Salt Intake: Good or Bad?

[Quincy]

One of my weaknesses with diet is I'm a huge fan of salty foods. Love em! And strangely I can easily do without sweets. Never really have a craving for them.

But here is a NYT's article with some interesting history about the evolution of the anti salt health movement along with some of the major studies that form that opinion (fact?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?ref=opinion&gwh=

[PeakT]

Thx for posting the article.  I had someone write me not too long ago about the same thing (who was selling sea salt though).  However, the argument in this article seem very overstated to me for reasons I will explain below.  First of all, there are more issues with salt than just blood pressure:

http://www.peaktestosterone.com/Salt_Deadly

But what I find really strange is that some experts are saying that there are no studies that show blood pressure is not strongly impacted by salt intake.  I just think that is crazy advice and all I can say is that I, non-researcher, can find many studies that show such a relationship.

Now I guess you could argue that perhaps salt intake does not impact cardiovascular health as much as anticipated and that athletes may need salt and that some individuals are more salt sensitive than others.  Furthermore, salt is one of the electrolytes, so you don't want to go too low.

But, all of that said, many middle-aged and older men battle with high blood pressure and I can't imagine an expert recommending that pounding down all the excess salt in processed and packaged food is going to be good for them!  But that seems to be where this guy is headed - or am I missing something?

If you want to lower your high blood pressure, then why not experiment with some reduction in excess salt intake?  I don't get it...

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/6/13/
"There was a significant positive relationship between salt intake and both systolic (2.17 mmHg [95% CI 0.44 to 3.91] per 50 mmol of UNa per day, p < 0.001) and diastolic BP (1.10 mmHg [0.08 to 1.94], p < 0.001) at baseline...In West Africa the lower the salt intake, the lower the BP."

And here is a study on chimps:
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v1/n10/abs/nm1095-1009.html
"This addition of salt within the human dietetic range caused a highly significant rise in systolic, mean and diastolic blood pressure...The hedonic liking for salt and avid ingestion was apt during human prehistory involving hunter–gatherer–scavenger existence in the interior of continents with a scarcity of salt, but is maladaptive in urban technological life with salt cheap and freely available."

http://www.bmj.com/content/302/6780/819.short
"In people aged 50-59 years a reduction in daily sodium intake of 50 mmol (about 3 g of salt), attainable by moderate dietary salt reduction would, after a few weeks, lower systolic blood pressure by an average of 5 mm Hg, and by 7 mm Hg in those with high blood pressure (170 mm Hg); diastolic blood pressure would be lowered by about half as much. It is estimated that such a reduction in salt intake by a whole Western population would reduce the incidence of stroke by 22% and of ischaemic heart disease by 16% [corrected]. "

And I remember a study of the Ornish Diet.  His Low Fat Diet reduced blood pressure, but when participants reduced their salt intake, their blood pressure dropped even further.

[Quincy]

Thanks for your viewpoint PeakT, I really don't know what the motivation of the article's writer is about. It does seem that it is quite easy to test this sort of thing for yourself... regardless of some old study(ies). I just don't know enough about it to have a firm opinion. Maybe it is so obvious you really don't need a ton of follow up studies to  the originals to make the point, with all the new type studies showing other negative implications. Just really wanted to hear your opinion... and I tend to agree with your position.

I do know my morning BP has dropped quite a bit over the last few months. Can't pinpoint exactly why as I've been eating a lot better, a LOT of exercise, better sleep and HRT. My avg BP the last 50 days is 113/68 and probably still eating almost, if not as much, salt as before. That's still using my BP meds and doing it about 10am after cardio and HRT... so I can't really tell what is the magic elixir. Given enough time with positive results and I may ask my doctor to drop the lisinopril.

And I should have added and doing so now, that my BP with meds before all the other changes was definitely higher.... maybe averaging 130/85.

[PeakT]

Can't pinpoint exactly why as I've been eating a lot better, a LOT of exercise, better sleep and HRT. My avg BP the last 50 days is 113/68 and probably still eating almost, if not as much, salt as before. That's still using my BP meds and doing it about 10am after cardio and HRT... so I can't really tell what is the magic elixir.

Nice!  Congrats.