Low salt diet turns out to be unhealthy

[Gaybutton]

For how many years have we all been told too much salt in our diet can be quite harmful? Now the latest study refutes that.
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Huh? Low-salt diet ups risk of fatal heart attack?

By Amanda Gardner, Health.com
May 3, 2011

(Health.com) -- Doctors and public health officials have been telling us for years that eating too much sodium can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke by raising blood pressure to unsafe levels. So how to explain a new study that suggests low salt intake actually increases the risk of dying from those causes?

The study, which followed 3,681 healthy European men and women age 60 or younger for about eight years, also found that above-average sodium intake did not appear to up the risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) or dying of a heart attack or stroke.

The findings, reported in the May 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, certainly seem counterintuitive, especially in light of the ongoing public-health campaign to lower sodium consumption across the U.S. by urging restaurants and food manufacturers to curtail their use of the ingredient.

Health.com: 25 foods with tons of hidden salt

In fact, says Jan A. Staessen, M.D., the senior author of the study and the head of the hypertension laboratory at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, the findings "do not support the current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction of [sodium] intake at the population level."

Salt lovers shouldn't break out their shakers just yet, though. A closer look at the findings shows that they're not as out of line with the low-sodium mantra as they might seem.


Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/03/sa ... index.html

[TheCornerBar]

So we can have a hotdog without fear of immediate death, unlike LMTU told us?