MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Q: Is MSG healthier than salt in terms of sodium content or is it the same or worse?

Great question, and for that matter, MSG itself is a great topic for another day. But your actual question, we can readily answer here and now:

  • Firstly, by “salt” we’re assuming from context that you mean sodium chloride.
  • Both salt and MSG do contain sodium. However…
  • MSG contains only about a third of the sodium that salt does, gram-for-gram.
  • It’s still wise to be mindful of it, though. Same with sodium in other ingredients!
  • Baking soda contains about twice as much sodium, gram for gram, as MSG.

Wondering why this happens?

Salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) is equal parts sodium and chlorine, by atom count, but sodium’s atomic mass is lower than chlorine’s, so 100g of salt contains only 39.34g of sodium.

Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO₃) is one part sodium for one part hydrogen, one part carbon, and three parts oxygen. Taking each of their diverse atomic masses into account, we see that 100g of baking soda contains 27.4g sodium.

MSG (monosodium glutamate, C₅H₈NO₄Na) is only one part sodium for 5 parts carbon, 8 parts hydrogen, 1 part nitrogen, and 4 parts oxygen… And all those other atoms put together weigh a lot (comparatively), so 100g of MSG contains only 12.28g sodium.

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  • The Yoga of Breath – by Richard Rosen

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    You probably know to breathe through your nose, and to breathe with your diaphragm. But did you know you’re usually only breathing through one nostril at a time, and alternate between nostrils every few hours? And did you know how to breathe through both nostrils equally instead, and the benefits that can bring?

    The above is one example of many, of things that make this book stand out from the crowd when it comes to breathing exercises. Author Richard Rosen has a deep expertise in this topic, and explains everything clearly and comprehensively, without leaving room for ambiguity.

    While most of the book focuses on the mechanics and physical techniques of breathing, he does also cover some more mindstate-related things too—without which, it wouldn’t be yoga.

    If the book has a downside, it’s that its comprehensive nature could be off-putting to readers new to breathing work in general. However, since he does explain everything from the ground up, that’s no reason to be put off this book, iff you’re serious about learning.

    Bottom line: if you’d like a deeper understanding of breathwork than “breathe slowly through your nose, using your diaphragm”, this book will teach you depths of breathing you probably didn’t know were possible.

    Click here to check out The Yoga of Breath, and catch yours!

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  • Experience life lessons with the powerful message of "Make Your Bed" beyond the comfort of a picture.

    Beyond “Make Your Bed”—life lessons from experience

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    Beyond “Make Your Bed”—life lessons from experience

    This is Admiral William H. McRaven, a former United States Navy four-star admiral who served as the ninth commander of the United States Special Operations Command.

    So, for those of us whose day-to-day lives don’t involve coordinating military operations, what does he have to offer?

    Quick note: 10almonds’ mission statement is “to make health and productivity crazy simple”.

    We tend to focus on the health side of this, and in the category of productivity, it’s often what most benefits our mental health.

    We’re writing less for career-driven technopreneurs in the 25–35 age bracket and more for people with a more holistic view of productivity and “a good life well-lived”.

    So today’s main feature is more in that vein!

    Start each day with an accomplishment

    McRaven famously gave a speech (and wrote a book) that began with the advice, “make your bed”. The idea here doesn’t have to be literal (if you’ll pardon the pun). Indeed, if you’re partnered, then depending on schedules and habits, it could be you can’t (sensibly) make your bed first thing because your partner is still in it. But! What you can do is start the day with an accomplishment—however small. A short exercise routine is a great example!

    Success in life requires teamwork

    We’re none of us an island (except in the bathtub). The point is… Nobody can do everything alone. Self-sufficiency is an illusion. You can make your own coffee, but could you have made the coffee machine, or even the cup? How about, grown the coffee? Transported it? So don’t be afraid to reach out for (and acknowledge!) help from others. Teamwork really does make the dream work.

    It’s what’s inside that counts

    It’s a common trap to fall into, getting caught up the outside appearance of success, rather than what actually matters the most. We need to remember this when it comes to our own choices, as well as assessing what others might bring to the table!

    A setback is only permanent if you let it be

    No, a positive attitude won’t reverse a lifelong degenerative illness, for example. But what we can do, is take life as comes, and press on with the reality, rather than getting caught up in the “should be”.

    Use failure to your advantage

    Learn. That’s all. Learn, and improve.

    Be daring in life

    To borrow from another military force, the SAS has the motto “Who dares, wins”. Caution has it place, but if we’ve made reasonable preparations*, sometimes being bold is the best (or only!) way forward.

    *Meanwhile the Parachute Regiment, from which come 80% of all SAS soldiers, has the motto “Utrinque paratus”, “prepared on all sides”.

    Keep courage close

    This is about not backing down when we know what’s right and we know what we need to do. Life can be scary! But if we don’t overcome our fears, they can become self-realizing.

    Writer’s note: a good example of this is an advice I sometimes gave during my much more exciting (military) life of some decades ago, and it pertains to getting into a knife-fight (top advice for civilians: don’t).

    But, if you’re in one, you need to not be afraid of getting cut.

    Because if you’re not afraid of getting cut, you will probably get cut.

    But if you are afraid of getting cut, you will definitely get cut.

    Hopefully your life doesn’t involve knives outside of the kitchen (mine doesn’t, these days, and I like it), but the lesson applies to other things too.

    Sometimes the only way out is through.

    Be your best at your worst

    Sometimes life is really, really hard. But if we allow those moments to drive us forwards, they’re also a place we can find more strength than we ever knew we had.

    Keep on swimming

    It’s said that the majority in life is about showing up—and often it is. But you have to keep showing up, day after day. So make what you’re doing sustainable for you, and keep on keeping on.

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  • The Power of Hormones – by Dr. Max Nieuwdorp

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    First a quick note on the author: he’s an MD & PhD, internist, endocrinologist, and professor. He knows his stuff.

    There are a lot of books with “the new science of” in the title, and they don’t often pertain to science that is actually new, and in this case, for the most part the science contained within this book is quite well-established.

    A strength of this book is that it’s not talking about hormones in just one specific aspect (e.g. menopause, pregnancy, etc) but rather, in the full span of human health, across the spectra of ages and sexes—and yes, also covering hormones that are not sex hormones, so for example also demystifying the different happiness-related neurotransmitters, as well as the hormones responsible for hunger and satiety, weight loss and gain, sleep and wakefulness, etc.

    Which is all very good, because there’s a lot of overlap and several hormones fall into several categories there.

    Moreover, the book covers how your personal cocktail of hormones impacts how you look, feel, behave, and more—there’s a lot about chronic health issues here too, and how to use the information in this book to if not outright cure, then at least ameliorate, many conditions.

    Bottom line: this is an information-dense book with a lot of details great and small; if you read this, you’ll come away with a much better understanding of hormones than you had previously!

    Click here to check out The Power of Hormones, and harness that power for yourself!

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Related Posts

  • The Truth About Chocolate & Skin Health
  • Heart Health Calculator Entry Issue

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝I tried to use your calculator for heart health, and was unable to enter in my height or weight. Is there another way to calculate? Why will that field not populate?❞

    (this is in reference to yesterday’s main feature “How Are You, Really? And How Old Is Your Heart?“)

    How strange! We tested it in several desktop browsers and several mobile browsers, and were unable to find any version that didn’t work. That includes switching between metric and imperial units, per preference; both appear to work fine. Do be aware that it’ll only take numerical imput, though.

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  • Lacking Motivation? Science Has The Answer

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    The Science Of Motivation (And How To Use It To Your Advantage)

    When we do something rewarding, our brain gets a little (or big!) spike of dopamine. Dopamine is popularly associated with pleasure—which is fair— but there’s more to it than this.

    Dopamine is also responsible for motivation itself, as a prime mover before we do the thing that we find rewarding. If we eat a banana, and enjoy it, perhaps because our body needed the nutrients from it, our brain gets a hit of dopamine.

    (and not because bananas contain dopamine; that dopamine is useful for the body, but can’t pass the blood-brain barrier to have an effect on the brain)

    So where does the dopamine in our brain come from? That dopamine is made in the brain itself.

    Key Important Fact: the brain produces dopamine when it expects an activity to be rewarding.

    If you take nothing else away from today’s newsletter, let it be this!

    It makes no difference if the activity is then not rewarding. And, it will keep on motivating you to do something it anticipated being rewarding, no matter how many times the activity disappoints, because it’ll remember the very dopamine that it created, as having been the reward.

    To put this into an example:

    • How often have you spent time aimlessly scrolling social media, flitting between the same three apps, or sifting through TV channels when “there’s nothing good on to watch”?
    • And how often did you think afterwards “that was a good and rewarding use of my time; I’m glad I did that”?

    In reality, whatever you felt like you were in search of, you were really in search of dopamine. And you didn’t find it, but your brain did make some, just enough to keep you going.

    Don’t try to “dopamine detox”, though.

    While taking a break from social media / doomscrolling the news / mindless TV-watching can be a great and healthful idea, you can’t actually “detox” from a substance your body makes inside itself.

    Which is fortunate, because if you could, you’d die, horribly and miserably.

    If you could “detox” completely from dopamine, you’d lose all motivation, and also other things that dopamine is responsible for, including motor control, language faculties, and critical task analysis (i.e. planning).

    This doesn’t just mean that you’d not be able to plan a wedding; it also means:

    • you wouldn’t be able to plan how to get a drink of water
    • you wouldn’t have any motivation to get water even if you were literally dying of thirst
    • you wouldn’t have the motor control to be able to physically drink it anyway

    Read: Dopamine and Reward: The Anhedonia Hypothesis 30 years on

    (this article is deep and covers a lot of ground, but is a fascinating read if you have time)

    Note: if you’re wondering why that article mentions schizophrenia so much, it’s because schizophrenia is in large part a disease of having too much dopamine.

    Consequently, antipsychotic drugs (and similar) used in the treatment of schizophrenia are generally dopamine antagonists, and scientists have been working on how to treat schizophrenia without also crippling the patient’s ability to function.

    Do be clever about how you get your dopamine fix

    Since we are hardwired to crave dopamine, and the only way to outright quash that craving is by inducing anhedonic depression, we have to leverage what we can’t change.

    The trick is: question how much your motivation aligns with your goals (or doesn’t).

    So if you feel like checking Facebook for the eleventieth time today, ask yourself: “am I really looking for new exciting events that surely happened in the past 60 seconds since I last checked, or am I just looking for dopamine?”

    You might then realize: “Hmm, I’m actually just looking for dopamine, and I’m not going to find it there”

    Then, pick something else to do that will actually be more rewarding. It helps if you make a sort of dopa-menu in advance, of things to pick from. You can keep this as a list on your phone, or printed and pinned up near your computer.

    Examples might be: Working on that passion project of yours, or engaging in your preferred hobby. Or spending quality time with a loved one. Or doing housework (surprisingly not something we’re commonly motivated-by-default to do, but actually is rewarding when done). Or exercising (same deal). Or learning that language on Duolingo (all those bells and whistles the app has are very much intentional dopamine-triggers to make it addictive, but it’s not a terrible outcome to be addicted to learning!).

    Basically… Let your brain’s tendency to get led astray work in your favor, by putting things in front of it that will lead you in good directions.

    Things for your health and/or education are almost always great things to allow yourself the “ooh, shiny” reaction and pick them up, try something new, etc.

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Antihistamines’ Generation Gap

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    Are You Ready For Allergy Season?

    For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, fall will be upon us soon, and we have a few weeks to be ready for it. A common seasonal ailment is of course seasonal allergies—it’s not serious for most of us, but it can be very annoying, and can disrupt a lot of our normal activities.

    Suddenly, a thing that notionally does us no real harm, is making driving dangerous, cooking take three times as long, sex laughable if not off-the-table (so to speak), and the lightest tasks exhausting.

    So, what to do about it?

    Antihistamines: first generation

    Ye olde antihistamines such as diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine are probably not what to do about it.

    They are small molecules that cross the blood-brain barrier and affect histamine receptors in the central nervous system. This will generally get the job done, but there’s a fair bit of neurological friendly-fire going on, and while they will produce drowsiness, the sleep will usually be of poor quality. They also tax the liver rather.

    If you are using them and not experiencing unwanted side effects, then don’t let us stop you, but do be aware of the risks.

    See also: Long-term use of diphenhydramine ← this is the active ingredient in Benadryl in the US and Canada, but safety regulations in many other countries mean that Benadryl has different, safer active ingredients elsewhere.

    Antihistamines: later generations

    We’re going to aggregate 2nd gen, 3rd gen, and 4th gen antihistamines here, because otherwise we’ll be writing a history article and we don’t have room for that. But suffice it to say, later generations of antihistamines do not come with the same problems.

    Instead of going in all-guns-blazing to the CNS like first-gens, they are more specific in their receptor-targetting, resulting in negligible collateral damage:

    CSACI position statement: Newer generation H1-antihistamines are safer than first-generation H1-antihistamines and should be the first-line antihistamines for the treatment of allergic rhinitis and urticaria

    Special shout-out to cetirizine and loratadine, which are the drugs behind half the brand names you’ll see on pharmacy shelves around most of the world these days (including many in the US and Canada).

    Note that these two are very often discussed in the same sentence, sit next to each other on the shelf, and often have identical price and near-identical packaging. Their effectiveness (usually: moderate) and side effects (usually: low) are similar and comparable, but they are genuinely different drugs that just happen to do more or less the same thing.

    This is relevant because if one of them isn’t working for you (and/or is creating an unwanted side effect), you might want to try the other one.

    Another honorable mention goes to fexofenadine, for which pretty much all the same as the above goes, though it gets talked about less (and when it does get mentioned, it’s usually by its most popular brand name, Allegra).

    Finally, one that’s a little different and also deserving of a special mention is azelastine. It was recently (ish, 2021) moved from being prescription-only to being non-prescription (OTC), and it’s a nasal spray.

    It can cause drowsiness, but it’s considered safe and effective for most people. Its main benefit is not really the difference in drug, so much as the difference in the route of administration (nasal rather than oral). Because the drug is in liquid spray form, it can be absorbed through the mucus lining of the nose and get straight to work on blocking the symptoms—in contrast, oral antihistamines usually have to go into your stomach and take their chances there (we say “usually”, because there are some sublingual antihistamines that dissolve under the tongue, but they are less common.)

    Better than antihistamines?

    Writer’s note: at this point, I was given to wonder: “wait, what was I squirting up my nose last time anyway?”—because, dear readers, at the time I got it I just bought one of every different drug on the shelf, desperate to find something that worked. What worked for me, like magic, when nothing else had, was beclometasone dipropionate, which a) smelled delightfully of flowers, which might just be the brand I got, b) needs replacing now because I got it in March 2023 and it expired July 2024, and c) is not an antihistamine at all.

    But, that brings us to the final chapter for today: systemic corticosteroids

    They’re not ok for everyone (check with your doctor if unsure), and definitely should not be taken if immunocompromised and/or currently suffering from an infection (including colds, flu, COVID, etc) unless your doctor tells you otherwise (and even then, honestly, double-check).

    But! They can work like magic when other things don’t. Unlike antihistamines, which only block the symptoms, systemic corticosteroids tackle the underlying inflammation, which can stop the whole thing in its tracks.

    Here’s how they measure up against antihistamines:

    ❝The results of this systematic review, together with data on safety and cost effectiveness, support the use of intranasal corticosteroids over oral antihistamines as first line treatment for allergic rhinitis.❞

    ~ Dr. Robert Puy et al.

    Read in full: Intranasal corticosteroids versus oral H1 receptor antagonists in allergic rhinitis: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

    Take care!

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