Salt Gives Our Dishes A Unique Flavor But It Should Be Consumed In Moderation To Avoid Our Blood Pressure Problems
Salt gives our dishes a unique flavor, but it should be consumed in moderation to avoid our blood pressure problems.
When you think about blood pressure, you may not remember your kidneys.
But when these bean-shaped organs are damaged or unbalanced, perhaps by a large intake of salt, both your blood pressure and your heart can feel the repercussions.
Eating too much salt can make it harder for the kidneys to eliminate the fluid, which builds up in your system and increase your blood pressure.
How does this affect the heart?
Over time, excessive salt intake can cause high blood pressure , hardening, and narrowing blood vessels. The blood and oxygen flow to the key organs decreases. Therefore, the heart strives more to pump blood throughout the body, which further increases blood pressure.
Uncontrolled hypertension can also damage the arteries’ walls, which begin to accumulate fat, leading to heart disease and, possibly, a heart attack or stroke.
If I Have Low Blood Pressure What Should I Do
Dr. Patel recommends establishing a close, trustworthy relationship with your health care team. Everyone has a support circlewhether that includes family, friends and/or colleagues, he says. Your doctor should also be a part of that inner circle for regular support and expertise.
Dr. Patel is located in Hoboken and is a physician at Hackensack Meridian Health Medical Group, a network of more than 1,000 physicians and advanced providers at over 300 practices throughout New Jersey. Our care network can help you better manage your health. Visit HMHMedicalGroup.org to find a practice near you.
The material provided through HealthU is intended to be used as general information only and should not replace the advice of your physician. Always consult your physician for individual care.
Salt Is Essential For Life
So heres the reality check based on facts and clinical studies not what so-called expert or website said.
High quality salt is essential for life. Most of the planet it made of salt water. Your body is made up of salt water.
When youre in the hospital, they give you a saline drip ,which is made up of salt water.
So logically it makes sense that salt is important and needed.
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Lets Break These Hbp Factors Down
Although salt helps our nerves and muscles to function correctly and is necessary for our bodies, eating too much salt can cause an imbalance which reduces our kidneys ability to remove water.
Fluid retention causes the blood vessels to become strained, which elevates blood pressure.
High cholesterol numbers indicate a build-up of artery plaque and calcium resulting in the heart working harder to pump blood through the clogged arteries.
Diabetes is the result of the bodys inability to produce or respond to the hormone insulin, which leads to elevated levels of glucose in the blood and urine.
High sugar levels in the body decrease the blood vessels ability to stretch and increase fluids, both cause the heart to work harder than it should, transporting blood.
When we are stressed, our bodies produce hormones that quicken our heart rate and constrict blood vessels, therefore, elevating our blood pressure.
Can Salt Intake Increase Blood Pressure
This can be a difficult question to answer, as there are many factors that come into play. For example, if you have high blood pressure already and you consume large amounts of sodium on a regular basis, your risk for developing more severe complications is increased. If this is the case, its important to lower your salt intake so that you dont put yourself at greater risk.
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Myth : All Salt Is Out To Kill You And You Shouldnt Eat Any Of It
Eating too much salt can contribute to high blood pressure, which is linked to conditions like heart failure and heart attack, kidney problems, fluid retention, stroke and osteoporosis. You might think this should mean you need to cut out salt completely, but salt is actually an important nutrient for the human body.
Your body uses salt to balance fluids in the blood and maintain healthy blood pressure, and it is also essential for nerve and muscle function. Its impossible to live a life without any salt , but this isnt a problem for most Australians the average Australian is consuming double the recommended amount of salt.
So, while a little salt in your diet is necessary, its important to keep the amount in check. The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend adults eat no more than 5 grams of salt a day, which is less than one teaspoon. Most of us are consuming about 9 grams a day. To help you track how much salt youre eating, you can find out how much salt is in packaged foods by looking at the food label for the sodium level salt is made up of sodium and chloride. Try to aim for items that have less than 120mg of sodium per 100 grams of the food. You should aim for a maximum of 2000mg of sodium a day.
Reducing Sodium And Reducing Cardiovascular Disease Burden
- Lowering high blood pressure reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke.13 Adults with elevated and high blood pressure especially benefit from lowering their blood pressure.6
- If manufacturers gradually reduced the amount of sodium in processed and prepared foods, public consumption of sodium could be reduced to safer levels with little or no change in behavior on the part of the individual consumer.14
- Sodium intake from processed and restaurant foods contributes to high rates of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. Because nearly 500,000 deaths each year are related to high blood pressure, reducing sodium intake could prevent thousands of deaths annually.15
- Reducing average population sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day may save $18 billion in health care dollars and reduce cases of high blood pressure by 11 million annually.16
- Sodium reduction continues to be an effective and safe strategy to lower blood pressure.3,11,17,18
- Lowering blood pressure reduces and prevents heart attacks and stroke.19
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How Sodium Impacts Blood Pressure
Even though sodium is an essential mineral, too much of it can increase your blood pressure. Sodium pulls water into your bloodstream, but if there is too much sodium, it pulls in too much water. The increase in water increases the volume of blood in your blood vessels more blood equals more pressure.
High blood pressure can damage your blood vessels over time by causing them to overstretch. Additionally, higher blood pressure can impact your heart by forcing it to work harder to pump all of that blood throughout your body. Despite all of these changes going on inside your blood vessels, most people dont notice any outward symptoms of high blood pressure. Thats why routine blood pressure screenings are so important.
The Cycle Of Damage: How Your Heart Is Affected
Over time, excessive salt intake can lead to high blood pressure , which stiffens and narrows the blood vessels. Blood and oxygen flow to key organs decreases. So the heart tries harder to pump blood throughout the body, which further increases blood pressure.
Elevated blood pressure, particularly over a long period of time, puts an incredible strain on the heart, says cardiologist Luke Laffin, MD. It can enlarge the hearts left pumping chamber and weaken the heart muscle .
Unchecked hypertension can also damage the artery walls, which begin to collect fat, leading to heart disease and potentially heart attack or stroke.
The best way to prevent a heart attack is to stop the arteries from becoming damaged, Dr. Laffin says.
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Who Is Most At Risk Of High Blood Pressure
Anyone is at risk of a high blood pressure, as blood pressure starts to increase from childhood. People with a high salt diet, pregnant women and people of black African descent are particularly susceptible to high blood pressure.
High blood pressure is an important risk factor for a range of conditions. These include strokes, vascular dementia, diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease and mobility problems. People who already have these conditions may find a reduced salt diet beneficial in the long run.
How To Reduce Salt In Diets
Government policies and strategies should create environments that enable populations to consume adequate quantities of safe and nutritious foods that make up a healthy diet including low salt. Improving dietary habits is a societal as well as an individual responsibility. It demands a population-based, multisectoral, and culturally relevant approach.
Key broad strategies for salt reduction include:
- government policies – including appropriate fiscal policies and regulation to ensure food manufacturers and retailers produce healthier foods or make healthy products available and affordable
- working with the private sector to improve the availability and accessibility of low-salt products
- consumer awareness and empowerment of populations through social marketing and mobilization to raise awareness of the need to reduce salt intake consumption
- creating an enabling environment for salt reduction through local policy interventions and the promotion of healthy food settings such as schools, workplaces, communities, and cities
- monitoring of population salt intake, sources of salt in the diet and consumer knowledge, attitudes and behaviours relating to salt to inform policy decisions.
Salt reduction programmes and programmes that promote fortification with micronutrients of salt, condiments or seasonings high in salt can complement each other.
Salt consumption at home can be reduced by:
Other local practical actions to reduce salt intake include:
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How Would I Know If I Have Low Blood Pressure
The only way to tell would be to get your blood pressure checked, he confirms. Any reading under 90/60 millimeters of mercury is considered low.
However, there may be signs including:
- Lightheadedness
- Dizziness
- Fainting
These symptoms tend to occur more when someone goes from lying down or sitting to then standing, he adds.
How Much Salt Do People Eat In Europe
The average intake of salt varies across Europe, ranging from between 8 to 12 g per day.1 Across most European countries, both men and women, on average, consume well above recommended levels . Men will often consume more salt than women as they tend to consume more food overall.
Figure 1. Estimated salt intake of men and women across European countries.1Estimated salt intake was calculated from 24-hour urinary sodium using the equation 17.1 mmol of sodium = 1g of salt and assumes all sodium was derived from salt. For Ireland and German salt intake was calculated using spot urinary sodium which means the result may be less reliable.
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Does Reducing Salt Improve Our Blood Pressure
There is consistent evidence that moderate reductions in salt intake can lead to a reduction in blood pressure.5,6 However, these effects may not be the same for everyone and will depend on an individuals starting blood pressure , their current level of salt intake, genetics, disease status and medication use.
It is important to note that salt is not the only lifestyle factor that can influence our blood pressure. Other factors such as eating enough potassium, maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, and being physically active are also important when it comes to reducing blood pressure. You can find 7 lifestyle tips to help reduce blood pressure here.
Figure 3. Tips to improve blood pressure.
Not All Salt Is Created Equal
Not only is salt relatively benign, its actually a nutritional goldmine,IF you consume the right kind. Modern table salt has very little in common with natural, unrefined salt.
Regular table salt will damage your health, while natural salts are profoundly healing. Heres a quick break-down of their basic ingredients:
- Natural salt: 84 percent sodium chloride, 16 percent naturally-occurring trace minerals, including silicon, phosphorous, vanadium, magnesium, potassium, etc.
- Processed salt: 97.5 percent sodium chloride, 2.5 percent man-made chemicals, such as moisture absorbents and flow agents. These are dangerous chemicals.
Processing table salt also radically alters and damages the structure of the salt. Refined table salt is dried above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and this excessive heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt, making it toxic.8
One last thing, processed white table salt causes water retention and bloating. Especially with all the sodium in pre-packaged foods. This causes headaches and makes you look puffy.
While natural salts, containing the minerals and electrolytes, are vital for water balance, enzyme production, stress reduction, immune system, adrenal and thyroid function.
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Reasons For High Blood Pressure That Have Nothing To Do With Salt
3 Reasons for High Blood Pressure That Have Nothing to do With Salt
Over 6 million Canadian adults have hypertension, also known as high blood pressure. That is nearly 20% of the entire adult population, making high blood pressure is one the leading public health concerns we face. It is a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and even dementia and other neurological conditions, and a process that we modulate!
High blood pressure is generally referred to as a lifestyle disease, meaning that lifestyle interventions and dietary tweaks can shift our biology in impactful ways, reducing risk for- or helping to manage existing hypertension.
Often times we hear that salt is the culprit behind high blood pressure, and that in addition to medications, low sodium diets are the fix. This story is not entirely complete and we know that stress, insulin resistance and nutrient deficiencies play a greater role in the onset of high blood pressure than salt alone.
The Other Side of The Salt Story
It is not the table salt we add to our food that is responsible for hypertension. In fact, salt is needed for health and wellness, in disease management and in disease prevention. There can be a salt connection to high blood pressure, but it is not always a given and there are other elements to consider.
Reducing salt is generally not the answer – the answer is often in increasing dietary potassium
The Stress Connection
So, whats going on?
Insulin Resistance
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How Much Salt Is Too Much
Adults should eat less than 6g of salt a day, but most of us eat much more. The latest figures show were eating around 8g a day on average.
Most of the salt we eat is hidden in the foods we buy ready-made, like bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals, sauces and condiments, as well as ready meals and takeaways. This hidden salt accounts for around three quarters of the salt we eat, only a small amount comes from the salt we add while cooking or at the table.
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Should We All Eat Less Salt
At an individual level, the benefit of reducing salt on blood pressure may be small. However, at a population level, this small reduction can have a significant benefit on public health.7 For this reason, reducing salt is encouraged by most dietary guidelines. To reach the 5 g of salt per day recommendation set by EFSA, both individuals and the food industry will need to commit to improving dietary choices and reducing the salt content of products, respectively.
Many EU countries have made progress in industry-led salt reduction campaigns, but more work is needed if we want to reach the target set by EFSA.8 There also remains some key challenges to help improve public knowledge and awareness on the importance of salt reduction.9
Salt intake in Europe and across the globe remains well above recommended levels. The high prevalence of high blood pressure and the increased risk of disease it brings emphasises the importance of salt reduction campaigns for both industry and individuals.
Why Salt Raises Blood Pressure
When you ingest more salt than you need, your body begins to retain water in an effort to wash the salt out of itself. The extra water accumulates in body tissues and raises the volume of blood in your body, explains the American Association of Kidney Patients. This extra volume puts pressure on your blood vessels. This extra pressure causes high blood pressure in some cases, especially if your blood pressure was higher than normal to begin with, or if you have other hypertension risk factors, such as kidney disease, heart disease or obesity.
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How Does Salt Contribute
A high salt diet disrupts the natural sodium balance in the body. This causes fluid retention which increases the pressure exerted by the blood against blood vessel walls . For every one gram of salt we cut from our average daily intake, there would be approximately 6,000 fewer deaths from strokes and heart attacks each year in the UK. It has been estimated that a reduction in salt intake from 10g a day to 6g will reduce blood pressure and could lead to a 16% reduction in deaths from strokes and a 12% reduction in deaths from coronary heart disease. This would prevent approximately 19,000 stroke and heart attack deaths in the UK each year and 2.6 million each year worldwide. Reducing salt is one of the quickest ways to reduce your blood pressure, particularly if you already have high blood pressure.
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What are ARCO Rights? Access, Rectification, Cancellation, and Opposition
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