Salt, Salt, Salt

There is discussion about salt and health during the last a few days. Some of them are thinking a re-think of CDC recommendation. I believe that salt is not our foe. The problem is that we take salt too much or too little. There are a few outlying persons who may need very low or very high level of salt consumption, but generally I feel the industries feed us too much salt, which is not good for our health. I have not read the salt recommendation and no comments on it, but I think that any recommendations on general population should be relaxing but not tight. A relaxing but doable recommendation is better than a radical but undoable/hurting recommendation.

Here are two articles discussed the this issue: one from New York Times (my favorite layman source of health related topics), one from the USA Today:

• Low-Salt Diet Ineffective, Study Finds. Disagreement Abounds. (2011)
• Study: Lower salt intake could be riskier than thought (2011)

The original research article the reports talked is on JAMA: Fatal and Nonfatal Outcomes, Incidence of Hypertension, and Blood Pressure Changes in Relation to Urinary Sodium Excretion  (2011)

There are other articles about salt and health, here are two:

• Dietary Salt Intake and Blood Pressure (1983)
• Dietary Salt Intake and Mortality in Patients with Diabetes (2011)