For over a hundred years medical authorities have warned against the excessive use of salt in our diet. High sodium levels have been blamed for increased blood pressure and consequent higher heart and stroke attacks. The evidence to support this is far from clear. In point of fact, many studies show that a high salt intake has little or no effect on blood pressure – similar numbers to those that claim to show a link. Some major large scale studies actually show the opposite. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. The study concluded that lower sodium diets led to HIGHER mortality rates among those with cardiovascular disease, which is the opposite of what I have been told for years.
All this is music to my ears as a 73 year old who has had a very high salt intake throughout my life and whose blood pressure is relatively normal for age. However my lifetime habit may prejudice my viewpoint.
While I may see salt as not being the enemy many medical professionals see it I do have some provisos on its use.
1. If your potassium intake is low relative to sodium it can affect blood pressure adversely ( this is the situation where most of the links to blood pressure have been made and is likely the cause why high sodium diets affect some but not others)
2. Grossly high salt intakes will be bad because of the skewing of the ratio mentioned in one.
3. Natural salt is markedly safer and better than processed natural salt (although the added iodine can be beneficial if low from other food sources)
So what do we do about potassium levels? I don’t think a supplement is the answer. Diet is the answer; we need to be sure we are eating reasonable amounts of high potassium foods. Our ancient ancestors ate 16 times more potassium than sodium. Today it is more like a 1:1 ratio with the great reliance on processed food. Vegetables are the best source, so eat your veggies, particularly green vegetables, and also good are baked potato, lima beans, squash, bananas and prunes.
Then use natural sea salt. This usually contains around 84% sodium chloride and 16% naturally occurring minerals, many of which we need for a healthy diet. Table salt usually contains some 97.5% sodium chloride and 2.5% of manmade chemicals, apart from iodine these are added to make it flow easier and in my view are dangerous to your health. Also while being processed it is excessively dried at some 1200 degrees destroying the lattice crystal structure and making it a quite different product. I find natural salt gives a better flavour to food as well, so it’s not only good for you but tastes better as well.
To Summarise
- Salt is an essential nutrient required for blood pressure regulation, transportation of nutrients into and out of your cells, ion exchange, and brain-muscle communication.
- Decades of scientific research have failed to show the benefits of a low-salt diet, and in fact tend to show the opposite. Low-salt diets are associated with higher cardiac risk across multiple studies.
- All salts are not equal, in terms of their impact on your health. Processed (table) salt can be health harming, while natural unprocessed salt is not only healing, but in fact essential for many biological functions
- While you will doubtless be getting iodine from other sources you may need to watch this when you change away from iodised table salt (iodised sea salt is the ideal but is not readily available in New Zealand)
So this is something you can tell your doctor when you next see him, some doctors need educating.
If you want to look up references on this contact me by email but you can check:
- Scientific America July 8 2011 on Google