Bagelled

Because I’ve been quite ill recently I’ve done a lot more reading into Meniere’s, and the two big dietary issues of cutting out caffeine and reducing salt intake come up again and again, even though specialists in the UK generally seem more sceptical of the link. Despite their scepticism, I’d cut out caffeine three months before my diagnosis on suspicion of Meniere’s, and since I’d never been the type of person who liked using salt in their food I thought I didn’t have to worry about it. Still, after recent events, I started to think I should consider the sodium issue more carefully.

I’d read that 1000mg of salt per day was a good target to aim for, and without worrying about it too much started to make breakfast while reading over the ingredients of what I was preparing. One bagel, 0.7g. Now wait a minute, I thought, surely that can’t be right? Has a single bagel just consumed 70% of my daily allowance? But there was little doubt about it – the ingredients on the bagel bag were quite specific – 0.7g per bagel. With a little margarine on top I estimated this was another 0.06g, so it wasn’t even 8am in the morning and I’d already reached 760g. I was stunned. How much salt had I actually been consuming every day before now?

I realised this is now a serious issue for me to monitor, but I felt there was a bit of eye-rolling when I discussed it with my girlfriend. How could I live my life like this? Wouldn’t it mean I could never eat out in a restaurant again? I told her that the way I saw things if I ate out it was just one of those things and I’d have to not worry about it, but there was no reason why I couldn’t make some changes in my own home – after all, what sacrifice is it to eat fruit for breakfast rather than a bagel or cereal? Even so, I feel that one of the problems of having Meniere’s is that people can perceive you as being obsessive about your health to the point of irritation, and it seemed like I’d encountered a little of that this morning as well.