There's a disease that makes skin taste super salty

Have you ever come across cystic fibrosis on the internet? Well, if you are hearing it for the first time in your life, you obviously do not know that it can make skin taste super salty. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited medical condition that changes how your body makes mucus and sweat, causing damage to lungs, digestive system and functioning of some other body parts.

The condition causes changes in the mucus, sweat and digestive juices by affecting cells that produce them. The nature of such fluids is normally thin and slippery, but people with cystic fibrosis have a gene that turns these secretions into a thick and sticky one. As a result, these thick and sticky secretions clog the tubes, ducts and other passageways in the lungs and pancreases.

Symptoms

Signs and symptoms of cystic fibrosis depend on the severity of the disease and may worsen or improve with time. Some people may not experience symptoms until adolescence or adulthood. Following are the common symptoms of the condition.

• A person with cystic fibrosis will have a higher than normal level of salt in his sweat.
• The skin is so salty that parents can taste salt when they kiss their children.
• Cystic fibrosis mostly affects the respiratory system or the digestive system.
• Adults with cystic fibrosis are more likely to have atypical symptoms, such as pancreatitis, diabetes and infertility.

The condition may also cause respiratory symptoms including constant cough that produces thick sputum, wheezing, breathlessness, stuffy nose and frequent lung infections. Other symptoms may include foul-smelling greasy stool, constipation and intestinal blockage.

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