This is Monica Reinagel.

Welcome to the Nutrition Divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

Eddie writes, I'm in my first year of pharmacy school, so naturally I have to eat a lot of those quick and easy foods that contain a ton of sodium.

Would drinking more water help the body to eliminate the excess sodium?

Now hang on just a second Eddie, before I weigh in on your question about water and

sodium, who says that being in school means that you have to eat a lot of high sodium foods?

Being short on time or money doesn't necessarily mean that you have to survive on fast food and vending machine snacks

For more strategies on eating healthy when time, money, and or space are tight,

please check out my two-part series on healthy eating for college kids,

as well as my episode on stocking a healthy kitchen on a budget

you'll find both of these in the show archives at nutrition diva dot quick and

dirty tips dot com and even when you are forced to grab a meal on the run, it's gotten easier and easier to find healthy options.

Even gas stations and drugstores now regularly stock things like baby carrots and hummus, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, hard-boiled eggs

and fresh fruit. So I'm afraid that being in pharmacy school doesn't give you a free pass to spend the

next two years eating potato chips and cheese whiz.

But now to get back to your question, can drinking more water cancel out too much sodium?

Eating a lot of salt can cause your body to retain more water and this can lead to a number of problems, such as increased blood pressure or swelling of the feet and other tissues in the body.

After a particularly salty meal,

drinking some extra water might help flush both the extra sodium

and any retained fluids from the body.

If your sodium intake is chronically high though, upping your water

intake probably isn't going to have much effect on your fluid balance. People who

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