It didn’t take medicine to bring BP way down. Drastically cutting salt intake was enough. Read about a study conducted by Northwestern University researchers that produced amazing results.
By Dona Suri
High blood pressure is a silent killer. There are no symptoms; you find out that your BP is too high or too low only when you get a reading from a sphygmomanometer.
Nice word, huh? sfuhg-moh-mun-NAW-muh-tuh. You’ve seen the thing plenty of times. The doc wraps a band around your arm, pumps it up so that the mercury on a scale goes up, then he lets the band slowly deflate and watches where the mercury bounces. Actually, that’s how they did it in the old days. Now it’s all digital. But the word for the device is still the same.
Just this month the American Heart Association released a report that said nearly half of Americans ages 20 years and up (more than 122 million people) have high blood pressure. High BP is also called hypertension. Untreated, it leads to lead to heart attack, heart failure, kidney damage and stroke. About a third of all people with high BP have “resistant” hypertension.
This means high blood pressure that has not responded despite the concurrent use of three types of medications. This condition mainly affects men.
Given the serious health risk involved in high BP, everybody should be doing whatever it takes to keep their BP within the normal range.
So here’s the good news. You can bring down your BP in just one week WITHOUT taking medicine of any sort. This sounds like one of those click-bait ads that flood the internet, but it’s true.
On November 11, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a report of a study carried out by researchers at Northwestern University. The researchers took 213 people aged 50 to 75 years, men and women, black and white. About 25% of the participants had normal blood pressure, while another 25% had untreated hypertension. Of the remaining group, 20% had blood pressure under control, while 80% did not.
The American Heart Association recommends that an adult’s total daily sodium consumption be limited to 1,500 milligrams or less. The study was designed to decrease it to 500 milligrams of salt daily.
For one week, they gave a group of about 100 subjects a high sodium diet. Specifically, this meant that people ate their normal diet every day along with two bouillon packets, each containing 1,100 milligrams of sodium. The second group of about 100 persons was put on a low sodium diet.
The subjects on the low sodium diet ate low sodium foods, purchased and given to them by dietitians. Every day the researchers measured not only the blood pressure of every individual but also the amount of sodium in their urine.
After a week, the groups were switched. The previously high sodium group went on to the low salt diet and the low sodium groups got the high salt diet.
The drop in blood pressure while on the low-sodium diet was quick and dramatic. Compared to the high-sodium diet, blood pressure on the extremely low-salt diet dropped 8 millimeters of mercury in systolic blood pressure. And there were no side effects. The blood pressure–lowering effect of dietary sodium reduction was comparable with a commonly used first-line antihypertensive medication. The surprising result was that even those subjects who were already taking medicine for BP saw a drop in BP when they consumed less sodium.
The study was carried out by Dr Norrina Allen, professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Dr Deepak Gupta, associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (University of Alabama at Birmingham).
Moral of the story: If you want to lower your BP, cutting down on salt is the way to go.
But why does salt have an effect on BP?
(Chemically speaking, salt is sodium chloride and it’s the sodium that does the damage. It’s a form of poison that takes a long time to act. Salt makes your body retain water. If you eat too much, the extra water in your blood means there is extra pressure on your blood vessel walls, raising your blood pressure. If you already have high blood pressure, too much salt will raise it further, and may mean that any blood pressure medicines you’re taking don’t work as well as they should.
Salt also messes up your kidneys. The job of the kidneys is to filter out excess fluid from your blood, which then collects in your bladder to be removed as urine. They draw water out of your blood through osmosis – where the water travels from the blood which is relatively low in sodium into channels which are higher in sodium – sodium is the part of salt that raises your blood pressure. Eating too much salt raises the amount of sodium in your blood, throwing off this fine balance of sodium and water, and damaging the tiny blood vessels in the kidneys.
Over time, the extra strain damages the kidneys, making them unable to do their job efficiently, raising your blood pressure and allowing fluid and waste products to build up in your body. Eventually this can lead to kidney failure and all the problems caused by high blood pressure, such as heart disease and stroke.
Eating less salt can help your blood pressure medications to work, and if you’re taking a diuretic medication, reducing salt will help the kidneys to remove fluid from your blood.
When you eat excess salt, you neutralize the effect of the diuretics.
Excess salt is associated with Type 2 diabetes. People who “always” or “usually” add salt to their meals show a much higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those who “rarely” or “never” add it
So, keeping your BP in check is as easy as taking the salt shaker off the table?
Not quite. Only a small amount of our daily salt intake comes from the salt we add while cooking or at the table. Most of the salt we eat is hidden in the foods we buy ready-made, like bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals, sauces and condiments, as well as ready meals and takeaways. This hidden salt accounts for around three quarters (75%) of the salt we consume.
A couple of slices of bread could have 400 or 500 milligrams of salt; a pickle has a full day’s worth of salt; and a bowl of soup could have several days’ worth of salt in it
No matter what you are using or consuming, it is always a good idea to read the label. Some food labels will mention salt, some will mention sodium
You can read the label on everything you buy at the grocery store. Compare products and choose the low-salt options. There’s an app that makes this easy.
When the government finally realized that nicotine was a killer, many measures were taken to turn people off tobacco. It’s clear that excess salt increases risk of serious illness so it would make sense if the government restricted the amount of salt that could be added to foods. So far, this is not even a voluntary option for manufacturers. Food manufactures compete for customers . If Manufacturer A reduces the quantum of salt in his product, he risks losing market share to Manufacturer B who keeps salt at the same level. Apart from being one of the cheapest forms of flavoring, salt can also be used to bulk up foods by increasing their water content
If you cook most of your meals from scratch, avoid takeaways and fast foods, you can reduce salt intake a lot. Be warned: your blood pressure adapts to a low salt diet much faster than your taste-buds do. Initially, everything will seem bland and unappetizing but stick with it.
Eat more fruits and vegetables – especially those that have lots of potassium, since potassium counters salt.
It may take a couple of weeks but your taste buds will adjust to less salt. When you have grown accustomed to a low salt diet, “normal” food will taste very salty.
Some table salt products market themselves as healthy or natural. These include sea salt, rock salt, pink Himalayan salt, garlic salt and natural salt. The truth is that SALT is SALT. Regardless of origin, they all contain the same amount of sodium and will have the same effect on your blood pressure and your body.
Low-sodium alternatives to salt are available. These products contain potassium instead of sodium so they can help you to lower your blood pressure if you find it too hard to cook without adding salt. If you have kidney problems or diabetes, check with your doctor or nurse before using the products as they might not be suitable for you.
Some medications are high in salt. Sodium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate are the chemicals that make fizzy, soluable tablets fizz. A single tablet may contain as much as 1 gm of salt. Avoid these tablets.
It can be challenging but reducing your sodium in any amount will be beneficial.