Is Salt Bad For You?

For years groups have been working and failing to get Americans to eat less salt. In April of 2010 the Institute of Medicine went so far as to ask the FDA to actually regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products. What would we gain if people ate less salt? Less tasty food? Well yes, but would it make us more healthy? Not necessarily.

In july of 2011 the American Journal of Hypertension complied data from seven studies involving over 6,ooo subjects and found no strong evidence that reducing salt intake reduces the risk for strokes, heart attacks or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. Possibly even more shocking was a study published in May of 2011 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Findings reported here showed a correlation between the less sodium subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption— and a greater risk of dying from heart disease. Another 2011 study confirmed this observation; not only was lower sodium excretion associated with higher mortality, but baseline sodium excretion did not predict the incidence of hypertension, and any associations between systolic pressure and sodium excretion did not translate into less morbidity or improved survival.

These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been very weak.

In the 1970's Brookhaven National Laboratory's Lewis Dahl claimed to have "unequivocal" evidence that salt causes hypertension: His "evidence" was inducing high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day. Dahl conducted his study using quantities that are 14705% more than the average America consumes daily.  

Dahl also pointed to "population trends" that continue to be cited to this day as strong evidence of a link between salt intake and high blood pressure. Dahl's "supported" his find by pointing to data from people living in countries with a high salt consumption, counties like such as Japan, China & Belgium—who also tend to have high blood pressure and more strokes. Unfortunately Dahl's research on population trends has been called into question too. When the American Journal of Hypertension, looked deeper into finding hypertension and more stroke risk associated with higher salt intake within these populations they were unable to find any correlation. This missing correlation suggests that genetics and other factors might be the culprit, and salt may be off the hook.  A large and extensive study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in over 10,000 subjects from research centers in 52 countries and found no relationship between sodium intake and high blood pressure. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day. 

Unfortunately for many of us, in 1977 the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent. This recommendation was based largely on Dahl's highly questionable findings. Shockingly even as the research continues to pile up against the benefit of salt reduction, not one government organization, has come out admitting to the mistake. This point was driven home in 2004, when the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. The study focused on long term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets. The findings showed that long term low sodium diets decreased systolic blood pressure (the number represented on the top, in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the number represented on the bottom) by 0.6 mmHg. That difference is equal to going from a ratio of 120/80 to a ratio of 119/79 or in other words a long term low sodium diet demonstrated an ability to drop blood pressure only within the error margin of a blood pressure cuff. The review concluded that "intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials."

As it turns out, a low salt intake is associated with higher mortality from cardiovascular events. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a low-salt zone where stroke, heart attack and death are more likely. 

Why are Doctors and the government still recommending salt restriction? Conventional healthcare experts have been recommending salt restriction ever since the 1970s, when Lewis Dahl established “proof” that salt causes hypertension. For some reason, this contradictory evidence is still being used today to justify restricting salt intake.

Gary Taubes wrote an article for Science magazine in 1998 call "The (Political) Science of Salt." His article highlighting the vast difference between public salt policy and the scientific evidence against salt reduction. Tubes wrote “the data supporting universal salt reduction have never been compelling, nor has it ever been demonstrated that such a program would not have unforeseen negative side effects.”

We now have the data that suggests long-term salt restriction may pose serious risks for much of the population, still major health organizations and govenment guidelines still recommend the restriction of salt for all Americans.

In short, I see this as a failing of our system, there is a healthy range of salt consumption for most if not all people and avoiding salt can cause serious damage to your body. When eating a whole food diet, most people tend to consume an appropriate amount of salt simply due to an innate preference for saltiness. In fact, the consumption of salt around the world for over two centuries has remained in the range of 1.5 to three teaspoons per day, which appears to hold the lowest risk for disease. Our bodies may have a natural sodium appetite through which our ideal salt intake is regulated. By following a natural whole food diet and doing what you can to eliminate processed foods, you can confidently follow your own natural taste for salt when adding it to your food.

So what is the catch? Well all salt may not be created equal. Ordinary table salt or "Refined salt" has had its minerals removed and has been bleached to give it the white appearance that we are accustomed to seeing with salt. Refined salt is the fine, white salt that is available at almost any restaurant or grocery store. Refined salt has been bleached and/or exposed to chemicals in order to get it to its final white uniform color. It often has aluminum, ferrocyanide, and other chemical in it. I believe this refining process may have detrimental effects on the quality of the salt. Unrefined salt, on the other hand, has not been put through a harsh chemical process. Natural salt contains the natural minerals that were obtained during the salts formation. Its the mineral content that gives natural salt like Himalayan Salt it a distinct color. The minerals supply the body with over 80 trace elements needed to maintain and sustain health.