The salt issue is over rated and reduced salt intake might actually be risky for the hypertensive patient.

In Guyten, the physiology book used by many med schools, it is shown that if salt intake is reduced, there is a transient decrease in Bp with subsequent rise back to previous levels. The reverse is also shown, that an increase in salt intake causes an transient increase in Bp followed by a gradual return to previous levels.

The problem is this, if a person with greatly reduced salt intake partakes of a meal with elevated salt content (lets face it, we don’t have control of all of our meals) there will be a transient increase in the Bp. The transient increase will be pronounced in the person who has reduced salt intake and thus an elevated sensitivity. This transient increase could very well be dangerous.

If a person has regular salt intake, there will be no reaction.

This is just food for thought. No pun intended. OK yes there was.

I also find it interesting that in modern science, the only thing that has ever shown any effect on increasing longevity has been reduction in caloric intake, to the tune of about 50% decrease from the average.

Nine tenth of the time any discussion of nutrition centers on weight loss. People who want to lose weight need to do one thing in particular. EAT LESS and CONSUME LESS. It is that simple and also that difficult. And that all depends upon how much you really was to make the change in order to lose the weight.

Taking ANY medication can be risky no matter what the doctor says, so you need to be aware of the side effects, add them all up, READ the labels and be responsible.

It is YOUR life and it is YOUR future. Die early or wait to later, I like the word later.

Life has NEVER been this great as it is now and we enjoy it to the fullest thanks to our own judgement.

Are we talking Nutraceutics not just Nutrition? YEP and what a difference.

This is why we say FeelGood365 it’s all in the name you know!

As far as I know, the dietary sugar – artery disease insight comes from CAM.

The early salt – heart disease connection was made from observations of tribal people who ate very little salt and had no heart disease. This correlation was used as a basis for the idea that a high-salt diet can cause heart disease.

Subsequent research has not been conclusive. It’s possible that, for some individuals, a low-salt diet can be harmful. It’s also possible that dietary salt can help fight certain infections.

The salt and hypertension issue is certainly a complex moving target. I did not mean to imply it was a simple or direct relationship – I was just referring to it “as a risk factor.” I think the evidence supports that there is a subset of people who may have so-called salt-sensitive hypertension. Recommending a modest cut back in salt intake and monitoring the effects on HTN in an individual is a reasonable EBM approach.

“Civilized” peoples, on the other hand, did not do so well at first. Living in the same spot year-round and on one single food did not do the human body good. Disease, famine, malnutrition took their toll. It took centuries to learn the tricks of living “Civilized” and agricultural rather than hunter-gatherer.

However, our nutritional system, being slower to respond, is still largely hunter-gatherer. We were h-g for how long? 200,000 years? and we have been civilized for how long? 10,000 years? maybe.

So, the Greek advice of variety is probably very very good advice. Eat a variety of foods, veggies, fruits, meats, fats, grains, roots, tubers, insects if you like. If there is anything else the human body needs for good nutrition it is likely to be in those foods and not in little bottles on the vitamin shelves of Wal-mart.

Note: I am completely unqualified to make any of the above statements in a scientific sense. Those are my OPINIONS by which I have lived for 66 years.

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abstract_63240.htm

http://www.travelafricamag.com/content/view/246/56/

There is some thought that variability in human sodium metabolism derives from people living in sodium depleted regions. That is likely part of why salty foods taste good. If sodium is always scarce, there isn’t a need to evolve pathways to deal with too much. But some of this variability may be epigenetic, determined in utero and not necessarily genetic.

A major metabolic load on the kidney is the pumping of sodium ions. If your kidneys have the metabolic capacity to pump as much sodium as your diet requires them to without going into metabolic stress, salt isn’t going to bother you. If they don’t, then it will.

I know that salt increases blood pressure. Anyone who understands the concept of osmotic pressure knows this. I’ve seen a recent study touted on the CSPI website that demonstrated this quite effectively. I don’t understand why it got published, since I learned the concept in high school, but that’s beside the point.

I understand that for people with reduced renal function, or those who have a problem with hypertension, the reduction in blood pressure that comes from reducing salt intake can be very important in reducing the strain on the heart.

What I want to know is where is the evidence that salt, independent of diet, is a risk factor for anything? Poor diets tend to have a high salt content, but the contrapositive is not necessarily true. Correlation is not causation, which I’m sure you already know and preach.

I’ve seen mentioned a study (mentioned above) that control the diet and vary the salt content, and demonstrate osmotic pressure quite nicely. I’ve seen mentioned a study that followed high-risk patients long-term, and their salt intake correlated with mortality, but with no mention of any other aspects of their diet. I would hypothesize that those who reduced salt intake altered most aspects of their diet, and the inverse as well.

Where is the good science that establishes this risk? I’m not saying that it’s not out there, but from the limited amount I’ve read, it looks like the science behind the low-salt diet is as good as that behind the low-fat diet. I understand the difficulty of producing such a study, but if it hasn’t been done, shouldn’t EBM practice what it preaches?