Does salt causes high blood pressure / hypertension?
High blood pressure is also called hypertension. Few question the advice they’ve heard for years about reducing salt to control high blood pressure or keep hypertension under control.
They should – and here’s why:
I’ve been researching nutrition since I started breeding Thoroughbreds to race in 1978. To excel as an athlete – horse or human – requires far higher levels of quality nutrition and health than a horse that is a pasture ornament or a person sitting behind a desk all day does.
Anyone who has raised cattle, or Thoroughbred racing prospects, or studied agriculture knows the importance of fertilizing pastures and providing free choice salt. I know from soil test results that most soil is deficient in magnesium, potassium and other macro and micro nutrients.
When I was breeding Thoroughbred to race, I moved to an area where pastures were lush because I realized you can not raise a truly healthy racing prospect without good grass (which is why so many top breeding farms are in Kentucky).
I moved to a county in Texas where most of the large feeder cattle operations are located (because of the grass). I had my soil tested. Calcium and phosphorous levels were VERY high, but because magnesium was within the normal range Texas A&M said nothing about it.
The experts SHOULD have recommended additional magnesium
because in proportion to calcium and phosphorous it was too low.
I phoned their expert and discussed this oversight with them. AFTER I pointed out that in proportion to the calcium and phosphorous levels, magnesium was low, he agreed that it would be a good idea to supplement magnesium.
Beef from cattle raised on grass that is deficient or out of balance for magnesium will also be deficient – unless that nutrient is supplemented and NONE of the huge cattle ranching operations around me supplement for magnesium. Most employees of cattle ranches have Ag degrees and many of them went to Texas A&M so if they don’t recommend it or teach it those employees aren’t likely to be doing it.
It is far more likely that people sensitive to salt who have higher blood pressure are deficient in magnesium and/or potassium – as almost all people eating the Standard American Diet (aptly referred to by the acronym S.A.D.) are.
You can find much additional detail to assist you answering the question does salt raise blood pressure on IULren.com including this:
Recent study regarding sodium’s role in managing blood pressure
confirms hypertension is NOT caused by a salt consumption.Neither is it lowered by simply cutting salt out of your diet.
How is it that table salt (sodium) is still getting such a bad rap and
becoming associated to high blood pressure?The actual culprit it turns out is not salt,
but how your body deals with sodium and its proportion
to the amount of potassium, calcium and magnesium in your body.
Doctors KNOW at least part of this because those taking diuretics such as Lasix aka Salix are always also put on potassium supplements. Doctors get almost no training in nutrition even though we should know by now that we really ARE what we eat.
European researchers found that people with low salt intakes
were more likely to die of heart disease
than people with higher
salt intakes.
The study surveyed 3,681 people living in various European countries over an eight year period . At the end of that eight year period, 56% of participants with low sodium intakes were more likely to have died from cardiovascular illness than those with high salt intakes. The study published in yesterday’s Journal of the American Medical Association refutes what has become a gospel truth in the US prompting government health experts to insist Americans decrease their salt intake in the quest to reduce hypertension and cardiovascular disease risks.
The European study found that of the 3,681 people followed over the years, 2,100 of those participants with normal blood pressure at the start of the study, their salt intake had no effect on the development of high blood pressure. The study, on the outset, appears to contradict the US government health and diet recommendation that Americans reduce their salt intake to prevent cardiovascular disease.
But Harvard nutrition experts say the study is complete hogwash.
American Universities rely on funding for research from Big Pharma and multi-national corporations. While SOME researchers have had the integrity and courage to publish honest studies, when they do so they become ostracized, no longer receive grants to do their research and can even lose their jobs.
I will add links to this text to document what has happened to researchers who insisted on publishing what the moneyed interested wanted them to publish when I can make the time. In the meantime:
I CHALLENGE ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THEY CAN PROVE THIS IS FALSE TO DO SO >>> LEAVE YOUR EVIDENCE AND LINKS IN THE COMMENTS.
If you are wise
you will NOT rely on evidence
provided by those being paid
to generate research that ‘proves’
what the people paying you
want it to prove.
Instead, rely on this age old wisdom passed down through generations that were far healthier than we are today because they were not conditioned by the media:
“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”
Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BCE)
WHAT CAUSES HYPERTENSION?
- The Blood Pressure Hoax
Gail Gardner
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Thankyou for sharing such a nice article and your knowledge with us.Eating salt raises the amount of sodium in your bloodstream and wrecks the delicate balance, reducing the ability of your kidneys to remove the water. The result is a higher blood pressure due to the extra fluid and extra strain on the delicate blood vessels leading to the kidneys
Hi John,
That is true if you’re talking about table salt which contains additives like aluminum and does not contain the proper balance of minerals. It is most decidedly NOT true if you use the highest quality sea salt like the kind I get from Swanson.
The first thing anyone learns about raising livestock is to give them free choice salt. It is ridiculous that doctors tell people to reduce their salt intake when what they should be telling them is to increase their intake of magnesium, potasium and phosphorous. What matters is the balance of nutrients.
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Salts make our body hold on to water and some extra water which stored in our body which help to raise our blood pressure.
so if we use/eat more and more salt than our blood pressure must be higher! Hypertension is another name of high blood pressure, causes a great strain on your heart, arteries, kidneys, and brain.
Stem cell arterial hypertension treatment is a positive effect in high blood pressure control. It is based on the transplantation of healthy cells into damaged organs – blood vessels and surrounding tissues.
I follow some process to keep my pressure normal. I used to take exercise daily. And do also meditation. Avoid too much salty food. Alhamdulillah i am fine now.
Great topic discussed 🙂
This topic is certainly the debatable issue discussed many times among medical practitioners. Eating salt raises the amount of sodium in your bloodstream and wrecks the delicate balance, reducing the ability of your kidneys to remove the water.
The result is a higher blood pressure due to the extra fluid and extra strain on the delicate blood vessels leading to the kidneys. If you have high blood pressure and are being treated with a diuretic medication, this makes the kidneys remove more fluid from the bloodstream. Because the sodium in salt counteracts this effect, reducing your salt intake will make your blood pressure medicine more effective.
According to Pakistan National Health Survey one-third of the population above 45 in Pakistan suffers from hypertension. Pakistan Hypertension League says only 3% of those diagnosed with the disease get proper treatment. Most people in Pakistan don’t even get their blood pressure checked on a regular basis.** *For years doctors have been telling patients with high blood pressure to cut down on the amount of salt in their diet. This package takes a look at salt consumption in America and that even if FDA places restrictions on the quantities of salt used by food manufacturing companies, people will need time to get used to new tastes and companies will need time to rework their recipes.
Hi Nadia,
Wise consumers need to start understanding DETAILS such as the difference between most types of table salt and salt that is healthy for you. All salt is NOT the same.
They must also decide who to trust. The FDA exists to help Big Pharma make big bucks at the expense of everyone’s health foolish enough to believe their stamp of approval means something is safe. It often means the opposite.
I highly recommend every person read the Web site and books by Dr Tanton to understand why treating symptoms is the wrong approach and how to get healthy.
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I am seeing more and more articles that claim that salt has a negligable effect on blood pressure. Why then do leading cardiologists insist that there is strong evidence that eating too much salt has a direct effect of increading blood pressure?
David G would love you to read ..Are you sure your headache isn’t a heart attack?
Hi David,
Because Doctors make a living doing what they’ve been taught to do and almost never question what they were taught. Here are some questions for you:
Who decided what blood pressure readings are high or low and why do they keep changing them? (Main answer: so they can get more and more people on prescription symptom treatments.)
As the saying goes “when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail”. To a surgeon, surgery is THE best solution – even when they are shown proof that “inoperable” heart patients (i.e., the patients they gave up on) get better WITHOUT surgery.
Another reason is that most doctors have almost no training in NUTRITION and you can not consider nutrients in a vacuum one at a time. It is more likely “high blood pressure” is caused by an imbalance of magnesium and potassium in relation to sodium levels than by too much salt.
Magnesium is widely deficient in food because of factory chemical farming which increases calcium and phosphorous with petroleum and ammonia based fertilizers and ignores the levels of magnesium – which might be within normal ranges but too low as a percentage of calcium and phosphorous.
And back again to the differences between forms of salt – and that applies to so many other nutrients and minerals as well. Naturally harvested pure sea salt is NOT the same as the salt with added aluminium in that familiar blue box.
Man-made vitamins are not as healthy or utilized as well by your body as forms found in food grown as naturally as possible.
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Salt alone will not increase your blood pressure. I think It takes a lot of sodium for a big water retention to happen thus causing elevated readings. Then again you have to take in a lot of sodium for that to happen.
you can buffer the effect by taking in potassium rich food.
Hi Velz,
Many people with water retention issues have them because the diuretics they’re being prescribed deplete minerals – especially potassium but also others. While doctors do often now prescribe potassium supplements as well, I have two questions about that:
1) Is the form of potassium provided as healthy and assimilable as what it being lost.
2) What else is lost that is not being replaced.
Man is never going to be able to replicate naturally occurring sources of nutrients that are complex interconnected groups of minerals, vitamins, enzymes and amino acids and NOT just ONE ingredient.
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