Dietary tips to help reduce your risk of ‘silent killer’ diseases

Reducing salt in your diet can be considered an effective treatment for people who want to lower their blood pressure.

A study published Nov. 11 in the journal JAMA found that reducing sodium intake significantly reduced blood pressure in the majority of volunteers.

Researchers administered regular high-sodium and low-sodium diets to 213 participants aged 50 to 75. Volunteers included people with and without blood pressure problems.

Specifically, the high-sodium diet contains approximately 2200 mg of daily supplements, and the low-sodium diet contains approximately 500 mg. A low-salt diet involves reducing salt intake compared to recommendations. In general, experts advise adults not to consume more than 6 grams of salt or 2.4 grams of sodium (about 1 teaspoon of salt) per day.

After using the low-sodium diet for a week, they had an average decrease of 8 mmHg in systolic blood pressure compared to the high-sodium diet and 6 mmHg compared to the normal diet. These results show that the benefits of eating less salt are equivalent to the effects of a 12.5 mg dose of hydrochlorothiazide, a commonly prescribed drug for high blood pressure.

The authors said a low-sodium diet reduced systolic blood pressure in nearly 75% of people compared to a high-sodium diet. The results obtained were generally consistent between groups, regardless of hypertensive status or use of antihypertensive medications.

Reducing salt in your diet can help lower your blood pressure. Photo: Forward Health

High blood pressure is known as the “silent killer” because it has no symptoms – the only way to know if you have it is to measure it mechanically. This condition increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, chronic kidney disease, and other serious problems. High blood pressure contributed to more than 691,000 deaths in the United States in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly half of all adults suffer from high blood pressure, with systolic blood pressure exceeding 130 or diastolic blood pressure exceeding 80. Only about one in four adults with high blood pressure can control their condition.

Another study from Tulane University in the US found that eating a lot of salt could shorten life expectancy by 2 years for men and 1.5 years for women.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that most people are consuming too much sodium. The global average intake for adults is 4310 mg per day (equivalent to 10.78 g of salt). This figure is more than double the WHO recommendation for adults to consume less than 2000 mg/day (equivalent to less than 5 g of salt per day).

But salt isn’t the only thing in your diet that can affect blood pressure. A study published earlier this year in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, found that drinking alcohol regularly (at least one drink a day) was associated with increased blood pressure, even in people with low blood pressure. .