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SALT, SALT, SALT Make this your mantra: Skip the salt and drop your blood pressure. Researchers reported at the American Society of Hypertension that lowering your salt intake can lower your blood pressure. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Study honed in on the ways that different eating habits influenced blood pressure. They compared the effects of diet on three groups of individuals. The first group dug into the good old-fashioned American diet (so-called because you can diet from it). The second ate a diet high in fruits and vegetables. The third group ate only what the DASH study called a "combination" diet--or DASH diet, which was high in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy foods and limited total fat and saturated fat. After 11 weeks, the blood pressure of people who stuck to the combination diet dropped the most. After this, scientists developed the DASH Sodium study to see whether blood pressure would drop even more if people reduced their sodium intake. In the DASH Sodium study, one group of participants again followed the typical American diet while another group followed the DASH diet. But the researchers separated this second group even further into into three subgroups. Group One ate 3300 mg of sodium daily, which is the minimum that most Americans eat. Group Two ate 2400 mg of sodium daily, which is the limit recommended by government health officials. And Group Three limited itself to a sodium intake of 1500 mg daily. After 14-weeks, the study found that all three sodium-restricted diets reduced blood pressure, even for people with blood pressure within normal range when the study began. Nonetheless, the diet that did the best job on lowering blood pressure was the DASH diet of 1500 mg/day. While scientists have been arguing for years about whether everyone should limit his or her salt intake, the Dash Sodium study supports the argument that a low-sodium diet will help us all keep our hearts healthy and our blood pressure down. I hate to spoil your day but the world is filled with people who have high blood pressure, defined as anything over 140/90. Hypertension has been called "the silent killer" because many of the estimated 600 million people in the world with high blood pressure don't have a clue that their pressure is up--or that their diets can help lower their pressure. Since individuals with high blood pressure run the risk of heart disease and stroke, knowledge is power. Medication, diet, weight loss, exercise, and regular monitoring by a careful physician are essential to lower blood pressure--and keep it down. As with so much of medical care, managing blood pressure requires a partnership between physicians and patients. Since This latest study highlights diet as one of the tools that people can use to manage high blood pressure. The American Dietetic Association and the American Heart Association both offer practical advice to consumers who are interested in limiting their intake of sodium. Your Guide to Lowering High Blood Pressure, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ( http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/index.html), and Salt and Hypertension Facts and Flavorful Solutions, American Dietetic Association ( http://www.eatright.org/nfs/nfs0399.html). Related Links
For more information (lots and lots and LOTS!), go to all the folders
on this site beginning "lowna," which stand for "low sodium" (Na+ stands
for sodium) and also check out the dashdiet2
folder.
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