we can find out the source. Where is it coming from? Is it coming from a current ocean, a dead sea? And then the third question is, what's the process? What are they doing to it? How are they extracting it? Are they adding anything? Are they taking anything out? And so when it comes to, let's say, dairy, or let's say it comes to steak, You know, I think if you can know the farmer, know are there hormones, are there processes? When it comes to the actual piece of meat, are they doing any, you know, gas, you know, treating with nitrogen? Are they doing any, you know, food coloring? So know the source, know who's producing it, and know what they're doing to it. And in the Himalayan deposit, it's a massive deposit that's mostly in Pakistan that also stretches up into Nepal. And it's a beautiful deposit, geologically almost identical to the deposit we have here in Utah. But there's dozens of mines. I've heard different numbers. But there's dozens of operators and mines that produce Himalayan salt. And a lot of it comes out of Pakistan. And there are probably places there where it's done very well. And there's probably places that maybe aren't. And I think traceability is one of the challenges for Himalayan salt. Now, if I lived in Nepal or Pakistan, I would try to find out, you know, ask a few questions and find somebody who's got a deposit and that they're using, maybe they're using hand tools, they're not using any blasting agents, they're using fair labor practices. And I would bet that if you and I lived in Nepal or Pakistan, we could find an incredible source of good, clean Himalayan salt. And if we can, I don't think there's any reason that we should import it all the way from the U.S. or from Bolivia all the way into that country. and vice versa. You know, if we have a great source of good, clean beef here in the US, why import it from China? And in Bolivia, if you and I lived in Bolivia, there's a great deposit of salt in Bolivia. And I would try to find the producer, ask him a few questions, make sure it's done right, make sure they're treating their people fairly. And I think the same with the French gray salts. There's some great producers out there. Selena, the owner of Celtic, she has gone over and she's ensured that that facility there, they're doing it right. And so I think Celtic is a great brand. There's a few brands of Himalayan, There's a brand called Himala, and if I were using Himalayan salt, Himala is a brand that I know the owner of, and I think it's a great product. And so obviously I'm a little biased, and I think Redmond is a great source of salt, but if you ask yourself those three questions, who's producing it, what's the source, and what are they doing to it, you'll end up with a great product. It might be Redmond, it might be Celtic, it might be Himalayan, it might be Andean pink salt, it might be the Murray River salt. There's a lot of great natural salts out there. One of the challenges with salt is it's co-mingled and harder to trace than almost every other food product. If you walk into the grocery store and buy an orange, it probably says, you know, made in Florida, raised in Florida, or it might be in California. It's easy to find out where a lot of our products are raised. If you buy a steak, you might get it from the local farmer's market. Salt, if you just walked into the grocery store or health food store and looked at all the different salts on the shelf, to know where that salt actually came from, Was it the Sea of Japan? Was it the coast of Brittany, France? Was it in the Mediterranean after the cruise ship went down? Was it in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP spill? Was it on the coast after Exxon Valdez? I mean, you have no idea where probably 95% of the salt on that shelf comes from. And if you're buying a lot of the Himalayan salts, it's all co-mingled, meaning it's shipped down to the coast through Pakistan. It hits the coast. It's all dumped together. It comes over in big bags. And that bag might end up at Costco. It might end up at, you know, it might end up at Sam's Club. It might end up in your grocery store. But to look at that shaker and say, what mine in what location and what family produced it, it would almost be impossible. And so that's why I think some of the challenge comes in and why I like Celtic because it's pretty transparent and you know exactly where that salt comes from if you buy Celtic. If you buy the Himalaya brand of Himalayan salt, you can find out where that salt actually came from. But a lot of the salt on the shelf today You'd have no idea where it came from. Did it come from a current ocean, a dead sea? Did it come from under Chicago? Was it processed? And that's one of the big challenges with salt.
Andres Preschel: Long answer. Yeah, I know. That's incredible. And I think this is one of the most valuable things you've touched upon so far on the show. And let's be specific. We appreciate transparency when it comes to the mission, but not to the product. Because the product must have all the minerals in it that keep it from being transparent. Yeah, so I think one thing that we didn't touch on is that you guys have 60 minerals in your salt. Is that the case with other salt brands?
Darryl Bosshardt: Yeah, so we used to have this podcast or a blog, and we called it Counting Minerals. Now, if you take, and I've done this, if you take Celtic salt, if you take Himalayan salt, if you take our real salt, you send it all to a lab, they're going to test it. And the easy or, I'm not sure easy is the right term, but generally they're going to test up to about 75 elements or what they can test for. easily. Now, some things you're not going to test for, like nitrogen, right? That's on the periodic table of elements. And you're not going to test for oxygen on the periodic table of elements. So these 75 that you can test for are things that you would typically see in salts and in heavy metals and in the earth. And when you get the lab result back, I don't know that I have one right here, but you will see the lab report and it lists all 75 or all 84 of those elements that you had them test for. But On a big chunk of those, you're going to see either an ND, which means non-detected, or you will see a less than symbol with a 0.0005. If it says less than, that means that the lab is saying we tested down to 0.0005 parts per million, and we didn't find any. So if there's some there, it's less than 0.0005. And so, when we report our analyses, we will show 60. Of those 60, some of them show up all the time, some of them show up most of the time, and there's some that have never shown up. But we only show the 60 that we have actually found in the salt. If you go to Celtic site, or you go to a lot of the Himalayans in some of the early books, they will say, we have 84, we have 82, we have 75, I have never been able to reproduce it and I have talked to Selena and I've talked to the Himalayan companies and they can't reproduce it because the technology doesn't exist to go down to that far level, at least in an economical way to do that study. So in theory, all of the salts, the natural salts that haven't been used as evaporation system, have those same number of minerals. If you look at Celtic, next to Himalayan, next to Redmond. Now, some of those levels are gonna be a little bit different. I've seen some tests and sometimes on the ones that we have done sent the same salt to the same labs, maybe the sulfur is a little bit higher in one, maybe the calcium will jump, but the number of minerals is the same. I have never seen analyses done that shows that That one has substantially more or less which makes sense Like with the himalayan and the red because it's the same ocean. It's the same 150 million year old seabed it just One part ended up in the sundance sea that covered this part of the u.s. Other parts covered the the chunk of the globe that's now Pakistan and india and it was pushed up there and it pushed up in bolivia So, the primordial C's were all the same. And so, I think it's a little sometimes disingenuine on some of the marketing that make this big deal. Another kind of funny, in my opinion, way to make some unique marketing is some of the French gray salt companies, if you've noticed, some of that French gray is kind of sticky and wet because they're not using high heat to evaporate it. And so they'll say that, oh, you know, this salt has 85% sodium chloride. And so we have all this other minerals and brine, which is just water. And so you'll see, it makes it look like that they've got, you know, 85% salt and they've got 15% minerals and brine, which is, and water. And so if you look at the actual salt and the mineral content and you get the water off, so everything's being equal, That's why I think, you know, whether you pick Himalayan, you pick some of the nice Hawaiian salts, you get Redmond, all of them are going to be right in that 2 to 3% trace mineral because the FDA makes that a condition. You can't sell salt if it was less than 70 or less than 80, sorry, less than 97. And so some of that is just marketing. And so that's why, rather than getting into brands, I'd like to say, ask those three questions. You know, who's producing it? What's the source? And what are they doing to it? Are they taking anything out? Are they putting anything in? And if you ask those questions, I think you'll get a good product. And it might be ours. I hope it is. But there's other good products out there that I would have no problems using for myself and my family. And no matter what the marketing says, they're going to have the same minerals, even though it might be a couple of parts per million different on any given test. Just like if you went and tested an apple tree, you take two apples off the tree, you do a full elemental and nutritional assay on those two apples. One's maybe closer to the sun on the east side, and the other one maybe was more shaded. You're going to have different nutrition. And in the salt, it's the same way. You pick up two handfuls of salt, and they're going to test a little bit different. But generally speaking, the natural salt from our natural oceans are going to have those same family of minerals. Incredible.
Andres Preschel: Well, I'd like to imagine that you guys are as real to the real thing as possible. In fact, you are the real thing. All right. Last question for you here, man. If you could put a word, message, or phrase on a billboard somewhere, what would it say and where would you put it?
Darryl Bosshardt: For me I think the two And it's hard because you say most important and then everything starts to change that but I love the idea of helpfulness and kindness And I think if if I could leave my kids with one thing um, or could leave humanity with one thing is Be helpful in your own way and be kind and I think if we could do those two things life and the world would be a lot better. And so I would like to share that message, be helpful in your own way and be kind. And I don't know where I'd share it, but that's what I'd share.
Andres Preschel: In a salt mine, to keep people from getting too salty.
Darryl Bosshardt: Yes, don't be too salty, that would be a good billboard.
Andres Preschel: Kind of ironic coming from you, no I'm kidding. This is extremely helpful and you're extremely kind and I really can't thank you enough for your time and for the incredible product that you're helping people get their hands on. It's delicious, it's nutritious, and I hope everyone gets a chance to enjoy food, the food that they're meant to savor, you know, considering our wonderful evolutionary design. So, thank you so much.
Darryl Bosshardt: Thank you for having me and the offer for a ski trip, a mountain bike trip, or an assault mine tour. And if we're lucky, we can do all three in the same trip. And some fishing.
Andres Preschel: And some fishing. Awesome, man. Thanks so much. So that's all for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For all of the show notes, including clickable links to anything and everything that we discussed today, everything from discount codes to videos, to research articles, books, tips, tricks, techniques, and of course, to learn more about the guest on today's episode, all you have to do is head to my website, AndresPreschel.com, that's A-N-D-R-P-R-E-S-CHEL. E-S-P-R-E-S-C-H-E-L.com and go to podcasts. You can also leave your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future episodes, future guests, so on and so forth. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one. Have a lovely rest of your day.