2023-11-12 06:47:00
(CNN) — According to a recent study, eliminating a teaspoon of salt from your daily diet can lower blood pressure as much as regular hypertension medication, even if you don’t have hypertension.
One teaspoon of salt is equivalent to 2,300 milligrams, the maximum daily limit recommended by the latest nutritional guidelines of the USA for people over 14 years of age. However, the American Heart Association recommends a diet with less than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day.
“This is the first study to show that people already taking blood pressure medication can lower their blood pressure even further by limiting sodium intake,” said Norrina Allen, co-principal investigator and professor of preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine. Northwestern University.
“And regardless of the medication, we found that 70% to 75% of people are likely to see a reduction in their blood pressure if they reduce the sodium in their diet,” Allen said.
Hypertension is often called the “silent killer” because it has no symptoms and the only way to know if you have it is through a test. However, hypertension affects 1 in 3 adults worldwide and can cause myocardial infarction, heart failure, kidney damage and stroke, according to a 2023 report of the World Health Organization.
Nearly half of Americans have hypertension, according to the American Heart Association. About a third of them suffer from “resistant” hypertension, that is, high blood pressure that has not responded despite the simultaneous use of three types of medications. According to a 2021 study, men ages 20 to 49 are up to 70% more likely to have uncontrolled hypertension than women of the same age.
“Most people today eat too much salt because it is added to almost everything we eat,” said Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of Cardiovascular Prevention and Wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.
“A teaspoon of salt may seem like a small amount. However, that added salt seems to have a surprisingly large effect on blood pressure,” said Freeman, who was not involved in the study.
Middle-aged and older adults
The study, published on Saturday in JAMA magazine, assigned 213 people between 50 and 75 years old to a week of a high- or low-sodium diet. After following that diet for seven days, each person moved on to the other diet.
About 25% of the participants had normal blood pressure, while another 25% had untreated hypertension. Of the remaining group, 20% had controlled blood pressure, while 31% did not.
During the high-salt week, people ate their normal diet, along with two packets of broth, each containing 1,100 milligrams of sodium. During the low-salt week, people ate low-sodium foods, purchased and provided by dieticians. The goal was to consume just 500 milligrams of salt a day, a drastic drop.
According to the study, the decrease in blood pressure during the low-sodium diet was rapid and considerable. Compared to the high-sodium diet, blood pressure on the extremely low-salt diet dropped 8 millimeters of mercury.
“Compared to their normal diet, people lowered their blood pressure by about 6 millimeters of mercury, about the same effect that would be seen with a blood pressure medication,” Allen said.
“Furthermore, that decline occurred fairly quickly and was consistent for people with normal blood pressure, slightly elevated blood pressure, or those already taking medications.”
Reducing this amount of salt had no significant side effects, Allen said, unless you count adaptation to a softer diet.
“When you go from a high-salt diet to a low-salt diet, everything tastes bland,” he said. “I want to encourage people to stick with it, because your taste buds adapt in a couple of weeks or so, and you really get the taste and flavor back, and normal things will taste very salty.”
“The adaptation of the taste buds takes a little longer, but the improvements in blood pressure are quite rapid,” he added.
However, blood pressure medications can have many side effects such as cough, constipation or diarrhea, dizziness, lack of energy, headache, muscle pain, nausea, nervousness, fatigue, weight gain or loss, and erection problems. According to the National Library of Medicine, these effects usually subside over time.
Overcome salt anxiety
Leaving aside the salt shaker is a good start, “but most people don’t get their salt from there,” explains Freeman.
“It’s in foods that you wouldn’t expect to have a lot of salt: a couple of slices of bread can contain 400 or 500 milligrams of salt, a pickle can contain a whole day’s worth of salt, and a bowl of soup can contain several days’ worth of salt.” .
But careful shopping can accomplish the task, Allen said. Dietitians purchased the foods from the low-sodium diets provided in the study after reading the labels at local grocery stores, Allen said.
CNN examined the low-salt menu and found that most breakfasts included store-bought quick oats, Greek yogurt and grapes, while lunch included grilled chicken, lettuces dressed with oil and vinegar, and low-salt versions of lentil soup, breads, peanut butter and tortilla chips. Dinners included brown rice and ready-to-eat vegetables, burritos, and lasagna.
“They were the low-salt versions of vegetable lasagna,” Allen said. “They were apples and bananas and things that everyone could get in the supermarket. They weren’t specially prepared by a chef.”
The award-winning DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is an expert-approved method for reducing salt intake. The premise of DASH is simple: eat more vegetables, fruit and low-fat dairy products; limit foods high in saturated fat and limit sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams a day, just as this study did.
The DASH meal plan includes four to six servings of vegetables and four to six servings of fruit, three servings of whole grain products, two to four servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy products, and several daily servings of lean meat and fruits. dried, seeds and legumes.
Regardless of the diet plan chosen, those looking to reduce salt are best off preparing their own foods at home, where they can read labels and calculate sodium levels, Freeman says.
Eating in a restaurant, even if it is healthy, can be problematic.
“Take a vegetable dish at a restaurant: those green beans may have been prepared with salted butter and crispy salty onions or whatever on top. Before long, you’ve ingested a huge load of salt that wasn’t anticipated. “explains Freeman. “The best way to eat is to make it as unprocessed as possible.”
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