Can anyone explain why everything I eat and drink tastes of salt even though I don't use it any longer?
Question:
Answers:
if you don't use it anymore, that may be why. Since you no longer use salt you can taste the slightest hint of salt in any food. Also you might have a nutrient defeciency of somekind but I'm neither a doctor nor a nutritionist so I couldn't tell you. I'd suggest eating an apple everyday along with some orange juice. If you smoke, that may be another reason you taste salt.
Other Answers:
This may help you.
http://health.ivillage.com/dental/0,,6hf8,00.html?iv_arrivalSA=1&iv_cobrandRef=0&iv_arrival_freq=1&pba=adid=15444627
ANSWER FROM Douglas Hoffman, MD, PhD on ivillage
There are a few possible explanations for your problem. Before discussing these possibilities, I'd like to point out that a salty taste truly does originate in the mouth (or brain) -- the nose can be ignored in this discussion. This may seem obvious to you, but it's an important point. Smell and taste are inextricably intertwined, so many "phantom tastes" are, in fact, "phantom smells." The list of possible explanations for "phantom smells" is quite different. In your case, we can ignore these possibilities; a variety of odors can simulate sweet, bitter or sour tastes, but I do not know of any odors that simulate a salty taste.
So . if your mouth is where the action is, what could this be?
The chemical composition of saliva may change in response to hydration. (In other words, are you drinking enough liquids?) If you are chronically dehydrated, you may have saltier saliva. Take a close look at what you drink. Some folks drink only caffeinated beverages and alcoholic beverages. Caffeine is a diuretic -- it makes you urinate -- so a steady diet of coffee, tea and caffeinated soft drinks will leach water from your body. Alcohol is even worse in this regard.
The salinity (salt content) of saliva may also change in response to medications and salivary gland disease. A number of noninfectious and infectious diseases can afflict the salivary glands; examples of each, respectively, are Sjogren's disease and bacterial sialadenitis.
Postnasal drainage can often have an odor and a taste. Bacterial sinusitis, for example, can cause bad breath and a foul taste in one's mouth. I would not be too surprised if a patient reported this taste as "salty." Postnasal drainage secondary to nasal allergy (allergic rhinitis) might also be salty. Usually folks with postnasal drainage are aware of their condition. If you are not "full of mucus," then this is an unlikely explanation for your problem.
Tears are very salty. The tear ducts drain into the nasal cavity; once tears enter the nasal cavity, they drain down the back of the throat. (People constantly produce tears, by the way; you don't have to cry to have tears!) This is really unlikely, but perhaps you are overproducing tears.
Here's one more really unlikely possibility: Since sensation ultimately resides in the brain, the problem could be upstairs. Migraine, epilepsy and brain tumor all come to mind, but each of these would be exceptionally rare explanations for your problem
ANSWER FROM: Yasser Mokhtar, M.D
What you are experiencing is an abnormal sensation in the tongue. Most of the authorities associate taste and smell together all the time so what you might think is related to taste could actually be related to smell.
Taste and smell dysfunctions have several causes
1. Common cold and influenza
2. Nose and throat infections.
3. Dry mouth.
4. Smoking (especially pipe). Do you smoke?
5. Vitamin B-12 or mineral (like zinc) deficiency.
6. Gingivitis.
7. Drug side effects such as antithyroid drugs, captopril, griseofulvin, lithium, penicillamine, procarbazine, rifampin, vinblastine, or vincristine. You did not say whether you are taking any chronic medications or not.
8. Sjogren's syndrome (Dry mouth and eyes associated with some autoimmune diseases).
9. Bell's palsy (Paralysis of the nerve going to the face causing facial droop). Does not sound like it in your case.
i would advise you to see your doctor and have an examination of the nerves of your face, nose, ears, throat and tongue.
Go to your doctors again and possibly your dentist too.
I would like to first say that I am not copying this from a web site and I actually understand what I am writing and am explaining it in a way that is easily understood for you. Even when you don't eat any salt the body still is forced to lose some salt in the urine every day. In order to conserve salt it pumps as much salt as possible out of the urine using a hormone called aldosterone, which also has the same effect on saliva. When your saliva has no salt in it your taste buds notice the lack of salt and tell your brain that you need to eat more salt. Because you have repeatedly refused this request, your brain has begun to amplify the taste of salt when the salty signal has come, and thus everything has a much stronger salty taste than it should.
Source(s):
I am a medical student.
salts in everything
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