The official health wisdom — the wisdom everybody knows is right (because all the top health officials repeat it over and over again) — is that if you "restrict" the salt in your diet, you'll live longer.
That's because (once again, according to those official pronouncements) your blood pressure will be lower, putting you at less risk for a heart attack or stroke, the #1 and #3 causes of death in the U.S.
There's only one problem with that widespread "health wisdom," as I've been telling my patients and readers for many years. It's not true! And a recent article in the May 4, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association is the latest evidence to run counter to the medical myth of "Low Salt Good, High Salt Bad."
Low-Salt Diet May Increase Risk of Heart Disease
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium. First, they measured the urinary sodium levels of 3,681 healthy people in their 40s. Then they tracked their health for the next eight years. The folks with the highest urinary sodium levels -- a sign of a higher dietary intake of salt -- had the lowest risk of developing heart disease. Looked at another way, the low-sodium folks had four times the rate of dying from heart disease, compared to the high-salt folks.
The conclusion of the researchers was straightforward: "Our current findings refute the estimates ... of lives saved and health care costs reduced with lower salt intake. They do not support the current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction of salt intake."
The recommendations they're talking about are those from the American Heart Association (AHA), which suggests you limit your intake of salt to 1,500 milligrams (mg) per day -- way down from the 4,000 or so mg most of us eat every day.
What did the study researchers have to say about the low-salt pronouncements of U.S. heart honchos? Yes, they agree, salt restriction may be a good idea if you already have high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. But for the rest of us? Previous scientific research has overestimated the effect of salt intake on healthy people, they say. And, they point out, hardly anyone actually achieves the level of salt restriction suggested by the AHA -- a sign that the salt-needing body naturally triggers you to eat more salt when you try to cut back.
Of course, this isn't the first study to report that salt isn't bad for you. Many other studies say the same thing.
7 More Studies Throw Water on Salt Bashing
The Cochrane Library is a widely respected scientific organization that analyzes previous studies (a so-called meta-analysis) on a topic and reaches "evidence-based" conclusions about what's likely to work and not work in medical practice. In May of this year, they published a meta-analysis that looked at seven studies on salt and health involving more than 6,000 people.
Their conclusion? "We didn't see big benefits" from salt restriction, said the lead author of the study, Professor Rod Taylor from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Exeter. No lower risk of heart disease. No lower rate of early death.
Another recent study analyzed data from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) -- one of the most respected (if not the most respected) nutritional databases in the country. It found the lower the intake of salt, the higher the risk of death!
So do take the advice to “restrict” the salt in your diet with a grain of salt. Now, I’m not saying that the insane amounts of salt added by food processing is a good thing -- it’s not. But I am saying that of all the things we need to worry about for better health, salt isn’t that big of a deal -- with the exception of people who already have high blood pressure or congestive heart failure.
Most importantly, for people with CFS and fibromyalgia, restricting salt is sets you up for crashing and burning, and is ill-advised -- especially in summertime, when you sweat and have more salt loss.
Salt restriction is also not recommended if you have adrenal exhaustion. How do you know if you have this problem? The symptoms include intense irritability when hungry, low blood pressure, and a tendency to collapse physically, mentally and emotionally when you're under too much stress. Salt supports the adrenals.
And when I'm talking about salt, I'm not just talking about sodium chloride, or table salt. When you're at home, consider using sea salt, which is a complex combination of minerals. I think it has many health benefits that are not yet understood by our current medical technology.
References
"European Project on Genes in Hypertension (EPOGH) Investigators. Fatal and nonfatal outcomes, incidence of hypertension, and blood pressure changes in relation to urinary sodium excretion." Stolarz-Skrzypek K, Kuznetsova T, Thijs L, Tikhonoff V, Seidlerova J, Richart T, Jin Y, Olszanecka A, Malyutina S, Casiglia E, Filipovsky J, Kawecka-Jaszcz K, Nikitin Y, Staessen JA; Journal of the American Medical Association. 2011 May 4;305(17):1777-85.
"Reduced dietary salt for the prevention of cardiovascular disease." Taylor RS, Ashton KE, Moxham T, Hooper L, Ebrahim S.; Reduced dietary salt for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Jul 6;7:CD009217.
"Sodium Intake and Mortality Follow-Up in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III)." Hillel W. Cohen, DrPH, MPH, Susan M. Hailpern, MS, DrPH, and Michael H. Alderman, MD.; J Gen Intern Med. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-008-0645-6
Since I'm interested in hunter-gatherer diet and have been generally on such a protocol for a good part of a decade, a couple of years ago I became interested in whether someone who followed a very strict primitive whole-foods only diet was at risk for sodium deficiency and hyponatremia. For six months I limited myself to only primitive whole foods consistent with a "paleo diet" and included no added salt or sodium at all. During this time I was hiking several days a week, often in dehydrating hot or high altitude conditions conducive to sweating. My fairly careful calculations showed that my average daily sodium intake for the six months was around 300-400 mg per day, from natural sodium in grassfed beef, celery, etc. and I stayed constantly alert for any signs of hyponatremia. Toward the end of the six months I had a blood chemistry run and checked my serum sodium level - it was 138 MMOL/L, where the normal reference range is 132-150. Previously, my blood pressure had tended toward borderline hypertension, but during the six months in question it ranged from 100/60 to about 115/68. All this leaves me more puzzled than ever in light of this article.
Best I can calculate, it would not have been uncommon for hunter-gatherers to have sodium intakes in the range of 300-500 mg per day, a tenth of what many moderns consume. But primitives would have had much higher intakes of magnesium than moderns, which presumably would increase the efficiency of the cellular sodium-potassium pumps as intracellular Mg does, and this would clear more intracellular Na and make it available in serum. I've often wondered if some cases of hyponatremia are not caused or exacerbated by Mg deficiency, the result being low serum sodium not because of inadequate intake of sodium, but because sodium is being trapped intracellularly via Mg deficiency induced sodium-potassium pump inefficiency. Some studies lend support to this in some cases. If you do the calcs, there is enough potential variation in sodium-potassium pump regulated intracellular sodium levels at their highs and lows to make the difference between hyponatremia (low serum sodium) and normal serum sodium. This might explain why hunter-gatherers on extremely low sodium diets in hot weather did not develop hyponatremia.
You have only published a few scientific research papers, and those were flawed and published in third-rate journals. Perhaps you should stop pushing these theories until you do some real research.
http://www.hormone.org/Public/upload/Adrenal-Fatigue-Web.pdf
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/adrenal-fatigue/AN01583
However there is substantial evidence that if you suffer from either heart or kidney failure, excessive salt intake will find you heading to an Emergency Room in crisis. Do not ignore your salt restriction if you suffer from these conditions.
I'm curious about the adrenal exhaustion/salt connection--I've heard that salt cravings can indicate adrenal exhaustion so I'll have to look into this further.
This paper and many others quoted a big federal study that showed that low potassium and high sodium was much worse than just high sodium! The more potassium you consume the faster and easier that your body gets rid of sodium. http://bit.ly/eNmtca Otherwise your body can store a lot of sodium causing you to hold a lot more water. This makes people bloated. The more sodium you consume, the more sodium your body retains.
Someone will fast and consume only pure water and lose 10 pounds in 5 days. It is mostly water weight. They lost all that water since they were urinating out tons of sodium, making them need less water. Wiki says: "The sodium-potassium pump was discovered in the 1950s by a Danish scientist, Jens Christian Skou, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1997. "In order to maintain the cell membrane potential, cells must keep a low concentration of sodium ions and high levels of potassium ions within the cell." The initial premise is wrong. At the beginning of a fast (pure water only), the urine has huge amounts of salt in it.
ideas floating
all i know is if
i use too
much of it
zee body
starts bloating
You mean as time goes by evidence and the science can change?
Wow.
Sheesh - if we went back and had stopped eating and drinking all the food and drink that were supposedly so bad for us, we would have strved to death long ago!
Can't we just go with moderation? At least that way I could have a slice of pecan pie with ice cream once every few months and not feel like I would be arrested by the "food police"!