Low-Salt Diet May Not Help Heart

[JLam]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/22/health/webmd/main1336306.shtml

An excerpt:

(WebMD) If you’re still reeling from the news that low-fat diets don’t seem to protect against heart disease, you may want to sit down.

New research suggests that low-salt diets may actually increase your risk of dying from heart attack or stroke.

Over a 13-year period, people in the study who reported eating little salt were 37% more likely to die from cardiovascular causes (such as stroke and coronary heart disease) as people who ate more salt than is recommended by U.S. government guidelines.

Researchers were quick to point out that the findings fall far short of proving that restricting sodium is bad for your health.

But they say the proof that salt-restricted diets protect against death from heart and artery disease has also not emerged in the years since salt was targeted as public enemy No. 1 by heart experts.

Government nutrition guidelines now call for adults to limit their daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams a day -- the equivalent of about a teaspoon of table salt.

“It is increasingly evident that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to diet,” researcher Hillel W. Cohen, MPH, Dr.PH, tells WebMD. “The certainty with which these [U.S. government] recommendations are being made is just not supported by the data.”

It's something I've thought for a long time, and lately it seems that more and more scientific studies are showing it to be true. Food, in and of itself, won't kill you. What will kill you is eating 6,500 calories a day. But if you want pizza, eat a goddamn slice of pizza! Just don't eat 3 whole pizzas a day, and you'll be fine.

Food does not kill you. Got that? FOOD DOES NOT KILL YOU! (Unless of course, you're eating toadstools...but that's another story.)

It's like my idol Julia Child said: "Everything in moderation, and no seconds."

RAmen, sister. RAmen.

 

[casebro]

I can't find a recent study that says obesity is not the culprit- not once you correct for blood pressure. Anybody recall anything about it?

I do know that water pills that supposedly work by flushing the salt out of your system, thereby lowering blood volume and presure, don't work for me. I get hypo-natremia and also edema. I've also learned that your body regulates blood volume with albumin, not salt... Yet I've never heard of a low albumin diet for hypertension...