SALT AND DEATH
CONSUMING MORE SALT MAY NOT LEAD TO HIGHER MORTALITY, ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS
Salt has emerged as the latest dietary villain, the last decade or so of research establishes. But now a new study looked at sodium excretion and deaths from cardiovascular causes and found no association, and in fact even found more deaths among those who consumed the smallest amount of salt. Redonda Miller, an internal medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, examines the findings.
MILLER: Increase in sodium excretion which implies a higher sodium intake increase in systolic blood pressure. Now, here’s an interesting fact: this association did not translate into higher risk of hypertension, so even though blood pressure went up these folks never hit hypertension levels, and did not correlate to cardiovascular outcomes, complications, heart attack, cardiovascular death, no correlation. This is in contradistinction to many of our former studies. :28
Miller says one problem could be the study population of all young Caucasian Europeans, since other groups are known to be more salt sensitive. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
