Please, please, please, answer if you’re a doctor, med student, physician’s assistant, or nurse practitioner in this area of medicine. I have no health insurance and simply cannot afford $150 for a general practitioner’s visit and if anything comes of that certainly -cannot- afford a specialist. (And perhaps this is excessive information but honestly if I do have some kind of health issue that will kill me, well, I will die of it. I already have medical debt and cannot afford any more. At least that way my family will collect on my life insurance policy 
.) Thank you.
(Oh, btw, yeah, I know, cut the salt out. Just went looking for information and will be doing that in the morning .)
Thank you for the reply! I’m more specifically concerned that I have been having palpitations (perhaps 2 times a day tops, usually 0-1) and slight difficulty breathing even though I am quitting smoking. I have smoked for 4 years, but every time I’ve been evaluated the doctor always says my lung capacity is normal. I have a high BMI (I don’t want to post specifics on the internet 
) but I have been "dieting" (eating healthy + counting my calories – no pills or any nonsense like that) and exercising for a minimum of 1 hour a day for the last two weeks. Additionally, I’ve noticed swelling in my feet. Could all of this be explained by the elevated amount of fluid in my circulatory system retained by all of the salt? Also, I’ve been consuming this high amount of sodium for a year – would it be likely (not asking for a diagnosis, just on a general population basis) that consuming that much salt for a year could cause egregious damage to the heart?
Also, I am 22 years old – so I’m not exactly in a high-risk category because of my age.
Well sodium or salt makes your blood more thick by pushing water out of it. This thicker blood is harder for your heart to pump and as a result has to work harder. If after taking so much salt for so long a time ,the heart can no longer pump effectively and not enough blood is pumped this can turn into the syndrome congestive heart failure.
However, a syndrome is called a syndrome because it has multiple causes not just high salt intake.
So yes high salt can contribute to getting CHF but it depends on other factors like weight, age, activity.
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