By Chris Joseph and Marji Keith
Take This with a Grain of Salt (And Toss the Receipt While You’re at It)
Let’s talk about two things that cross your path every single day—that little packet of salt at lunch and the receipt you grab without thinking twice. They seem harmless enough, right? But they are not: When it comes to metabolic health and hormone balance, these everyday items might be affecting your health more than you realize.
The Salt Story
We’re not just talking about any salt here. We’re talking about the highly refined stuff that shows up everywhere—from those packets in restaurants to the Morton salt sitting in most pantries. This isn’t the sea salt your great-grandmother used. It’s sodium chloride that’s been stripped of its natural minerals, bleached white, and loaded with synthetic iodine and anti-caking agents like sodium silicoaluminate.
Your body was designed to process natural salt with its full spectrum of minerals. But this refined version? It can contribute to blood pressure issues and throws off your body’s delicate mineral balance. When you’re already dealing with metabolic challenges or inflammation, every little stressor adds up.
The Receipt Story
And that innocent-looking receipt you grabbed at the coffee shop? It’s coated with BPA (bisphenol A) or its chemical cousin BPS. Studies show that BPA was found in over 90% of thermal paper receipts from Spain and Brazil, with concentrations up to 20.27 mg/g of paper.
BPA acts like estrogen in your body—it’s what we call a xenoestrogen or endocrine disruptor. Research published in JAMA found that people who handle receipts continuously wind up with significantly elevated levels of BPA in their urine, and BPA can disrupt the body’s hormone system.
Here’s what really caught our attention: when people held receipts for just two hours, their BPA levels rose from 1.8 to 5.8 micrograms per liter. After 8 hours, levels jumped to 11.1 micrograms per liter—almost a five-fold increase.
And if you’ve used hand sanitizer or lotion recently? You can absorb 100 times more BPA—300 micrograms versus just 3 micrograms from a clean hand. Those penetration enhancers in skin products make your skin much more permeable.
Why This Matters for Your Hormones
People think fixing hormone issues means jumping straight to hormone replacement therapy. But there’s so much we can do in our daily lives to reduce our estrogenic burden first. Studies show that cashiers, who handle receipts all day, have higher levels of BPA in their bodies than people in other occupations.
When we’re constantly exposed to these hormone disruptors, our bodies have to work overtime to process and eliminate them. That means less energy for the important stuff—like maintaining stable blood sugar, burning fat efficiently, and keeping inflammation in check.
The Little Things Add Up
If you’re thinking, “It’s just a receipt. It’s just some salt on my hard-boiled egg.” Well, that’s exactly the point. These exposures seem tiny in isolation, but they accumulate. Research shows that after handling thermal paper receipts, BPA can stay in your system for up to 9 days—much longer than the 24 hours it takes to clear after eating BPA-contaminated food.
Your liver is already working hard to process everything else in our modern environment. Every small reduction in toxic load gives it more capacity to do its job well.
Simple Swaps That Make a Difference
There is good news; small changes can have a big impact:
For salt:
• Choose Colima sea salt or pink Himalayan salt instead of Morton or other refined varieties
• Look for salt that’s gray or pink; color usually means minerals are still intact
• Read labels and avoid anti-caking agents when possible
For receipts:
• Decline receipts when you don’t need them
• Ask for digital receipts instead
• If you must handle receipts, avoid touching them after using hand sanitizer, lotion, or when your hands are wet. (And by the way, avoid hand sanitizer too! Another small change to reduce your toxic burden)
• Wash your hands thoroughly after handling receipts
• If you work as a cashier, server, or in retail, consider wearing nitrile gloves or washing hands frequently during your shift
For everyone:
• Avoid handling receipts after using alcohol-based cleaners or when hands are wet or greasy from food or lotion
• Don’t put thermal receipts in recycling—the BPA can contaminate other papers
The Bigger Picture
While you don’t want to be paranoid about every single thing you touch, awareness is power. Most people think hormone issues are just genetic bad luck or something that happens with age. But the truth is, your hormone balance is being influenced every day by your environment—what you eat, touch, breathe, and absorb through your skin. Once you see these connections, you can make informed choices. These aren’t massive lifestyle overhauls. They’re tiny tweaks that cost next to nothing and take no extra time. And when you add them up over weeks, months, and years? That’s when you start seeing the compound effect on your energy, mood, weight, and overall health.
Your body is incredibly resilient and wants to heal. Sometimes we just need to get out of its way by reducing the daily burden of things that don’t serve us. Salt and receipts might seem too small to matter, but in the world of metabolic health, the smallest changes often make the biggest difference.
Remember: if you work in an industry where you handle receipts regularly—retail, restaurants, banking—this is especially important for you. Consider it part of your occupational health strategy.