The biggest cause of water retention is not salt, it's this...

Did you know that stress causes water retention?

Stress causes your body (specifically your adrenal glands) to produce a hormone called Cortisol.

Elevated levels of Cortisol trigger a rise in another hormone called antidiuretic hormone (ADH).

ADH sends a signal to your kidneys to "reduce the amount of fluid lost in urine".

This is actually "good for you". Your stress response is designed to protect your body when you're in danger.

Cortisol not only causes you to retain more water, but also increases your blood sugar, your blood pressure, and reduces the activity of your immune and reproduction systems.

All of this is designed to help you divert all the body's energy to "survive" when exposed to danger.

Throughout human history, this only happened once every few days. This is called "acute stress".

So: danger ==> stress response / Cortisol ==> danger goes away ==> everything back to normal for a few days ==> no negative health impact.

However!

In modern times, we are rarely exposed to "acute stress".

Instead we are exposed to "chronic stress": medium levels of stress which happen "multiples times a day every day"!

Chronic stress comes from:

- Bad quality or insufficient sleep

- Not enough movement / exercise

- Driving in traffic

- Air pollution

- Foods which cause inflammation

- Work stress

- Social media (yes, it's already been demonstrated in studies)

- etc.

Your body can't tell the difference between "acute" and "chronic" stress, so the response is the same: Release Cortisol.

I wrote another article about how stress impacts your health & what you can do about it. You can find it here.