Things have been pretty hectic this week at Strictly Salt of Metairie, I've been running the streets in search of furniture, accessories, art, curtains, and everything else we need to get open!

Yesterday, my lovely aunt accompanied me to the stores, where we ended up hungry shopping at            TJ Maxx and I found this gem in the check out line --- thats where they get ya!

As I was hungry shopping... and had absolutely no purchasing filter, into the basket it went. 

I arrived back at strictly salt and showed off my purchase to my husband and father in law and then ripped open the bag. So much salty goodness. We ate a few chips and put the bag away. 

Today, I decided I needed a bit of a salty snack to offset the sweetness of the mandarin I just ate and pulled out the Himalayan salted chips and thought to myself, I wonder what it is about Himalayan Salt that is supposed to be so much better for you than regular salt. Of course, in true Nathallie fashion, down the rabbit hole I went into the subject of Himalayan Salt just for you.

Himalayan salt has many names: Pink Salt, Himalayan Sea Salt, Rock Salt, Halite and Himalayan crystal salt. Himalayan Salt comes from the Punjab region in India about 190 miles outside of the Himalayan Mountains. Believed to have been born from a sea present in the permian era (for you non-geology nerds that was a mere 250 MILLION years ago!). The sea became land locked and eventually evaporated leaving behind the salt deposit. Over the next few hundred million years, this deposit ended up at the border of the Indian and eurasian plates and was pushed up into a mountain range in Pakistan.

The first documented discovery of Himalayan salt goes back to 326BC. Troops of Alexander the Great stopped to rest in a region near Khewra, Punjab (where the largest concentration of mines are today). They noticed their horses licking on the salty rocks, and Himalayan salt was probably mined from that area even since. The first records of commercial mining of Himalayan salt date back to the 1200's from Pakistan.

The color of Himalayan salt comes from the minerals found in the crystals. The chemical composition is very similar to table salt, plus zinc, iron, lead, copper and many more minerals. The colors of HImalayan salt range from a clear white to a dark beet red. 

Himalayan salt is mined by hand in Pakistan. If your Himalayan salt says it is from anywhere other than Pakistan it is not real Himalayan salt. Regular white iodized table salt is heavily processed product. This process causes the elimination of the salt's natural mineral content. Table salt has a slightly higher concentration of sodium than Himalayan salt, and contains chemical anti-caking agents. Many table salts also undergo a bleaching process and contain aluminum derivatives. Himalayan salt contains no artificial iodine and less natural iodine in general than table salt. Those individuals with an Iodine deficiency however may have to look for an iodine alternative if they choose to only consume Himalayan salt. 

Pink Himalayan salt is said to help balance the PH in your body, helping regulate your immune functions and encourages good digestion. Your body needs salt to perform a variety of functions such as muscle contraction and relaxation, maintain proper fluid balance and prevent dehydration, and prevents low blood pressure. Recent studies have even suggested that eating Himalayan salt can reduce the risk of infection and kill harmful bacteria. One study on animals suggests that Himalayan salt may also act as an anti depressant!

Some things to consider about salt in general however; 

Although sodium is necessary for life, too much sodium can be hazardous to your health. The 2015-2020 Dietary guidelines for American's suggest consuming the equivalent of one teaspoon of salt per day at most. 

Himalayan Salt is essential REALLY OLD sea salt! 

Modern sea salt is created by harvesting ocean water or water from salt water lakes. The water that is harvested undergoes an evaporation process and the crystals left behind are used as sea salt. One big concern with sea salt these days is plastic. Studies are showing that sea salt around the world has become contaminated with plastic pollutions. Experts fear that plastics are finding their way into the food chain through the sea salt in our diets, since sea salt was recently marketed as a health food.

Himalayan salt has two main benefits in comparison to table salt. It's not processed, making it natural and chemical free, and it has a few additional minerals that your body will thank you for. 


I really enjoyed researching and writing about consumption of Himalayan salt! I hope you guys learned a little something. I know I did!

Have any salty questions? Leave some comments below!

​Nathallie

    As the temperatures continue to rise here in the south and we inch closer and closer to summer, it's that wonderful time of year when we fire up the grill. My father in law had to go out of town this Sunday, so Stephen and I had the day off from Strictly Salt. We decided to head over to my step dad's house and invite a few friends over for an evening of experimentation. It was time to test out our Himalayan Salt Block Cooking skills. 

When it comes to grilling on Himalayan Salt, you have a few options. You can use large round blocks, similar to pizza stones, large rectangles, small rectangles and square shapes or varying sizes. 

We chose a few smaller "tapas" size plates like the one above with the shrimp on it. Since we had 6 people we decided to break out a few blocks to cut down on cook time! 

 It was time to light up the burners. One thing to remember with Himalayan salt is that you ABSOLUTELY MUST heat them gradually. If you don't, you will run the risk of cracking your stone due to large temperature swings. We put down a layer of aluminum to protect the bottom of our blocks, since we were all inexperienced in Himalayan salt block cooking, we weren't sure what to expect.

Step 1:
HEAT ON LOW FOR 20 MINUTES 
This particular grill had 4 burners across it. Evenly distributed across the bottom. I set the timer for 20 minutes and put down the lid hoping that we wouldn't hear any sounds of cracking or explosions. After 20 minutes the timer went off and all was well. It was time to up the heat.

STEP 2:
RAISE HEAT TO MEDIUM FOR 20 MINUTES

So, we turned up the heat on the gas dials and set the timer for another 20 minutes. When we came back, I was HORRIFIED!

OMG! THE STONES ALL TURNED BLACK!!!!
What do we do now. I thought for sure that I ruined it. It turns out that 4 burners was a bit much for the salt blocks, but none of them had cracked or exploded! We all stood around analyzing the situation and came to the conclusion that we should do the water splatter test.

Step 3:
HEAT ON HIGH FOR 20 MINUTES
After heating on high for 20 minutes, do the water splatter test.

The water splatter test is exactly what it sounds like. Grab a bit of water on your hand and just sprinkle it onto the block. If the water sizzles, then your Himalayan block is ready for cooking.

Now, OBVIOUSLY by my image above, we all thought it was a bad idea to heat the stones on high for an additional 20 minutes. So, we decided to turn off the two middle burners and let them cool off for a few minutes. Then came the splatter test. As I bravely stepped up to the grill with my water in hand, I reached my hand in and splattered it across the bricks and to my amazement nothing happened except for a mild sizzle! Everyone was relieved, and everyone joined in on the splatter fun... but no one more enthusiastic than my step dad.

The splatter test revealed that the dark residue was simply dust we failed to clean off properly before heating! So, with a damp paper towel and some tongs, we carefully wiped them clean and they were once again pink and ready for grilling!

With only two burners left on low to keep the temperature up in the grill we threw on the veggies. 

STEP 4: COOK!

This step took some trial and error, the veggies took a lot longer to cook than we anticipated and I would reset the timer every 5 minutes to see if they weren't overdone.

We started off with some asparagus. and thinly cut eggplant sprinkled with some pepper. 

The eggplant was honestly, too thinly cut. If you're a fan of a thick juicy piece of eggplant, don't cut them so thin! The cooking process dried try them out a bit. After about 10 minutes on each side, the Eggplants were done. The Asparagus still needed some time but it was time for a taste test. 

To our amazement. The eggplants were DELISH!!!! Even with just a light coating of pepper, we could not believe that the flavor was so good. We were all a bit concerned that the eggplants would be very bitter to taste, which can happen sometimes when you under cook eggplants as I'm sure many of you foodies know, but there was no hint of bitterness. These eggplants were almost chip like, salty and a bit dry. for the next round of eggplants we decided to get creative and drizzle a bit of olive oil on top to help them cook faster and retain some of the moisture. These too were a huge hit. 

All the while the asparagus continued to cook. After about 15 minutes of total cook time, the asparagus were finally ready to flip over. To accelerate cooking, we opted for a bit of oil drizzled on top and a sprinkle of pepper as well. 

The asparagus were soft and ready to take off of the grill finally after about 30 minutes of cooking. 

​It was time to pull out the steak!

We decided to leave three steaks unseasoned to see what it tasted like straight off of the salt block. The other small steaks, we seasoned with a family favorite "New Orleans Seasoning" blend from the Budget Saver on the west bank. This stuff is seriously hard to find, my dad lives over there and anytime he finds them he loads us up! It's worth the trip out there I guarantee!

The small, thin steaks cooked in no time! We were amazed than in about 6 minutes they had been flipped and cooked. A bit too quick for my liking, since that meant that the meat wasn't particularly tender, but we can work on that. So, with that being done. We all grabbed out plates and dug in.

There was soon an explosion of OOOO's and AAAHHH's coming from the table. The food was a bit salty for a girl who doesn't even bother using salt in the kitchen most days but it was this wonderful understated rich savory taste instead of just salt. The asparagus were my absolute favorite. They were simply the best asparagus I have EVER cooked. The Himalayan cooking block released just the PERFECT amount of salt onto the vegetable. 

As for the steak, it was unanimous. As good as that New Orleans seasoning was, it was completely eclipsed by the non seasoned steak. We made sure to wipe all the other flavors off of the Himalayan grill block before putting the plain steak to grill. The flavor of the meat was completely enhanced. We were all pretty proud of our experiment.  

I hope that you all enjoyed reading this blog as much as I had putting it together! Please feel free to ask questions below or leave me some comments!

"Stay salty, my friends!"

​

Hello all! 

We've got a lot of ground to cover on this blog entry! It has taken me almost two weeks of research to gather all of this information!

In this blog entry I would like to address a concern voiced by a friend of mine, Patricia.

​After showcasing a few photos on Facebook of three new salt lamps I purchased, Patricia voiced some concern on the potential impact that a salt lamp could take on her pets.  Here is her question.

"Have you done any research on the affect these (salt lamps) have on animals? I know lots of essential oils are hazardous, anything on salt lamps?"

What a great question!

    I personally keep a beautiful pink Himalayan lamp that my mother gave me at home and I am proud mom to two adorable fur babies. An Australian Shepherd and a Cairn Terrier.

    My girls haven't had any adverse reactions to the salt lamp in my bedroom as far as I can tell. No changes in behavior, no unexplainable ailments. The salt lamp has been turned on consistently for about 6 months. Simply being in the room with the salt lamp seems to have no effect on them. 

    If you have cats it may be a bit of a different story. My salt lamp is up high atop a large jewelry box on top of my dresser, so its hanging out roughly 4 feet from the floor. My girls can't get to it there. However, keeping your cats away from your salt lamp may be a challenge if they like to climb up on your counter tops and furniture. Several cat owners have caught their pets licking on their salt lamps and I imagine that a dog may be able to find a low lying salt lamp and turn it into their chew toy for a bit, although i haven't found any evidence of this happening anywhere I've looked. This is a big no - no. 

    Salt is essential to our nerve and muscle movement and is involved in the regulation of fluids in the human body. Salt also plays a role in the regulation of blood pressure and blood volume. However too much salt can cause those systems to become unbalanced leading to such conditions as hypertension and high blood pressure. The same can happen to our furry pals. Salt is essential to some of the functions in dogs, cats, and birds, but if they decide to go on a salt binge the results can be catastrophic. 

    If you have cats and really want to own a salt lamp, try to put the lamp in a spot where the cats won't get to it.  If you have an aviary, please don't place the salt lamp inside the cage where the birds can snack on it! It's perfectly safe to keep a salt lamp in the same room as your bird cage. If you are left with any doubts, just place your salt lamp at the other end of the room or in another room to keep some distance from your birds as an extra precaution. 
 
    If you are still having doubts, here is a message from a halotherapy owner acquaintance of mine from my inquiry.  "I immediately messaged my salt expert at a mine in Poland who replied laughing that only Americans would claim this. They have cats and dogs living in salt mines for years in excellent health. At the mine outside Krakow, at one point there were 30 horses who were stabled in the mines to work transporting salt. They came into the mines at 2 years of age, never saw sunlight or ran (a horrible state of affairs) BUT they lived to 30 years of age in excellent health."

    There is a whole industry tailored specifically to horses and halotherapy.  A mobile halotherapy horse trailer comes to your location and treats your horse. These horse owners claim that the horses do perform better after halotherapy. There are also halo rooms that encourage you to bring your dogs into halotherapy. There are claims that Halotherapy helps dogs suffering from anxiety to relax. My expert tells me that its amazing to watch the calming effect that halotherapy has on dogs. 
 
    In my research for this blog entry, I came across a secondary bird owner concern regarding negative ions. So, lets talk about your salt lamp and the negative ions.

    Himalayan salt lamps are large pieces of salt crystals mined from very specific mines in Pakistan. If your salt lamp claims that it is from somewhere other than Pakistan, it is not Himalayan Salt. Himalayan salt is often marketed as "Jurassic Sea Salt", but in reality the himalayan salt deposit comes from a sea present during the Permian and Cretaceous eras, (much earlier than the Jurassic) around 250 million years ago. This sea apparently ended up landlocked, evaporating until it left a dense salt deposit, Over the next few hundred million years, that deposit ended up at the border of a continental plate, and was pushed up into a mountain range in Pakistan by colliding plate tectonics. The concentration of salt near Khewra, Punjab, is said to have been discovered around 326 BC when the troops led by Alexander the Great stopped to rest there and noticed their horses licking the salty rocks. Salt was probably mined there from that time, but the first records of mining are from the Janjua people in the 1200s.

To create your salt lamp, huge chunks of crystals are mined and shaped. Holes are then drilled into the lamp to house a standard light bulb to illuminate the crystal from the inside. 

    In my quest to better understand the Negative Ion, I had to go back to sophomore year in high school chemistry.

​ A negative ion is an electrically charged atom that is formed by the gain of one or two negatively charged electrons. Wait what? Its been A WHILE since high school chemistry. 

      An atom gets a jolt of energy, usually from heat and it looses an electron. That atom becomes a positive ion because it is no longer balanced. There are more protons than electrons. In the mean time, this lost electron wanders around until it finds a new compatible atom it can cling to. When this happens, the electron count may be higher than it should be and this transformed atom is now a negative ion. 

I have read on several different sites that in order to get a Himalayan Salt lamp to release negative ions, they must be heated to 120 Degrees. Live Science claims that "To dissociate the two ions, people would need to raise the temperature to about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius), which cannot be accomplished with a 15-watt light bulb. (If the lamps were hot enough to dissociate the two elements, they would present a fire hazard.)" 

Wellness Mama explains the wellness properties of Himalayan salt lamps through its Hygroscopic (tending to absorb moisture from the air) qualities. "Small amounts of water vapor is present in the air and can carry things like mold, bacteria, and allergens. Salt lamps attract this water vapor and those items it carries to its surface and removes them from the air. When the water vapor evaporates, this MAY generate a small amount of negative ions." 

Both of these schools of thought generally agree that Salt lamps that are not under significant heat stress are not enough of a source of negative ions to really feel any benefit. Not to say that negative ions aren't a thing. There might be something in the fact that negative ions are detected in abundance around places that have lots of moving water. Waterfalls, and shorelines have very high concentrations of negative ions. ""The action of the pounding surf creates negative air ions and we also see it immediately after spring thunderstorms when people report lightened moods," says ion researcher Michael Terman, PhD, of Columbia University in New York." 

​WebMD has this to say about Negative Ions:

"Negative ions are odorless, tasteless, and invisible molecules that we inhale in abundance in certain environments. Think mountains, waterfalls, and beaches. Once they reach our bloodstream, negative ions are believed to produce biochemical reactions that increase levels of the mood chemical serotonin, helping to alleviate depression, relieve stress, and boost our daytime energy."

​    I reached out to several pet health professionals and got some mixed reactions about salt lamps in the home. The main concern was about the pet's consumption of the salt in large quantities. A  concern was expressed to me by an Avian expert who was adamantly against having a salt lamp in the home. His concern was over environmental allergens being attracted to the negative ions. He claims that when an allergen interacts with a negative ion, it will become weighed down. His concern was that he did not know what would happen to a birds very fragile lungs if one of these allergen infused ions suddenly gets inhaled and drops inside of the lung (from the weight). Not being an avian expert, I wasn't sure what to make of this information. It seems that in all the bird forums there is a good bit of confusion over the difference between a negative ion and an Ozone generator. I did not, however, find a single report of poor health being caused by a Himalayan salt lamp from all of those forums I checked out. It was mostly just speculation. More extensive scientific testing is really needed to determine either way.

    One thing is clear from the rest of my research, whatever benefits we may be getting from salt lamps whether it be from the negative ions or the allergen containing water molecules, the effect is minimal. It is a very localized phenomenon happing only in close proximity to the salt lamp. This is evident by the fact that Salt Lamp fans feel the need to keep one in every room to get the benefits they claim to recieve from the salt lamp. So, if you're worried about your bird's lungs, don't put a salt lamp in the room where they are! 

I really hope that all my hard work helped answer any questions that my fellow pet owners might have about Salt Lamps. Unfortunately, science has yet to do any really meaningful studies on salt lamps. I was seriously tempted this week to purchase an Ion meter to test out my salt lamp! 

I certainly enjoyed researching for this entry and I hope you guys enjoyed reading it! Please feel free to ask some more questions in the comment section or give me some info I may have missed! 

Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you have a question about halotherapy, don't hesitate to ask! Your questions inspire me to research and write! 

Check out what the lung institute has to say about COPD and Halotherapy!


Salt Therapy can Help Ease COPD Symptoms

​"Some people have found salt therapy to be an effective option for relieving symptoms of lung disease, resulting in easier breathing. Different treatments have proven to be successful for different patients. Perhaps salt therapy is the right option for you!"

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