{"id":1026,"date":"2012-02-14T07:41:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T07:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/personalpolishing.wordpress.com\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2012-02-14T07:41:01","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T07:41:01","slug":"pinching-back-on-salt-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/pinching-back-on-salt-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinching Back On Salt Restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Carole Jackson<\/strong>, Bottom Line Health<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a mantra that we\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve heard for years\u00e2\u0080\u0094cut back on salt! But a new study dashes that advice, demonstrating that it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s not just too\u00c2\u00a0much<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0salt that\u00e2\u0080\u0099s bad for our hearts but apparently also too\u00c2\u00a0little<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not all of this surprised me, because many practitioners of natural medicine have long held the view that advice on salt intake should be individualized\u00e2\u0080\u0094and not simply be \u00e2\u0080\u009cless is best\u00e2\u0080\u009d for everyone. So I called the study\u00e2\u0080\u0099s lead author, Martin J. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell, MB, PhD, an associate clinical professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada, to learn more about the research.<\/p>\n

SHAKING UP CONVENTIONAL WISDOM<\/h4>\n

Dr. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell told me that his study\u00e2\u0080\u0094published in November 2011 in\u00c2\u00a0Journal of the American Medical Association<\/em>\u00e2\u0080\u0094is the first large study to report potential heart health risks for both low and high salt intake in a single study.<\/p>\n

Dr. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell and his colleagues examined data from nearly 29,000 men and women (all age 55 or over) from 40 countries who either had heart disease or were at increased risk for it because of prior history and co-morbidity factors such as diabetes. They looked at how much sodium was excreted in their morning fasting urine (so it wasn\u00e2\u0080\u0099t self-reported salt intake) at the start of the study. The participants were not aware that their salt consumption was being measured, nor were they asked to raise or lower their intake\u00e2\u0080\u0094they just ate the amount that they normally ate.<\/p>\n

What the researchers found was that, over four years, those who consumed higher-than-average amounts of salt\u00c2\u00a0and<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0those who consumed lower-than-average amounts of salt experienced more heart problems (including deaths) than those with an average intake.<\/p>\n

WHAT\u00e2\u0080\u0099S \u00e2\u0080\u009cAVERAGE\u00e2\u0080\u009d?<\/h4>\n

It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s worth noting that the \u00e2\u0080\u009caverage\u00e2\u0080\u009d salt consumption among participants in this study\u00e2\u0080\u0094estimated between 4,000 mg and 6,000 mg per day\u00e2\u0080\u0094is much higher than the recommended upper limits of 1,500 mg per day (the advice of the American Heart Association) or 2,300 mg per day (the recommended dietary guideline from the US Department of Agriculture). And yet in this study it was the people who consumed this much salt who had the least number of heart problems.<\/p>\n

The study showed that those with the highest and lowest amounts of sodium excretion had the highest risk. For example, those who consumed more than 8,000 mg daily were at a 50%-to-70% higher risk of suffering a cardiovascular event over the four-year period, compared with the \u00e2\u0080\u009caverage\u00e2\u0080\u009d salt group. And, not quite as alarming but still of concern, among those whose daily salt intake was between 2,000 mg and 3,000 mg, the likelihood of dying from a cardiac event related to congestive heart failure rose by 20%, compared with the \u00e2\u0080\u009caverage\u00e2\u0080\u009d salt group.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s important to note that patients who ate the least amount of salt might have been doing so because they were at very high risk for disease and their doctors had insisted that they cut back severely on salt. In other words, their risk uptick might not be due to their salt intake (or their salt intake alone), but also due to poor health. \u00e2\u0080\u009cWe did some analysis to address this issue, but we can\u00e2\u0080\u0099t exclude this possibility\u00e2\u0080\u0094larger clinical trials will be the only way to truly answer this question,\u00e2\u0080\u009d said Dr. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell.<\/p>\n

The mystery is\u00e2\u0080\u0094how could consuming a low amount of salt increase cardiovascular risk? There may be several potential reasons for this, Dr. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell said, but the most prominent hypothesis is that lower salt intake activates the body\u00e2\u0080\u0099s\u00c2\u00a0renin-angiotensin system<\/em>, which results in narrowed blood vessels, which of course makes it harder for blood to flow to and from the heart.<\/p>\n

WHAT\u00e2\u0080\u0099S THE SALT SOLUTION?<\/h4>\n

This study\u00e2\u0080\u0094and others that have recently shown that similarly negative health effects may be associated with a low-salt diet\u00e2\u0080\u0094caught the attention of the government. Congress has already put on hold its plans to legislate lower sodium levels for school lunches, requesting more information from the US Department of Agriculture before putting it to vote. Dr. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell said that there is \u00e2\u0080\u009can urgent need to establish a safe range for sodium intake.\u00e2\u0080\u009d<\/p>\n

In terms of how much salt\u00c2\u00a0you<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0should eat, talk to your doctor about your particular risk factors\u00e2\u0080\u0094and remember that the jury is still out.<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0Martin J. O\u00e2\u0080\u0099Donnell, MB, PhD<\/a>, associate clinical professor of medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Carole Jackson, Bottom Line Health It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a mantra that we\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve heard for years\u00e2\u0080\u0094cut back on salt! But a new study dashes that advice, demonstrating that it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s not just too\u00c2\u00a0much\u00c2\u00a0salt that\u00e2\u0080\u0099s bad for our hearts but apparently also too\u00c2\u00a0little. Not all of this surprised me, because many practitioners of natural medicine have long held the … Continue reading Pinching Back On Salt Restrictions<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","pmpro-has-access"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4MGMb-gy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadershipshape.com\/wardroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}