Posted on 05/03/2011 4:04:17 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX
Which is more dangerous: dietary salt or the government’s dietary guidelines? A new study confirms some old truths.
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 4), reports that among 3,681 study subjects followed for as long as 23 years, the cardiovascular death rate was more than 50 percent higher among those on who consumed less salt.
The researchers concluded that their findings, “refute the estimates of computer model of lives saved and health care costs reduced with lower salt intake” and they do not support “the current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction in salt intake at the population level.”
But that sort of reduction is precisely what the U.S. government now recommends.
(Excerpt) Read more at junkscience.com ...
I cook with half lard and half olive oil anymore. To hell with the experts.
They should be applied to any idustrial practice which produces carbon. Let the government place a tax on the Climate Sprinkles and the problem will be solved for about 25 years until they come up with something new.
It would have been nice if they linked the original study. It would have been important to see how they dealt with selection bias.
What is often missed is the fact that salt on fries and chips usually gives you less salt than when the salt is added into processed foods. You taste the exposed salt more easily, so you actually use less.
Try salt that is not iodized, the iodine stimulates the thyroid and causes the high blood pressure, imho.
We're government and we're here to help hurt you!
“It would have been nice if they linked the original study. It would have been important to see how they dealt with selection bias.”
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/17/1777.short
If you’re a JAMA jammer then you can read the full report.
Abstract
Context
Extrapolations from observational studies and short-term intervention trials suggest that population-wide moderation of salt intake might reduce cardiovascular events.
Objective
To assess whether 24-hour urinary sodium excretion predicts blood pressure (BP) and health outcomes.
Design, Setting, and Participants
Prospective population study, involving 3681 participants without cardiovascular disease (CVD) who are members of families that were randomly enrolled in the Flemish Study on Genes, Environment, and Health Outcomes (1985-2004) or in the European Project on Genes in Hypertension (1999-2001). Of 3681 participants without CVD, 2096 were normotensive at baseline and 1499 had BP and sodium excretion measured at baseline and last follow-up (2005-2008).
Main Outcome Measures
Incidence of mortality and morbidity and association between changes in BP and sodium excretion. Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) express the risk in tertiles of sodium excretion relative to average risk in the whole study population.
Results
Among 3681 participants followed up for a median 7.9 years, CVD deaths decreased across increasing tertiles of 24-hour sodium excretion, from 50 deaths in the low (mean, 107 mmol), 24 in the medium (mean, 168 mmol), and 10 in the high excretion group (mean, 260 mmol; P < .001), resulting in respective death rates of 4.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.5%-4.7%), 1.9% (95% CI, 1.5%-2.3%), and 0.8% (95% CI, 0.5%-1.1%). In multivariable-adjusted analyses, this inverse association retained significance (P = .02): the HR in the low tertile was 1.56 (95% CI, 1.02-2.36; P = .04). Baseline sodium excretion predicted neither total mortality (P = .10) nor fatal combined with nonfatal CVD events (P = .55). Among 2096 participants followed up for 6.5 years, the risk of hypertension did not increase across increasing tertiles (P = .93). Incident hypertension was 187 (27.0%; HR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.87-1.16) in the low, 190 (26.6%; HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.89-1.16) in the medium, and 175 (25.4%; HR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.86-1.12) in the high sodium excretion group. In 1499 participants followed up for 6.1 years, systolic blood pressure increased by 0.37 mm Hg per year (P < .001), whereas sodium excretion did not change (–0.45 mmol per year, P = .15). However, in multivariable-adjusted analyses, a 100-mmol increase in sodium excretion was associated with 1.71 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (P.<001) but no change in diastolic BP.
JAMA jammer here...
Conclusions
In this population-based cohort, systolic blood pressure, but not diastolic pressure, changes over time aligned with change in sodium excretion, but this association did not translate into a higher risk of hypertension or CVD complications. Lower sodium excretion was associated with higher CVD mortality.
Real butter is real food. Margarine (I call it acrylic butter) does not break down.
Real butter (salted, of course) is good for you....well, perhaps not 1/4” thick, but in normal amounts, it’s fine.
Thanks.
That’s the abstract or short report. There’s a full report but it’s limited to subscribers.
I have the PDF of the full text article
Not sure how to get it to you, if you would like it...
FreepMail, if you are interested, if you trust a stranger with your e-mail address
Well, there are. Not the right lesson to take from this. It's just that salt isn't one of them for most people.
It's just like how low-fat diets are killing people.
I appreciate the offer but I don’t need it. I thought that others might want the link.
—I appreciate the offer but I don’t need it.
—I thought that others might want the link.
I’ve already received multiple requests...
I think that is the whole point. We are being hectored and worried every day over some new health scare that will kill us. I remember reading that some people were shocked when a female marathon runner got cancer, as if there were some magic bullet that would make a person immune to serious illness.
Yep, the chances of dying are 100%. We just don’t know when.
“If we listened to all these (often contradictory) studies, we wouldn’t eat anything but rabbit food and the occasional piece of fish.”
They won’t even let you have the fish now. They say it has mercury in it!
Most of these scare stories come from the so-called Center for Science in the Public Interest. They are a bunch of enviro-lefties and animal rights whackos. Yet, the media always report on their latest scare story. It’s time people started to think for themselves.
Actually from researchers are bringing us back around to the idea that in many cases, particularly Type II diabetes, SUGAR intake is the cause. Particularly harmful is the fructose part that makes up half of table sugar and 55% of HFCS.
Fructose may be toxic in the doses most people are consuming and it is processed in the liver. The damage to the liver is also being linked to the imbalance between HDL and LDL cholesterol as fructose break down masks the receptors the liver uses to detect it has enough LDL cholesterol in the blood. And unless you only eat sugar before a big workout, most of what you consume gets turned into triglycerides that also contributes to the slow death of heart disease.
For this article to make the claims you point out immediately brings into question the validity of it’s major points. In reality salt is only a problem in a subset of heart disease patients. It is suspected to related to how the body retains wafer at inflammation, but we really don’t know why that subset is sodium sensitive.
Hyponatremia just means a low concentration of sodium in the blood. Table salt is sodium chloride. There's more than one kind of edible molecule that contains sodium, e.g. baking soda.
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