Fear of correcting hypernatremia too quickly

[flatline]

Hi,

I got a bit of a salty surprise when I went to Qdoba today. I was eating some of the chips and there was like a solid tablespoon or two of salt right at the bottom that I accidentally ate when I poured the last of the bag in my mouth. That was a lot of sodium (8330 mg/362 mEq for the whole meal, which since I weigh around 77kg would have increased my blood sodium levels by ~7.8 mEq/l (46.2 mEq to increase at safe rate of 1 mEq/l/hr); I didn't have any symptoms of hypernatremia but I drank around 25 fl oz of water/dr pepper in an hour to be safe.

however, my main worry is cerebral edema from correcting my blood sodium too quickly. that 25 fluid ounces is about 738 mL, and according to this calculator a person of my weight with blood sodium levels of 147.8 mEq/L (I got a blood test not too long ago that had my blood sodium levels at 140 + 7.8 from the meal) around 640 mL of water is needed to lower my blood sodium by 2 mEq/l -- 4x higher than the safe rate!

This all happened about 6 hours ago. I called Poison Control 4 times to ascertain what I should do; they said that it was a large amount of sodium but that I should be okay. Advice was to drink up to 8 oz of water and go to bed around ~3 am, and to drink a little more water than usual and avoid salty foods the next day. This whole situation happened around midnight and it's 6am since I typed this. I'm not experiencing any symptoms of hypernatremia or cereberal edema, outside of a headache which I had before I even ate. I would really appreciate anybody telling me that I'm going to be okay at these rates; I obviously haven't slept yet and don't want to in case my brain swells in my sleep...or something like central pontine myeliosis to happen.

Or someone to check my math considering I have very little confidence in these piecemeal calculations.

Calculator: https://www.mdcalc.com/sodium-correction-rate-hyponatremia-hypernatremia#evidence

---------- Post added at 07:47 ---------- Previous post was at 06:20 ----------

keep in mind that these are pretty high calculations because I'm trying to be safe. I probably only had like 10 grams of salt at most because I didn't eat all of what was at the bottom of the bag, I kind of just poured some of it into my mouth and quickly realized that it was mostly salt

[ErinKC]

Unless you're a doctor, you're almost certainly not qualified to use those calculations in any meaningful way to diagnose a problem.

A tablespoon is a large amount, and it's unlikely there was actually a full tablespoon of salt at the bottom of the bag.

Four calls to poison control resulted in a response that you were ok and to just drink some extra water, like you did.

As you said, you're "not experiencing any symptoms of hypernatremia or cerebral edema."

You did what poison control said, you are still here with no symptoms of anything nefarious.

Any further symptoms you develop will almost certainly be from anxiety and/or lack of sleep. Get some rest!

[Fishmanpa]

Frankly, you're WAY overthinking this! Just the fact you did all that math and exaggerated it to affirm your fear proves it :whistles: If you or I or anyone had poured even a tablespoon of salt into our mouths, we wouldn't be able to consume it! Think about it. On it's own, could you put that much salt in your mouth and actually eat it? Heck, I would be spitting it out within a second! :emot-puke:

This is a non issue and not worth the time to even think about it. At worse, you'll feel some dry mouth and need to drink more liquids. No biggie :shrug:

Positive thoughts

[flatline]

yeah honestly it was just because the salt was mixed with chips that I was able to get it down. I don't remember it being that salty so maybe I ended up with a lot less salt and I thought I did I don't know

[NancyW]

hypernatremia

cereberal edema

central pontine myeliosis

Holy GOOGLE!

Step away from the search bar, do what poison control told you to do and go to bed.

[MyNameIsTerry]

If it was so dangerous would it be put in your food in the first place? Wouldn't thrash be a pretty massive health risk to the general public?

Poison Control say no risk, they are the experts. If they said it wasn't and something bad happened they would be in court.

[flatline]

Holy GOOGLE!

Step away from the search bar, do what poison control told you to do and go to bed.

I did :x

[flatline]

Sodium intake today was around 2500mg. A bit higher than the daily but probably lower than my average. Still kinda worried about it but its still way less than yesterday