Life's a Beach
Half of the world's population lives less than 200km from the sea. Humans seem to strongly prefer coastal climates.
I have come to believe this is because life evolved in the ocean and we need the salt and other minerals found in the ocean water. There are a variety of minerals found in ocean water and/or seafood that isn't readily found elsewhere.
Notably, American table salt often has iodine added because the Midwestern states used to be known as The Goiter Belt. Iodine is primarily found in seafood and wasn't very available that far inland at one time.
There is more than just salt in ocean water. There is a mix of minerals that work hand-in-hand with salt and most commercially available salt doesn't contain those micronutrients, though some brands of sea salt do.
If you live near the beach and have respiratory issues, gut issues and/or neurological issues, it can be helpful to visit the beach regularly. Even if it is too cold to venture into the water, the air at the beach will be heavy with moisture and minerals from the water.
If it's warm enough to take your shoes off and walk in the surf, you can increase your absorption that way without having to get into a bathing suit or go surfing or anything like that.
Cystic Fibrosis is essentially a salt wasting condition. People with CF sweat out salt at high rates and when we sweat out so much salt, other things get dragged with it, thereby serving as a primary root cause of most of our symptoms.
In fact, one of the few standard non-drug treatments for CF was born of the observation that people with CF who surfed generally fared better. This inspired the development of nebulized hypertonic saline which inspired the development of the two following items on this site: While homeless, I used to sometimes go nap on the beach when I was in a lot of pain and generally miserable. Napping on a public beach was a price I could afford -- FREE -- and it did me more good than prescription medication. It was a surprisingly reliable means to get my pain under control in a much more pleasant fashion than what doctors generally do to people like me.
