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New Study Promotes Low Salt Consumption Stroke?
According to Yusuf, not only does too much salt increase the risk of having a stroke, but too little, he concludes from a Pure study with 101,945 participants from 19 countries.
Salt deficiency harms the organism (fotolia.com/zikovic) Salt is vital
Sodium chloride, our salt, is vital. Sodium is a building block of the blood and enables cell metabolism. Chloride is an elemental substance of stomach acid. Without salt, bone formation suffers, as well as digestion, water balance and the nervous system.
Animal salt licks
Animals also feed their bodies with salt: elephants like horses, cattle like deer. Salt is the only substance that various animal species feed on from outside - by eating earth or licking salt stones.
Salt is necessary, for example, so that deer can train their antlers. Predators such as wildcats or wolves consume enough sodium through the blood and flesh of their prey.
Mothers need a lot of salt during their rearing because they lose sodium through the milk. Even the change of coat leads to a salt deficiency in the metabolism.
salt loss
So people need salt to keep the balance of fluids and nutrients in their cells. Healthy people have around 200 grams of salt in their own body, as we can easily tell if we cry or sweat.
If we sweat a lot or cry, we have to add salt to the body.
Salt on the wounds
Too much salt damages our immune system, thus blocking wound healing, Berlin researchers said in 2015.
However, animals deposit salt in infectious tissue, and there it strengthens the macrophages, they know white blood cells that kill the causative agents of inflammation, and every local on the North Sea: wounds heal better in salt water.
How much salt do we need?
Salt is unhealthy or healthy? The answer is: Sodium chloride not only promotes good health but is as necessary as carbohydrates, fats or protein.
Scientists agree on that. But they discuss how much salt a person needs. In Germany, most doctors recommend consuming 5.0g of salt, which is about 2 teaspoons. The American Heart Society AHA even recommends 3.8 g of salt or 1.5 g of sodium per day to prevent heart attacks or strokes. However, Germans averagely consume about 9 g daily, and many 15 g or more.
Heart and kidney specialists, however, are challenging American standards, as there are few valid studies showing that reducing salt intake lowers the risk of heart attack. Studies from the 1990s and 2000s contradicted each other in the question of which risk for heart attacks and strokes high salt intake brings.
Ethnic-genetic differences
Salim Yusuf, who today warns against low salt intake, said as early as 2013 that people from Asia who consume well over two teaspoons of salt a day would be at high risk for strokes, Americans or Europeans would not.
Cardiologists like Franz Eberli from Zurich confirm Yusuf. Our genetic dispositions set the course for how much salt we tolerate. In people with a hereditary trait to an increased sensitivity to salt, salt in higher amounts than two teaspoons per day raises the blood pressure. Chronic increased blood pressure, in turn, narrows the vessels with the potential consequence of a heart attack or stroke.
Not only individuals and blood relatives have such a genetic disposition but also ethnic groups. According to Eberli, people from tropical Africa and Asia have a much more common heredity for salt sensitivity than Europeans.
Too little salt
According to Yusuf, study participants who consumed less than three grams of salt per day were more likely to experience heart disease and strokes. What causes saline-sensitive amounts of salt, is therefore the result of lack of salt in "normal": The body presumably pours out hormones in salt deficiency, which increase the blood pressure.
Where is the middle?
Yusuf does not doubt that an extremely high salt intake favors strokes - a lack of salt as well. According to him, a moderate intake of salt is healthier than a lower one.
According to this, subjects who fed four to five grams of salt a day had the lowest risk. to die from cardiovascular disease, less than three grams increased the risk.
High blood pressure
In healthy people, the risk increased only when not too high, but not at high salt intake. This is not the case with clients with high blood pressure: with them, the risk of cardiovascular disease increased both in too little and too much salt.
In plain language, the conclusion is therefore: In people without salt sensitivity, there is no relationship between high salt intake and cardiovascular disease, but very well between low salt intake and such complaints.
However, people with high blood pressure, or 5% of the population, are at an increased risk of salt intake of more than 6 grams per day.
Many effects
Salt, so sodium and chloride do not work in isolation. Therefore, the question "too much or too little salt" is often a sham discussion.
The tip to swim in the sea with small injuries and then to dry in the sun, does not automatically refer to salt alone as a healing source. Heat, water and trace elements can also play a role.
Similarly, combined effects are also negative: what about someone who consumes a lot of salt with other lifestyle habits? Finished products with a lot of salt, such as potato chips or canned soups, are usually deficient in vitamins. They contain a lot of unsaturated fats and simple carbohydrates, which means lots of sugar.
Patients who consume many such "hidden salt" finished products tend to under-range and resort to harmful foods such as alcohol and cigarettes.
In pregnant women, a lack of salt is just as problematic as a lack of other nutrients that the fetus urgently needs for its development. Thus, babies with low birth weight often have a low sodium content.
Old people who have been consuming very little salt for a long time often break their hips and their mental abilities suffer.
The WHO recommends that you do not take more than five grams of salt a day.
How sodium and chloride affect the body, however, is hardly explored. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)