PS: The thing is, excessive sodium caused your body to retain fluid. Your body becomes a ‘sponge’ basically.
People with Cirrhosis tend to build up fluid, which is knows as Ascites. I had end stage Cirrhosis, and my Ascites was HORRIBLE. They could routinely drain 7 liters of fluid from my abdomen, and that would make me just barely comfortable. I’d always been an average sized person, and I quickly learned what it must feel like for a woman to be 8 months pregnant.
They told me that sodium would worsen the Ascites, and to avoid Salt. (I never did) The way I saw it, If I’m gonna die anyway, I’ll be dammed if I’m gonna spend my remaining days eating like a rabbit!
Mark Twain advised that if you can't get to 70 by a comfortable road, don't go.
Same for me after my triple-bypass operation. The usual diet lecture "because of your blood pressure" (which was 130/76 last visit) "avoid salt, red meat, smiling, singing & dancing" (just kidding about the last 3). This was in 2003.
In his famous quote. HL Menken said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." While I am NOT saying that there are NO dangers in excessive salt consumption, I have seen "an endless series of (dietary) hobgoblins" decried in the press and in medical "conventional wisdom".
Salt
Red meat
Fat
Margarine
Butter
High fructose corn syrup
GMO foods
Whole milk
Caffeine
Red dye # whatever
MSG
There have also been a whole slew of "magic bullet" diets such as oat bran, organic, herbal, vegan, "eat-while-facing-the-rising-sun-and-chanting-OOOOOOMMMMM." Yet I know folks who usually subsist on millet porridge plus cattle blood & milk. I even managed to survive for a while in 1969 on a diet of C-rations canned in 1956. :-)
/rant
"For what we are about to receive, oh Lord, make us truly grateful. Amen"