Redmond Real Salt: Why We Sell Salt at a Health Clinic

Selling salt at a health clinic requires an explanation, so let's give one.

What it is

Redmond Real Salt is described by its maker as the only sea salt harvested from an ancient deposit in Utah — unrefined and full of trace minerals. It has a subtle sweetness and a distinctive pink-and-grey flecking from the trace mineral content. It runs $7.50–$10.50 depending on size.

The deposit is the remnant of an ancient inland sea, which means the salt was laid down long before modern industrial contamination — a genuine point in its favor relative to some contemporary sea salts.

Refined versus unrefined

Standard table salt is refined to nearly pure sodium chloride. The trace minerals are stripped out, and anti-caking agents are typically added. Iodine is usually added back, which is worth knowing about — more on that below.

Unrefined salt retains the trace minerals present in the original deposit. Now, an honest caveat: the trace mineral quantities are small, and you should not expect to meet mineral needs through salt. Anyone marketing unrefined salt as a mineral supplement is overstating it.

What unrefined salt genuinely offers is a cleaner ingredient list, no anti-caking additives, and — this is not nothing — a better flavor that makes home cooking better. People who cook more at home eat better. That's a real health effect through an unglamorous mechanism.

The iodine thing, which nobody mentions

Here's a genuinely important point that gets skipped in every "switch to natural salt" article.

Iodized salt was a public health intervention, and a spectacularly successful one. Iodine deficiency causes goiter and, in pregnancy, serious developmental problems. Adding iodine to table salt largely eliminated endemic deficiency in this country.

Unrefined salts generally contain very little iodine. If you switch entirely away from iodized salt and don't eat much seafood, seaweed, or dairy, iodine intake can drop meaningfully — and that's especially relevant for anyone pregnant or planning a pregnancy, and for anyone with thyroid concerns.

We're not saying don't use unrefined salt. We're saying know where else your iodine is coming from. That's exactly the sort of thing that should be part of a thyroid workup, and our comprehensive thyroid panel covers it.

A more honest conversation about sodium

The public message has been "eat less sodium," full stop, for forty years. The actual picture is more nuanced than that, and it cuts both ways.

Sodium genuinely matters for some people. If you have hypertension, kidney disease, or heart failure, or you've been told to restrict sodium, that guidance is medical and you should follow it. Talk to your prescribing provider — not a blog — before changing anything.

But sodium needs aren't identical across people. They rise with sweat losses, and someone framing houses in July, working in a commercial kitchen, or training hard has genuinely different needs than someone sedentary in an air-conditioned office. Very low sodium alongside heavy sweating is a common cause of the fatigue, cramping, and lightheadedness we hear about in active patients.

Most dietary sodium isn't from your salt shaker. The large majority comes from processed and restaurant food. Cooking at home with good salt while eating less packaged food usually results in less total sodium, not more — and better food.

Where it fits with our other Redmond products

Same company, related use cases. Re-Lyte electrolyte mixes use the same ancient sea salt as their sodium source, and the single-serve packets are the portable version. Leaf toothpaste is theirs as well.

Where to get it

Redmond Real Salt is $7.50–$10.50 in our online shop.

Call 207-317-6770 — or if electrolytes and hydration are actually your question, that's a functional medicine conversation worth having with real labs behind it.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not medical advice. Nutrition needs are individual; anyone with kidney disease, heart failure, high blood pressure, or who is on a sodium-restricted or fluid-restricted diet should talk with their prescribing provider before changing sodium or electrolyte intake. Prices are current as of publication and subject to change.