The drive to bring about "sweeping," sharp reductions in salt consumption is based more on zealotry than science, and should be halted until there's better evidence, one of Canada's foremost heart researchers charges in a provocative new commentary.
Reducing ingestion of sodium has been a major focus of public-health advocates in recent years, and generated widespread, sometimes-alarming media coverage.
But there is only modest evidence that cutting back on salt radically will reduce high blood pressure, and little or none that it would actually prevent heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, argues Dr. Salim Yusuf in a journal article.
The Sound Of Settled Science
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Recent Comments
- stradivarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8og6An-bCA read more
- Carter Hall: Nothing to do with reduced cigarette smoking over those two read more
- peterj: As a physician you have a closed mind and would read more
- Loki: Dante, the body has a great mechanism for telling people read more
- Dante: As a physician, I can unequivocally tell you too much read more
- peterj: Many good articles on salt and salt myths. Bottom line read more
- sasquatch: Yeah well, I recall drifting away from my GP towards read more
- Alain : Whether one agrees or disagrees is NOT the point. The read more
- John: Far be it for me to actually make the case read more
- John A: I do like sea salt. But note, it contains iodine. read more










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Our bodies require sodium to help retain water. Too little sodium in our diet and we become dehydrated, no matter how much water we drink...
Is there any valid reason why Iodine is mixed with table salt?
Iodine is a necessity for the thyroid. It occurs naturally in a lot of sea food, but they add it to salt because traditionally many people's diet does not include enough natural iodine. Japanese, who consume a lot of kelp, ingest 10 times as much iodine as typical North Americans for example.
Whenever my wife takes away my salt shaker my blood pressure is good. Those periods where I manage to get it back, it is not. That's enough evidence for me.
http://www.highpotassiumfoods.org/potassium-symptoms/reduce-sodium-to-prevent-strokes-enough
"In the 1960s Finland’s men had the worst rate in the world of coronary heart disease mortality and among the highest rates of high blood pressure (hypertension). Along with other interventions felt to be helpful at the time, the government sought to reduce sodium intake in the diet.
...during the 20 year period they were able to bring down blood pressure by 10 mm Hg and reduce the stroke rate by 60%."
What it doesn't mention here is that potassium was substituted for salt creating a better balance. Argue with the results from a whole country if you like, the proof is there.
Interesting. I get a fair amount of potassium as the humble banana is my preferred post-workout recovery food. Thanks, Strad.
Stockholm syndrome? Or, anecdotally you might be the one it helps.
Great article by Gary Taubes on salt and diet. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Our bodies require 1,500 milligrams of sodium each day or about 1 teaspoon salt daily to regulate water and sustain a healthy metabolic rate. Today’s "problem" is that a diet consisting of processed foods includes far more than our daily requirement and the use of processed salt deprives us of needed trace minerals and puts excessive iodine in our thyroid.
Once again the free market has responded to junk science and government meddling in the food supply - the largest trend in food additives/spice is towards non iodized sea salt (non processed natural sodium chloride and 14.38% other trace minerals that are removed in processed salt: sulphate, magnesium, calcium, potassium,)Sea salt contains a large percentage of required minerals you no longer get in garden crop foods and is a great tasting part of a fresh/unprocessed food diet. - get some at your local health food store and enjoy it on your venison Stroganoff, and wild rice.
Let us see now,
Dr. Norm Campbell sez……."Dr. Yusuf has wrongly analyzed the evidence, playing up research that supports his thesis while ignoring other science."
Apparently, wrongly analyzed evidence, playing up research that supports thesis while ignoring other science”, does not apply to scientologist Campbell.
It is clear that the science is not settled, however if you come up with something other than orthodoxy you are damn wrong and better shut up.
That you may be onto something will begin to demolish all the earlier research and preconceived science may have been wrongly analyzed and played up to get more cash.
It also releases some of the stranglehold where the settled science insisted that the politicians screw the population another turn of the diktat screw.
Heh. Isn’t science great?
How does science state complex sound?
If you think that scientists have a pure hart, you may be a whiteneck. the scientists are just as bad and just as good as the plebeians, they just get to play with things they like to play and get paid for it.
I do like sea salt. But note, it contains iodine.
The Feds way back when first noted incidence of thyroid problems was lower in areas within about a hundred miles or so of oceans, noted iodine treatment worked, and eventually decided the easiest way to ensure kids in, say, Nebraska got needed iodine was to add a trace to salt - everyone uses salt, not everyone uses wheat/milk/corn/pork...
As to hypertension, if you have it then cutting down on salt may help. But last I heard, about seven years ago, salt possibly caused the condition only in a [small numbers in the US] genetically discrete population. Otherwise, it is like cutting back on aspirin if you have [bleeding] stomach ulcers - aspirin, after decades of this as "proof" of being the cause, is now known to be a catalyst [with H. Pylori bacterium as the main culprit], not the cause.
Far be it for me to actually make the case for you guys to stick around, continuing to spew your bile, but it would be unethical to point out the fact that the science is settled enough to indicate that yes, too much sodium is not good for you, and it's not a bad thing the government is restricting what food producers can put in our food.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/jama-sodium-study-flawed/
Don't like it? Fine. Grab the shaker and salt away. If you want to end up in a nursing home, or dead, that's your business.
Whether one agrees or disagrees is NOT the point. The point is government and its agencies expanding their mandate and jurisdiction where they have no business. It has also been shown that reducing salt for some people is dangerous to their health, while for others, actually a minority, it is a good thing. It is up to the individual to make the decision, not government. Perhaps it is because I am old enough to recall a time when we actually had freedom from all this kind of state busybodies and interference in our personal lives that I am still amazed at the number of people today who automatically buy into it, especially it is claimed to be for our own good. In light of this the future does not look promising.
Yeah well, I recall drifting away from my GP towards one who had not adopted the vegan craze......
I am amazed at the number of GPs who still subscribe to the notion that stress causes ulcers....
Many good articles on salt and salt myths. Bottom line is if it tastes good, eat it.
http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/go-ahead-shake-it-we-may-be-wrong-about-salt
http://www.health-report.co.uk/sodium_chloride_salt_myths2.html
As a physician, I can unequivocally tell you too much salt is bad for you. Because one researcher says so doesn't change the fact that it is so - the scientific evidence and clinically experience bears it out.
Dante, the body has a great mechanism for telling people how much salt they need. During the winter, I find processed food to be far too salty and don't have any whereas in the summer it tastes bland and I load up on anything salty I can find. Considering when I work out I get salt rings if I wear a black T-shirt, that tells me that I'm incapable of reducing Na content in sweat.
One interesting fact about caucasian populations is that about 1/40 or more people has a defective chloride channel. Only way this shows up in heterozygotes is as increased salt wasting in hot weather whereas homozygotes have CF. Such individuals need far more salt in their diet during hot months than someone with a 2 copies of the gene coding for a functional chloride channel.
Every summer I have to admit elderly people who are hypotensive and might even fall and break their hips. The reason for their admission: they bought into the "salt is bad for you" meme. I've lost track of the number of hypotensive people who I've treated with a daily dose of V8 juice. N. America seems to have a scotoma for hypotension and I make it a point of doing a lying and standing bp on every elderly patient I put on antihypertensives as well as discontinuing their diuretics in the summer. While the medical dogma is that hyponatremia is not caused by sodium lack, I have a case series of patients in whom increased salt losses as a result of decreased inability of the aging kidney to absorb sodium and sweating were responsible for hyponatremia requiring hospital admission.
The only patients of mine I tell to cut their salt intake are those with congestive heart failure or renal disease. Yes, there's too much salt in processed food, but that's why we have taste buds to determine what's the appropriate amount needed for our physiology. The studies done on NFL players doing workouts in the summer in the SE US are very informative in that the extreme salt loss during a 3 hour workout in the heat was 36 gm of salt. Talked to a doctor who was once a team physician for a southern NFL team and he described how every player had a personal sweat mineral analysis done and was prepared individual mineral rehydration solutions to replace the sometimes huge amount of salt they were losing.
Statist propaganda with respect to anything medical totally ignores biochemical individuality and is worse than useless. I'm happy to see physicians questioning the dogma about salt induced hypertension except among some very small groups of people.
As a physician you have a closed mind and would be a doctor I would try to avoid. To question the status quo on any subject when counter evidence is produced indicates intelligence I would be more comfortable with. The use of the word unequivocally would make me nervous when the scientific evidence and clinical experience shows questionable results or less. As sasquatch pointed out, there was also unequivocal evidence that stress caused ulcers and there are still doctors who believe scientific evidence plus clinical experience bears it out. Any advance in medicine relies on questioning what we perceive as fact today. That's why we call it practice of medicine and have come a long way in the past century, but still have a long way to go. Doctors like loki obviously questioned the scientific evidence and saw the flaws. My kind of Doctor.
Nothing to do with reduced cigarette smoking over those two decades right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8og6An-bCA