The Evidence That Salt Raises Blood Pressure

I recently shared this video on one of my social media platforms.  In response I received a link in the comment section:

It’s Time to End the War on Salt

My response:

Like the article you linked says, “for every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not ”.  That’s why you have to look at the studies in question and understand them.

Often times bought and paid for science is designed to obtain a specific result.  Even studies with good intentions can be doomed to fail simply because they don’t understand the scope of the matter when setting up their parameters.

Examples:

1) Is a high fat diet bad for you?  We’ll compare the health of people on a 40% fat diet (the average) to people on a low fat diet (30%).

2) Is cholesterol bad for you?  We’ll compare the health of people with a cholesterol count of 220 to those with a count of 200.

Both of the above are set up to fail, because they are only using people and averages from an unhealthy pool of people.  Which is healthier?  Unhealthy group “A” or unhealthy group “B”?

A truly low fat diet is between 5-10% with 15-20% being the upper limits (usually for highly active individuals and athletes).  The health differences between 30-40% is hardly detectable, but compared to folks on a truly low fat diet, the differences are easy to see.

In the USA a total cholesterol level below 200 is desirable.  200-239 is borderline high.  240 and above is high.  180 is thought to be amazingly healthy.  A truly low cholesterol diet (vegan diet 0.0% dietary cholesterol) will result in truly low cholesterol numbers.  A cholesterol count below 140 is considered heart attack proof.  Our number one killer can be easily avoided by a dietary change.  The last time I checked my cholesterol count was 112.

So, back to the salt.  The USA’s RDA for sodium is 1500 minimum to 2300 maximum per day.  According to your article “today (July 8th, 2011) the average American consumes 3.4 grams (3400mg) of sodium, or 8.5 grams (8500mg) of salt, a day ”.  That’s a pretty wide range for an average.  A truly low salt diet would be 250 mg minimum to 1500mg maximum.  Comparing the average salt intake to a truly low salt intake, the health differences are undeniable.

It’s a pretty good video.  You should give it another shot (or a first shot).  😉

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