As chronic kidney disease (CKD) progresses, the kidneys become less able to maintain a healthy balance of acids in the body. To maintain healthy acid levels, people with CKD are treated with alkaline substances such as sodium ...
Jun 14, 2019
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A worldwide effort to lower people's blood pressure, cut their sodium intake, and eliminate trans fat from their diet could dramatically reduce the incidence of premature death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) over a quarter ...
Jun 10, 2019
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Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers recently found a key structural differences in channels that regulate how and when heart and skeletal muscles contract. Identifying the differences between the two, say researchers, provides ...
May 15, 2019
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Slash sodium from your diet. That's the advice inevitably given to everyone.
May 13, 2019
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A team of researchers with Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute has used a new tool to record activation of thousands of neurons due to thirst and quenching in a mouse brain. In their paper published in ...
For many years, radioactive iodine which emits beta rays has been used for treatment of thyroid cancer. Generally, 5-year survival rates may exceed 90%. However, some thyroid tumors become resistant to iodine treatment ("iodine-refractory"), ...
Apr 02, 2019
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Potato chips, French fries, popcorn—whichever your preference, we all know that salt is a key component of many tasty foods. But eating too much salt has potential health risks and can lead to cardiovascular and cognitive ...
Mar 27, 2019
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Scientists have long known that tumors have many pockets of high acidity, usually found deep within the tumor where little oxygen is available. However, a new study from MIT researchers has found that tumor surfaces are also ...
Mar 20, 2019
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A Florida State University engineer and a team of researchers have found a link between migraines and how sodium is distributed through the brain, a finding that could be a key to future research on treatments for migraine ...
Mar 14, 2019
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(HealthDay)—Your food processor can help you get a healthy and hearty dinner on the table with a quick flick of a switch. Here are two taste-pleasers.
Feb 27, 2019
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Sodium (pronounced /ˈsoʊdiəm/) is a metallic element with a symbol Na (from Latin natrium or Arabic natrun) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals within "group 1" (formerly known as ‘group IA’). It has only one stable isotope, 23Na.
Elemental sodium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1806 by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide. Elemental sodium does not occur naturally on Earth, but quickly oxidizes in air and is violently reactive with water, so it must be stored in an inert medium, such as a liquid hydrocarbon. The free metal is used for some chemical synthesis and heat transfer applications.
Sodium ion is soluble in water in nearly all of its compounds, and is thus present in great quantities in the Earth's oceans and other stagnant bodies of water. In these bodies it is mostly counterbalanced by the chloride ion, causing evaporated ocean water solids to consist mostly of sodium chloride, or common table salt. Sodium ion is also a component of many minerals.
Sodium is an essential element for all animal life and for some plant species. In animals, sodium ions are used in opposition to potassium ions, to allow the organism to build up an electrostatic charge on cell membranes, and thus allow transmission of nerve impulses when the charge is allowed to dissipate by a moving wave of voltage change. Sodium is thus classified as a “dietary inorganic macro-mineral” for animals. Sodium's relative rarity on land is due to its solubility in water, thus causing it to be leached into bodies of long-standing water by rainfall. Such is its relatively large requirement in animals, in contrast to its relative scarcity in many inland soils, that herbivorous land animals have developed a special taste receptor for sodium ion.
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