Health Shocker: Low Sodium Diet Triggers Multiple Cardio Stressors

The kindergarten-level public health mantra is to lower your sodium intake to reduce blood pressure. This idea is being promoted as a healthy way to eat. A new study shows that reducing sodium intake may actually be dangerous to your health and set up stressors that actually cause heart disease.

It is true that there are people whose kidneys are in such a state of stress from multiple abuses over the years that they can no longer tolerate much sodium in their diet. This is a sign of poor health in general and cardio and kidney fragility in particular. However, translating that fact to a public health policy is absurd, like proclaiming everyone needs a wheelchair to get around because it is of benefit to some.

A comprehensive evaluation of all sodium studies in Caucasians has found that in healthy people with normal blood pressure restricting salt intake lowers blood pressure less than 1%. In people with elevated blood pressure it lowers blood pressure 3%, rather trivial benefits in the first place. On the other hand, in both normal and high blood pressure people it significantly elevated plasma renin, plasma aldosterone, plasma adrenaline, and plasma noradrenaline. In other words this approach is putting the adrenals and kidneys into a state of stress. It means that the reason restricted salt intake lowers blood pressure at all is due to additional stress to the kidneys – which are already stressed in people with high blood pressure.

Furthermore, cholesterol and triglycerides were elevated in response to the low sodium diet. In other words, metabolism and overall cardiovascular health were made worse by the diet. These findings applied to people with normal or high blood pressure.

While Americans tend to over-consume salt because it is used as an additive stimulant by the makers of junk food, there is no need for the majority of Americans to pay much attention to their salt intake as long as they are eating healthy fresh food and using moderate sodium.