What about the implication that kids would be better off if they simply cut back on their salt intake? Governmental organizations including the CDC and IOM advocate for population-wide salt reduction, but some researchers question the science behind these policies. "Cutting back on salt does reduce blood pressure, but it may not reduce the risk of dying early," explains Katarzyna Stolarz-Skrzypek, a cardiologist at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland.
In a 2011 study published in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, Stolarz-Skrzypek and her colleagues compared the urinary sodium levels of 3,681 people with their risk of dying over the course of eight years. They found, surprisingly, that the more sodium their subjects ate, the less likely they were to die. In particular, the death rate among those eating the least sodium was 4.1 percent, but it was only 0.8 percent among avid salt consumers.
One factor behind this strange trend is that low-salt diets do more than just lower blood pressure. "Cutting sodium can cause other physiological changes such as increased resistance to insulin, which can set the stage for diabetes and increase the risk of death from heart disease," Stolarz-Skrzypek says. "Too little sodium can also increase sympathetic nerve activity, which raises the risk of heart attacks, and boost the secretion of aldosterone, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that is bad for the cardiovascular system." A 2011 review published by the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit research organization funded in part by the World Health Organization, concluded that low-salt diets are associated with "increases in some hormones and lipids, which could be harmful if persistent over time."
Looked at another way, the CDC study suggests that parents of overweight and obese kids should focus on weight loss, not salt reduction. Multiple studies in both adults and children suggest that weight has a bigger effect on blood pressure than salt does, and once kids reach a healthy weight, eating too much salt may not cause problems. Plus, going from obese to an appropriate weight reduces not only blood pressure but also the risk for conditions such as cancer, depression and type 2 diabetes. Shedding pounds isn't easy, but considering that an estimated 75 percent of our sodium intake comes from store-bought processed foods rather than what is added during cooking or at the dinner table, cutting back on salt isn't either—and ultimately, doing so may not be as beneficial for us as we think it is.
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11 Comments
Add CommentI'm amazed that this article does not mention sodium/potasium balance in the diet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was right at the limit in my last checkup (130 systolic) although I live extremely healthy, so I went through the pain of adding up all the milligrams of sodium from my usual diet. It's amazing how it adds up even from healthy foods. Now I rinse beans and tuna and try to get as much potassium in as possible. Thank goodness I like bananas, tomatoes and spinach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne curious thing is in the salt sensitive Dahl mouse they have shown by restricting iron , the salt sensitivity goes down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Dietary Iron Restriction Prevents Hypertensive Cardiovascular Remodeling in Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rats"
Adding salt to your meat causes and increased release of iron.
"Cooking and addition of NaCl caused increase in measured nonheme iron content and had a synergistic effect on the release of nonheme iron in meat"
There it is: "...INTERSALT compared urinary sodium levels—an accurate indicator of prior sodium consumption—with hypertension in more than 10,000 people in 1988 and found no statistically significant association between them. In fact, the population that ate the most sodium had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForget about highly inaccurate "self reported salt intake", here is a methodology that can determine objectively salt intake and compare it to blood pressure. And guess what -- no correlation with a sample size of ten thousand!! Any further discussion/ hypothesis of the dangers of salt intake better be able to explain away this study. I'm betting there is no viable explanation, and that salt ingestion is harmless.
Salt is a mean of NA+ in take to the body. Na+, K+, Cl-,P+3, ions are very much important to Neurons actions in the brain. Also Pituitary gland where's the leader to the Hormonal activity stimulated by the Neurons in the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile imbalance of these ions are not found with a imbalance diet.What I found in Sri Lanka almost every food menu contain bit of salt.In Amarican food they are not using salt in almost every food.
Hypertension might not only buy food salt its occurs by the stress as what I feel.
I eat healthy. I sweat a good deal. I drink 9+ pints of water each day. I have to salt my food plus drink electrolyte drinks in order to not go fuzzy from sodium and potassium deficiency.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen we get 180 news like this it tends to discredit health advice across the board, it weakens all areas of health education. When it is difficult for health professionals to sort it out, it's near hopeless for average Jo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome time back there was a report of large areas of retardation in China linked to salt (no Iodine in the salt thought the problem). The iron connection (mention above in comment ironjustice) is especially interesting given iron is added ubiquitously, as a health positive, to so many foods – children’s cereal etc... It would seem even at this late date there is much to learn about a very basic substance.
Richard Carlson
To rgcorrgk. You are right on, only it is a much bigger problem than you may imagine. I've been researching diet and nutrition studies fairly vigorously since I retired six plus years ago. I'd always assumed that "medical scientific research" was as scientific as other, hard, sciences. Way wrong. The core problem is the absolute refusal of the medical scientist community to "punish" terrible research and researchers. Everybody is too busy doing their own thing to properly attack and drive out incompetent or duplicitous or money-driven articles. What a crime that your physician and mine have to disregard virtually all articles because they cannot trust traditional sources. Major medical schools (I'm talking to you, Harvard) should lead the way in assuring that anything published and referring to that school is of the highest caliber. Shame on all of them for failing so completely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo rgcorrgk. You are right on, only it is a much bigger problem than you may imagine. I've been researching diet and nutrition studies fairly vigorously since I retired six plus years ago. I'd always assumed that "medical scientific research" was as scientific as other, hard, sciences. Way wrong. The core problem is the absolute refusal of the medical scientist community to "punish" terrible research and researchers. Everybody is too busy doing their own thing to properly attack and drive out incompetent or duplicitous or money-driven articles. What a crime that your physician and mine have to disregard virtually all articles because they cannot trust traditional sources. Major medical schools (I'm talking to you, Harvard) should lead the way in assuring that anything published and referring to that school is of the highest caliber. Shame on all of them for failing so completely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, something to wave at my in-laws when they glare at me when I reach for the salt cellar...B-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo SteveinOG
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is lopsided indeed, and the essential sodium/potassium balance is inexcusable I think. But one-sided medical studies like this are par for the course, because they tend to treat only ONE food element in total isolation, doing an injustice to the body condition IN VIVO, which is always about synergies .
I come from a meat- and sausage-eating Bavarian background, but have since down-tuned my salt intake enormously by evolving more and more into a 'saladonian'
and have felt much better healthwise since.
I can only explain this with the help of evolutionary anthropology; after all, we are by body design classy 'chimps de luxe'! And being in that class, we would have got our sodium as well as our potassium/etc. intake from
plant sources, in a body-friendly, chelated form.
Think: greens, with their unique, solar power protein that is built into their chlorophyll molecules, together with many other goodies, e.g. magnesium.
Added salt stresses the kidneys, which have too tiny capillaries to cope in the long run with the added pressure from flushing out 9 parts of water for every 1 part of sodium chloride. High salt consumption is linked statistically with high cancer rates, too.
A recent Harvard study found that meat eating is life-shortening. Meat would be totally inpalatable without salt. And so would bread, and refined carbs like pasta and bread! This is due to the salt lick reflex, which makes us automatically salivate, to cope with the elimination of this de-hydrating, addictive substance.
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