There is no single number, and the published figures are not all written in the same unit. Cleveland Clinic's POTS page says "Increase sodium (salt) in your diet from 3,000 milligrams (mg) to 10,000 mg per day". Dysautonomia International lists increasing salt consumption to 8,000 mg to 10,000 mg per day. The 2015 Heart Rhythm Society consensus statement says up to 10 to 12 g of NaCl daily may be considered, and the 2020 Canadian Cardiovascular Society position statement recommends 10 g of NaCl per day. NaCl is salt, not sodium, and salt is only about 40 percent sodium by weight, so a figure stated in salt is roughly two and a half times the mass of the sodium inside it. A large part of the apparent gap between these sources is not disagreement at all. Each of these figures was written for diagnosed patients under a clinician's direction, so the number that applies to you is the one your own clinician sets.
Below is every figure we could verify against its primary source, with the unit stated for each row and the source sentence quoted. If you have ever found two POTS pages that seem to contradict each other, this table is the reconciliation.
Every published figure, side by side
| Source and date | Figure as published | Salt or sodium? | Sodium equivalent | Fluid figure | How it is framed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Clinic, last updated 8 June 2026 | 3,000 to 10,000 mg per day | Ambiguous. The page says "Increase sodium (salt) in your diet from 3,000 milligrams (mg) to 10,000 mg per day." It writes the two words as one term and never separates them. | Not converted. The source does not make its unit clear, so any conversion would be a guess. | 2 to 2.5 litres of fluid per day | The figure sits under "General guidelines for dietary changes", and the page says a provider "may suggest" increasing fluid and salt intake for the hypovolemic form |
| Dysautonomia International (no review date shown, 2019 site copyright) | 8,000 to 10,000 mg per day | Salt. The page says "increasing salt consumption to 8,000 mg to 10,000 mg per day". | About 3,100 to 4,000 mg sodium (our arithmetic) | 2 to 3 litres per day | Listed among "the most common treatments for POTS", cited to Grubb 2008 and Raj 2006, preceded by advice to consult an experienced physician |
| Heart Rhythm Society expert consensus statement, 2015 (Sheldon, Grubb et al.) | 10 to 12 g per day | Salt, written as NaCl: "The consumption of up to 2 to 3 L of water and 10 to 12 g of NaCl daily by patients with POTS may be considered." | 4,000 to 4,800 mg sodium, as printed by Stock et al. 2022, which restates the figure as "10,000-12,000 mg of salt per day (4,000-4,800 mg of sodium)" | Up to 2 to 3 litres of water per day | Class IIb, Level of Evidence E. "May be considered", and the body text adds "if tolerated" |
| Canadian Cardiovascular Society position statement, 2020 (Raj et al.) | 10 g per day | Salt, written as NaCl: "daily oral NaCl intake of 10 g via high-salt foods, NaCl sachets, salt sticks, or salt tablets". | About 4,000 mg sodium (our arithmetic) | At least 3 litres of oral fluid per day | Strong Recommendation, Low-Quality Evidence |
| Garland, Raj et al., JACC, 4 May 2021 (crossover study) | 300 mEq sodium per day on the high-sodium arm, 10 mEq on the low-sodium arm | Sodium, in mEq | About 6,900 mg sodium on the high arm, using the paper's own rule that 1 mEq equals 1 mmol. The paper never prints a gram figure for its study arms. | Not a study variable. The paper cites 2 to 3 L per day as existing advice. | A six-day research diet for 14 women with POTS and 13 controls, not a dosing instruction |
| Stock, Chelimsky, Edwards, Farquhar, Autonomic Neuroscience, 2022 (review) | American Society of Hypertension range of 6,000 to 10,000 mg of salt per day | Salt, with the sodium equivalent given by the authors as 2,400 to 4,000 mg | 2,400 to 4,000 mg sodium, as printed in the paper | None stated | Reported as existing recommendations. The authors' own line is that "modest, rather than robust, increases in NaCl intake may be sufficient" |
| NINDS, last reviewed 13 March 2026 | No daily sodium or salt figure | Neither. The page says only "Increasing salt intake and staying hydrated can help regulate blood pressure and increase the volume of blood in the body." The word sodium never appears. | Not applicable | No daily fluid total. The only quantity on the page is 16 oz of water before getting up. | Qualitative lifestyle guidance |
The "Sodium equivalent" column is unit arithmetic and nothing else. Where a source states salt, we have converted that mass to the mass of sodium inside it at about 40 percent by weight, or quoted the conversion the authors printed themselves. It is not a recommendation from us, not an endorsement of the row, and not a target. The Cleveland Clinic row is deliberately left unconverted because that page does not make its unit clear.
None of these figures is a dose you can safely pick off a page. Bring the table to your clinician and ask which row, if any, applies to your situation.
Why the figures look so far apart
Table salt is sodium chloride. By weight it is roughly 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride. So the mass of salt in a figure is about two and a half times the mass of the sodium it contains: 10 g of salt holds about 3,900 mg of sodium, and 4,000 mg of sodium arrives in about 10 g of salt. Same substance, two different measured nouns.
That single fact explains most of the apparent conflict:
- Dysautonomia International's 8,000 to 10,000 mg is salt, which lands near 3,100 to 4,000 mg of sodium, close to the Canadian and American cardiology figures.
- The Heart Rhythm Society's 10 to 12 g and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society's 10 g are both NaCl, so they sit in the same band as Dysautonomia International rather than well above it. Stock et al. 2022 restate the Heart Rhythm Society figure in both units, "10,000-12,000 mg of salt per day (4,000-4,800 mg of sodium)".
- Cleveland Clinic's 3,000 to 10,000 mg is the row to be careful with, and not because it is the highest. Its page uses sodium and salt as if they were interchangeable, so there is no honest way to convert it. Read it as published, and if your clinician quotes it, ask which of the two they mean.
Three of those sources are giving broadly similar advice in different units. Ranges that look like a serious disagreement are, once the unit is settled, roughly the same instruction.
Where this bites in practice is on food labels. Nutrition panels in the United States list sodium in milligrams, while salt tablets and a lot of clinical shorthand are in grams of NaCl. If you are moving between the two, our salt to sodium converter does the arithmetic so you are not doing it in your head at the pharmacy.
What "salt loading" means
Salt loading is clinician shorthand for deliberately raising daily sodium chloride intake above what you would normally eat, usually alongside extra fluid, with the aim of expanding blood volume. It is not a defined protocol and it does not have an agreed dose. In practice it describes the strategy that sits behind every figure in the table above.
The published statements describe how it is done rather than prescribing a single method. The Canadian Cardiovascular Society's 2020 statement specifies its 10 g of NaCl per day is taken "via high-salt foods, NaCl sachets, salt sticks, or salt tablets", again a strong recommendation on low-quality evidence, and something to agree with your own clinician. The 2015 Heart Rhythm Society statement says dietary salt "should be increased to approximately 10 to 12 g/day, if tolerated, using salt tablets, if necessary", and limits that sentence to patients known or strongly suspected to have hypovolemia. Cleveland Clinic's version is food-first: "Choose beneficial salty snacks, like broth, pickles, olives, sardines and nuts" and "Don't over-rely on snack chips and crackers for salt."
You will rarely hear the phrase from a search engine and often hear it in a clinic. It is worth knowing so that when someone uses it, you can ask the follow-up question that matters: how much, in which unit, and measured how.
How strong is the evidence behind these numbers
Weaker than the confidence of the internet suggests, and the guideline authors say so themselves.
The 2015 Heart Rhythm Society figure carries a grade of Class IIb, Level of Evidence E. Class IIb means the intervention "may be considered". Level E means expert opinion. The 2020 Canadian Cardiovascular Society figure is graded Strong Recommendation, Low-Quality Evidence, which is a fair summary of the whole field: clinicians are confident about the direction and short on trial data for the number.
A 2022 review in Autonomic Neuroscience put it plainly, noting that while short-term benefit has evidence behind it, "there are few studies assessing the benefits and side effects of long-term high dietary NaCl". If you want the detail of what the trials and the review actually measured, that belongs in what the POTS sodium research actually reported rather than here.
Two practical consequences. First, a number this soft is not something to self-prescribe from a table. Second, when your clinician picks a figure at the lower end, that is consistent with the literature, not a sign they are being cautious with you.
Where the figures stop and your situation starts
The published ranges answer one question: what have expert bodies put in print. They do not answer several others that matter more day to day.
- They do not say whether the figure is total daily intake or supplemental on top of your normal diet. Dysautonomia International's page does not specify, and the difference is large if you already eat a lot of salt.
- They do not distinguish POTS subtypes in most cases. Cleveland Clinic ties the salt and fluid increase specifically to the hypovolemic form, and the 2015 Heart Rhythm Society body text limits its figure to patients known or suspected to be hypovolemic. Others state a figure with no subtype attached.
- They do not tell you how it is going. The Canadian Cardiovascular Society statement offers a lab check for that, noting the "currently recommended target for 24-hour urinary sodium is > 170 mmol/d" as a surrogate estimate of dietary salt intake. That is a measurement your clinician orders, not an intake instruction.
- Raising sodium is not right for everyone. That is a clinician decision and there are situations where it is the wrong move, which we cover in when more sodium is not right for you.
What to take to your appointment
If you go in with the table above and four questions, you should leave with a number you can actually act on.
- Which unit are we using? Ask for the target in milligrams of sodium per day, and write it down in that form. If they answer in grams of salt, ask them to convert it or convert it yourself before you leave the room.
- Total or supplemental? Is the figure everything you eat and drink in a day, or is it what you add on top of your usual diet? This single question changes the practical target by thousands of milligrams.
- Does my subtype change the answer? Cleveland Clinic frames the salt and fluid increase as something a provider may suggest for the hypovolemic form of POTS. Ask where you sit and whether the figure moves because of it.
- How will we check it is working, and how will we check it is safe? Ask what they want monitored, on what schedule, and what would make them lower the target again.
Two things worth bringing physically. A record of what you currently consume, even a rough three-day tally, because a target means nothing without a baseline. And the labels or the exact sodium content of whatever you already use, since clinicians can only work with numbers you can give them. If it helps to hand your clinician the underlying papers rather than a summary, our source list for clinicians has the Garland 2021, Sheldon 2015 and Raj 2020 citations in full.
Once your clinician has settled on a figure and a unit, the day to day question becomes a practical one about food, drinks and habits rather than a question about the literature. For how people fit electrolyte drinks into an ordinary day, see our page on electrolytes and POTS.
Sources
- Cleveland Clinic. "Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)." Cleveland Clinic Health Library, last updated 8 June 2026.
- Dysautonomia International. "Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome." dysautonomiainternational.org (accessed 21 July 2026).
- Sheldon RS, Grubb BP 2nd, Olshansky B, et al. 2015 Heart Rhythm Society Expert Consensus Statement on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia, and Vasovagal Syncope. Heart Rhythm. 2015;12(6):e41-e63. PMID 25980576.
- Raj SR, Guzman JC, Harvey P, et al. Canadian Cardiovascular Society Position Statement on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and Related Disorders of Chronic Orthostatic Intolerance. Can J Cardiol. 2020;36(3):357-372.
- Garland EM, Raj SR, et al. "Effect of High Dietary Sodium Intake in Patients with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome." J Am Coll Cardiol. 2021;77(17):2174-2184. PMID 33926653.
- Stock JM, Chelimsky G, Edwards DG, Farquhar WB. "Dietary sodium and health: how much is too much for those with orthostatic disorders?" Auton Neurosci. 2022;238:102947. PMID 35131651.
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)", last reviewed 13 March 2026.
This article is general information about published guidance, not medical advice. Decisions about your sodium and fluid intake belong with your clinician.
