Intake of Salt
Experts estimate that today, we eat nearly twice the sodium we should, and we can do that without even touching the salt shaker. The Intake of Saltsodium hides in processed foods, put there by food companies to preserve products that would otherwise go bad, or to make bland or bitter food taste better, or maybe just to appeal to our craving for the stuff.

A couple of years back, the Institute of Medicine, which helps the US government set nutrition recommendations, decided that people should try to take in about 1,500 milligrams (mg) of sodium daily, with an upper limit of 2,300 mg. Before, they recommended no more than 2,400 mg.


The primary threat from too much salt in your diet, as you are well aware, is High Blood Pressure, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Salt increases blood pressure because its sodium - one of salt's two "ingredients" - makes the body retain extra water. The additional water in the blood vessels creates more pressure. To pump the added fluid, the heart has to work harder, putting an added strain on your heart.

But it's more than the risk of high blood pressure and subsequent heart attack, stroke and kidney disease risk that has prompted experts to put the squeeze salt on guidelines. Excessive sodium is now linked to other illnesses. Like

* Porous bones: Too much sodium makes the body excrete calcium, Intake of Saltthreatening bone density and strength, says Pao-Hwa Lin, Ph.D., a researcher at Duke University medical centre. "The more you limit sodium, the less calcium you excrete," she says.

* Stomach cancer: A report from Japan found that men with the highest salt intakes had double the risk of stomach cancer. The cause: The subjects ate lots of salted fish and pickled vegetables, condiments that are common in India as well.

* DNA damage: Researchers from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute found that as they increase salt levels in laboratory cells, DNA strands begin to break and cell-repair mechanisms shut down. When salt concentrations return to normal, the cells begin to repair DNA again. Researchers found the same DNA mess up in the kidneys of mice. The next step is to see if these results hold true for human kidneys.

* Kidney stones: In a 5-year study, Italian researchers found that limiting protein and salt may be more effective in preventingthe recurrence of calcium oxalate kidney stones than the more traditional calcium-restricted diet.

In addition to the above, too much salt can worsen symptoms such as swelling in pregnant women; shortness of breath; and weight gain.



Although sodium is an essential nutrient your body needs, Dr. Burner says no one fails to get enough from natural sources. You only need about 200 mg of sodium a day to keep fluids in balance. In fact, it's estimated that the Yanomamo Indians of Brazil survive with less than 200 milligrams per day of sodium. At the opposite extreme, the report noted that the average daily sodium intake in northern Japan is more than 10,300 milligrams per person. Yet some of us may be taking in as much as 4000 mg a day.


The answer may be evolutionary, says Richard McGregor, Ph.D., a taste researcher at the New Jersey - based biotech company Linguagen. In the Intake of Saltdays of hunting and gathering, "people needed salt to replace minerals lost during an entire day of sweaty labor," he says. Not so when we hunt and gather on the Web all day. The encouraging news is that you can de-program your tastebuds in a few weeks. In an informal experiment, researchers at Saint Louis University medical school had blood-pressure patients nibble on snack chips, then cut back on salt and salty processed foods in other areas of their diets for 4 weeks. Their palates adjusted, and they preferred less-salty chips. "Some of the men were brushing the salt off the regular chips with their fingers," says nutrition professor Mildred Mattfeldt-Beman, Ph.D., R.D.

As we noted earlier, sodium raises blood pressure. Reducing intake by just 300 mg drops systolic pressure by 2 to 4 points, and diastolic by 1 to 2 points, a British study shows. Triple that reduction and you triple the benefit.


The tricky part about shaking the salt habit is that as much as 90% of the salt you consume every day is "hidden" - salt that you don't add on at the stove top or the dining table. While about 10 to 12% occurs naturally in dairy products and seafoods, nearly 75% comes from processed foods and restaurants.