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Salt remains main culprit in hypertension

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-22 11:15

On the high sodium diet, they were consuming 5.7 grams of sodium daily, while the low-sodium diet contained 1.15 grams of sodium daily.

US and UK guidelines recommend people consume less than 6 grams of sodium daily, while the World Health Organization recommends reducing intake even further, to less than 5 grams. But people in the developed world typically consume 9 to 12 grams of sodium a day.

In the study by Pimenta and his team, going on the low-salt diet reduced people's systolic blood pressure by 22.7 mm Hg, on average, and their diastolic pressure by 9.1 mm Hg.

"The current results suggest that patients with resistant hypertension are exquisitely salt-sensitive," the researchers suggest. These individuals' salt intake is probably causing them to retain so much fluid that standard treatments for reducing blood pressure aren't helping them, they add.

In the other study, Dr Feng J. He of the University of London and her colleagues tested a less dramatic sodium reduction in 71 whites, 69 blacks, and 29 Asians. All spent two weeks on a low-sodium diet, and were then randomly assigned to take sodium pills or a placebo for six weeks, after which they were switched to the opposite treatment for another six weeks.

Being on placebo versus taking sodium was equivalent to consuming 6.5 grams per day of salt versus 9.7 grams daily.

In He's study, participants' blood pressure averaged 146/91 while they were taking the sodium tablets, but fell to 141/88 when they were on placebo.

Cutting salt also led to changes in the urine that suggested the change might be producing additional benefits for the kidneys and heart and circulatory system beyond the effects on blood pressure, He and her team found. Study participants were also losing less calcium in their urine, so reducing salt could be helping to protect their bones, too.

People should pay particular attention to the sodium content of breads and cereals, Appel says. Even though individual products aren't excessively high in sodium, he adds, because people tend to eat a lot of these products, they can add up.

For the population at large, He says, the advice is clear: stop adding salt during cooking, stop adding salt at the table, and pay attention to food labels. Most important, according to He, is cooperation from the food industry in gradually lowering the amount of salt added to foods over time. "That would make it actually much easier for the general public."

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