We had a great chat with Nick French, who’s an internet entrepreneur, active sportsman and since he was in high school, has suffered serious insomnia. At times he was getting as little as 20 hours of sleep a week.
Just think about that for a minute.
Most of us know how groggy, brain-foggy and miserable it feels not to get one good night’s sleep!
Following a spinal injury, Nick moved to Bali and in his quest for good health, decided to follow an incredibly simple diet: grass-fed meats, some berries and a lot of salt. He had researched the benefits and importance of salt, and had been impressed with the data. Salt is vital to good health. However, like sugar, salt has been demonised and the mainstream view is that our salt intake needs to be managed, monitored and restricted. This didn’t make sense to Nick.
In the past, when he had restricted salt, he experienced cramps and other health issues. He experimented with different salts and finally settling on Oryx Desert Salt because it was local and tasted good.
He happened to bump into Samantha (Oryx Desert Salt founder) at an event and that’s how we came to meet Nick and ask to chat to him.
Today, his sleep pattern is completely normalised and Nick attributes this largely to the simplicity of his diet and the amount (and quality) of sodium he’s eating. Although Nick consumes more than the recommended amount of sodium, modern nutritional advice is that we should be eating around 4-6g of sodium a day – that’s 13 grams of salt).
He’s done the research to know it’s smart to ensure you’re getting your electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium and chloride) balanced in the right ratios. When we asked him how he did that, he told us he uses Revive, a great South African-made hydration product. What Nick didn’t know until we told him, was that Revive uses Oryx Desert Salt in their formula. How’s that for serendipity!
Nick wears a sophisticated sleep monitor in the form of a ring and gets all his sleep stats delivered to his phone. His graphs clearly show his improved sleep patterns from the time he started eating good amounts of salt. He referred a friend to this dietary tip and his friend has seen the same great results.
‘The thing is,’ says Nick, ‘I want to rave about this to everybody! But the truth is, this isn’t some miracle cure. To my mind, this is just natural eating. We allow too many outside influences to tell us what and how to eat and drink. Follow your thirst and drink however much water you need; follow your taste and eat as much salt as it asks for.”
In other words, trust your body.
Check out our blog on Salt and Sleep
Sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date with our products, latest news and promotions.
