Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Salt sensitivity" is a made up term, perpetuated by quacks who likely also believe that saturated fat "clogs" arterial passages and prefer the calories in/calories out method of weight control vs. hormonal centric version. These theories about as real as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny and are barbaric in nature. Stop dusting off the cold war era nutritional textbooks and listen for a moment to the modern research.
Yes, sugar is also the most likely direct culprit for hypertension. I've personally never known anyone to have this made up diagnosis of "salt sensitivity" who was eating a lower carb diet and pounding away at least 4-5,000mg of salt a day. All have not only not had hypertension, but they threw away their HBP medications. It was the absence of sugar that caused the transformation.
The sugar promotes inflammation and oxidative stress on the blood passages, and that irritation causes blockages and stiffening. The kidneys on the other hand are well adapted to filtrating excess salt. This is why people were able to get away with many times the prescribed limit without suffering ill effects prior to refrigeration, and why people like say the Koreans can have 4000mg a day in their kimchi etc. without any ill effects.
It is not made up. Some people will retain water and have higher blood pressures if they eat too much salt, which can result in a hypertensive crisis, edema, etc. It is great that you have not *personally* known anyone with this problem, but it doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist.
Here is a link to the DASH diet, which is often recommended by doctors for heart healthy eating. It is on the National Heart, Leung, and Blood Institute, which I don’t consider to be “quacks.”
It is not made up. Some people will retain water and have higher blood pressures if they eat too much salt, which can result in a hypertensive crisis, edema, etc. It is great that you have not *personally* known anyone with this problem, but it doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t exist.
Here is a link to the DASH diet, which is often recommended by doctors for heart healthy eating. It is on the National Heart, Leung, and Blood Institute, which I don’t consider to be “quacks.”
As you can see, the sodium recommendations are quite low- nowhere near 4000mg a day.
That entire post is a lot of malarkey. Anyone who says that salt sensitivity is a “made up” term doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Thank goodness I don’t pay an iota of attention to most of the videos, etc posted here. And if my memory serves me correctly this is the same poster who was on some anti sugar/carb crusade months ago. So glad I don’t take much of this stuff seriously...
If ya'll want to believe the same organization that put its heart healthy logo on a box of Cocoa Puffs over a study with 150,000 participants across 50 countries that showed a direct association between low salt and INCREASED chances of cardiovascular disease, be my guest.
The quackery that goes on in the mainstream medical community is astounding.
Calories In/Calories Out
Saturated fat clogs arteries
Salt directly drives high blood pressure
It's kind of sad, really to believe in this sort of stuff that belongs in the same dust bin along with the leg warmers and 8 track tapes that were along for the ride in the same era.
Low salt is a fad diet barely a few decades old, and dangerous as he** since you are more likely to die from restricting sodium if you exercise a lot or are caught in a heat wave. The amount of hormonal stress a body goes through under such conditions is tremendous.
Anyone who complains about being hypertensive when they have salt, it's likely the hypertension is actually caused by the following:
1) Low potassium/salt ratio
2) Lack of sleep (i.e. cranked up cortisol)
3) Sweet tooth (sugar is the primary hypertensive agent, not salt)
4) Stress (stress actually isn't really a problem, but the lack of an outlet for the stress)
Actually, #1 and #3 are right on the money. #2 and #4 yes as well but not as much. It's obvious stress can affect BP. Many people do not realize that glucose can also affect blood pressure just like sodium. Try increasing potassium instead of just reducing salt and I don't mean eat a banana. Leafy greens are a great source of potassium and the more you consume, the lower your blood pressure should be. Avacodos are another good one. Potassium supplements would also help with the ratio. A 4 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium is recommended.
But if you're focused on sodium alone, you've learned only part of the story. The other part involves potassium, a mineral that naturally balances the metabolic action of sodium in the body. Human beings evolved on foods that were high in potassium and low in sodium, and the ratio between potassium and sodium in the diet is a crucial but greatly overlooked factor in human health.
If ya'll want to believe the same organization that put its heart healthy logo on a box of Cocoa Puffs over a study with 150,000 participants across 50 countries that showed a direct association between low salt and INCREASED chances of cardiovascular disease, be my guest.
The quackery that goes on in the mainstream medical community is astounding.
Calories In/Calories Out
Saturated fat clogs arteries
Salt directly drives high blood pressure
It's kind of sad, really to believe in this sort of stuff that belongs in the same dust bin along with the leg warmers and 8 track tapes that were along for the ride in the same era.
Low salt is a fad diet barely a few decades old, and dangerous as he** since you are more likely to die from restricting sodium if you exercise a lot or are caught in a heat wave. The amount of hormonal stress a body goes through under such conditions is tremendous.
Couldn't rep you again but I totally agree. Sadly, ideas like this are driven by higher powers. The saturated fat thing, believe it or not came from either flawed studies like the Ancel Keys study or from food lobbies in the 1960's.
Quote:
Once upon a time, a scientist named Ancel Keys did an awful thing. He published a study about different countries that made it look like heart disease was associated with fat intake. But the truth was that he started out with 22 countries and just tossed out the ones that didn’t fit his hypothesis! When other researchers analyzed his data using all the original countries, the link between fat and heart disease totally vanished. Keys was a fraud, and he’s the reason my mom made me eat skim milk and Corn Chex for breakfast instead of delicious bacon and eggs. LET HIS SOUL BURN. BURN! BUUUUUURN!
Physicians just follow suit and go with the 'program". Most don't know any better or would not rather risk being called quacks or worse yet, have their licenses revoked.
Actually, #1 and #3 are right on the money. #2 and #4 yes as well but not as much. It's obvious stress can affect BP. Many people do not realize that glucose can also affect blood pressure just like sodium. Try increasing potassium instead of just reducing salt and I don't mean eat a banana. Leafy greens are a great source of potassium and the more you consume, the lower your blood pressure should be. Avacodos are another good one. Potassium supplements would also help with the ratio. A 4 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium is recommended.
Bingo. Yeah I was just listing the potential factors not in any particular order of importance. Stress isn't actually a problem, more like bottling up stress rather than using what they call the "hug drug" to open back up the arterial passages while still reaping the blood flow benefits of stress. Talking out problems is usually the order of the day. Modern society is much more virtual about social order so face time is becoming less commonplace. This may be a huge negative in how humans deal with stress and the physiological outcomes.
Yeah, I'm also talking about chronic lack of sleep but I agree it's not necessarily a huge factor. Forgot to mention drinking and smoking for the oxidative stress.
Potassium deficiencies abound in the general public, this could be for a variety of reasons, but I think that mineral binding agents such as bread that rob the body of minerals during the digestive process could be partly to blame. I think the increase in avocados and the decrease in bread is partly the reason why I've never, ever heard of a low carber who hadn't lowered their BP markedly even while consuming copious amounts of salt.
If you have a sweet tooth, you're already screwed and even low salt won't fix the BP problem. Low salt may put you in the hospital for other reasons such as passing out from electrolyte imbalance especially if you mow the yard, like working out, or doing anything moderately strenuous.
Low salt certainly does spike blood pressure, due to the excretion of ACE.
It also promotes insulin resistance, putting you at higher risk for Type 2 Diabetes, and is associated with higher risk of heart disease due to the stress your arterial passages take from the stress hormones being released.
Quote:
Originally Posted by summers73
Higher risk of heart disease and more insulin resistance. Low salt really messes you up. Any other questions?
Yeah - give me the journal articles for context and not a couple random graphs - other questions?
I agree that the electrolytes need to be in balance. For example, one of the bp meds that I take spares potassium, which balances the other bp med that causes my kidneys to excrete sodium. Things have to be regulated. The problem is that for most Americans, this proportion gets out of whack because of too much sodium. You'd have to consume a lot of potassium containing foods (you could supplement) to counter 4k mg of sodium and there's no real health benefit to consuming 4k mg of sodium a day. None. Virtually every health authority out there says that sodium is one mineral that we're not deficient in and need to scale back on.
Sugar again is not a "primary hypertensive agent". It does not directly cause hypertension but eating too much of it promotes weight gain, which is a known contributor to hypertension. And not all overweight people have high blood pressure. There are many factors at play here as to who gets HBP and who doesn't.
I don't know of low sodium fad diets (fad diets are crap anyway), but I do know of the DASH diet, which is highly respected and proven to work for people with hypertension. It is advised for non-hypertensive people as well because it stresses the reliance on good, wholesome foods and not on highly salted, often prepackage/premade foods.
If eating lots of sodium correlated with good health, then America theoretically should be in tip top shape. On the contrary, America and the first world is as fat as ever, eating too much of just about everything and too little of healthy things.
For the record, I consume in 1800-1900 range.
and again, this says it all, though I don't need an article to tell me what I already knew. Too much sodium consumption causes me to retain a lot of water. Ever heard of cotton mouth? In response, you drink tons of water (or any other liquid), which results in bloating. This taxes your blood pressure and your kidneys. Your kidneys have to work to excrete all of that and restore balance. And yeah, maybe you could counter by eating potassium supplements, but again, why would you do that? Why eat so much salt in the first place? Salt is not much different than sugar in that people consume lots of it because salt tastes good NOT because of some physiological reason...
DASH is garbage, another 'heart healthy' Cocoa Puffs endorsement.
DASH recommends 5 servings of sweets PER WEEK. Plus, isn’t it better to just eat less salt than have to take Lasix and pee every 15-30 minutes because you are in fluid overload due to excess salt?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
