Salt flat ping.
This could explain my strange addiction to lemon & salt seasoning.
Salt enables hydration. Excess salt is dehydrating only in the sense that it is not matched by the approprate amount of water, and thus creates a craving for water to balance it out. In this way, you get a direct perception of adequate water - bliss with appropriate hydration, pain with dehydration (which is accompanied by “excess” salt until appropriate hydration takes place, at which time the same amount of salt is “appropriate”).
In other words, it’s dehydration stress, not salt stress, and it’s SUPPOSED to be anxiety producing, because your body needs water like nother else other than oxygen.
To then trick the body by adding excess salt, triggering biological dehydration anxiety, and then throw in a social stress situation is simply adding social stress to pre-existing biological stress. How, exactly, do you separate these two variables for any decent scientific investigation.
It’s like saying, hey, if I stick a nail through your hand and then give you a math test, it’s a lot more stressful on you than if you take the math test without the nail through your hand - therefore math tests have a direct effect on nail pain.
WTF?