HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND WATER SOFTENERS

It could be, especially if he's skirting around the edge of heart failure and other problems associated with metabolic disorder and hypertension. Healthy kidneys do more than a decent job of keeping electrolytes of all kinds in balance, even when one overdoes it, but when endocrine and metabolic problems are in the mix, kidneys don't need the extra effort it takes to keep things regulated. In case you aren't aware of it, the kidneys are a strong monitoring system to keep your electrolytes in balance, and they help to keep your blood pressure in the 'normal' range.

I would, with your physician's agreement and monitoring, suggest that you start by mixing a quarter tsp of salt in distilled water and drink two or three cups of it a day (you can buy a gallon of distilled water for just a couple of dollars, or so, at large stores). Take your morning BP, ideally before tea or coffee, and keep a record, a chart, to see if there is any spike or rising trend. If not, then your current regimen is working, and you'd be able to drink softened water.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.119.012758

I don’t know but I do have one as well a whole house filter. The whole house removes a lot of the chemicals the city put in our water. Then softer. Water has a better taste and my skin don’t hurt any more. I hate it when I travel. Chemicals in the water.
Talk with your doctor and talk with companies you trust and ask questions.
Good luck.

Thank you! Very helpful!!

Here is another thought -often done where we live (including my home) - we have one water line that by-passes the water softener and delivers unsoftened cold water directly to our kitchen. Because that untreated water is pretty nasty, we filter it through a two stage filter before it reaches the drinking water spigot installed next to the faucets. It looks like the picture below. The regular faucet gets softened water for cooking and cleaning.

You can also purchase 'under-the-kitchen-sink' reverse osmosis systems that clean up water. They don't have to be literally under the kitchen sink...they can be close by, in a next door laundry for example, but it means more tubing to reach the faucet from which you'd normally want potable water. They aren't exactly cheap, but the three/four different filters need only to be changed about once each year. That means they process a LOT OF water.

In addition to our water softener we installed an RO system. 95% of the water I drink comes from the RO system so bypass the water softener.

I am a heart failure patient. I also work for EcoWater. You don’t want to just buy a water softener. You want a refiner. It will clean your water and incorporate softening but the brine water will all go out a drain. Also instead of using salt you can use potassium. Although you should have an RO Drinking System which will take everything out and remineralize your water. I’ve had a system for 16 years, sodium is less than you’re getting from city or county.

@mtlove I heard a talk by a doctor about salt and its effect on the organs.
He asked, what is the first thing done to a patient in an emergency or hospital…they give an IV that has an extreme amount of salt in the solution. According to him, they use extreme amounts of salt in emergency situations because your body needs it.

I don’t know if he is correct or not…

That didn't sound quite correct to me, so I asked my daughter, and ER/Trauma nurse. The solutions used in the ER/OR/other locations are "isotonic" - they contain the same concentration of sodium as found in normal human blood. The solution may contain sodium alone or in combination with other elements like calcium and chloride.

High concentration sodium IV's are reserved for situations where a person's serum (blood) sodium is too low, as this creates a risk for heart attack.

I'm not sure what the doctor meant, but the IV is usually started because many patients arrive dehydrated, and this is a quick, direct way to increase blood volume. It also provides a ready port for administering other meds.

As Sue has said, the understanding or the actual utterance by the learned person saying the words were at best misleading, and at worst flat out wrong. One could argue dead wrong because some of his patients could be....well....

A high concentration of sodium forces you to give up water to make it easier for the kidneys to flush the excess. Often what is the one or two things wrong with especially elderly patients brought in for health reasons to an ER; too little sodium or too little water in their blood serum. So, you treat with an isotonic solution and slowly let the body come out of the funk imposed by either deficit. But too high a concentration of salt, as what you posted is the rationale, places an even greater burden of dehydration on the typical elderly person brough into the ER.