How much salt you had in your lunch? Whatever your guess, chances are you’re off. By a lot. If you’re an average American, chances are that you’re eating too much salt.
The latest research — which, the scientists stress, published recently — hints that high sodium sensitivity or sodium resistance may have an increased risk of developing high blood pressure.
Reporting in the journal Hypertension, Dr. Jiang He, from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the US, conducted a study to find out whether salt sensitivity caused hypertension or happened as a result of it.
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In clinical trials, high consumption of salt is strongly linked with Elevated blood pressure. Several previous research papers have recorded that high sodium sensitivity is more common among individuals with high blood pressure.
Experimental studies have also detailed various animal models with sodium-resistant hypertension. However, it is unknown whether sodium sensitivity and resistance precede the development of hypertension.
Therefore, Dr. Jiang He and his team carried out a feeding study, including a 7-day low-sodium diet (1180 mg/day) followed by a 7-day high-sodium diet (7081 mg/day), among 1718 Chinese adults with blood pressure (BP) <140/90 mm Hg. The team extensively followed them over an average of 7.4 years.
They recorded three BP measurements and 24-hour urinary sodium excretion on each of 3 days during baseline observation, low-sodium and high-sodium interventions, and two follow-up studies. They used latent trajectory analysis to identify the three trajectories of BP responses to dietary sodium intake.
The results of the study shows that:
- After 7.4 years of follow up, the researchers observed changes in the systolic BP in high sodium-sensitive, moderate sodium-sensitive, and sodium-resistant groups.
♦ Low-sodium intervention: −13.7 (5.5), −4.9 (3.0), and 2.4 (3.0) mm Hg and
♦ High-sodium intervention: 11.2 (5.3), 4.4 (4.1), and −0.2 (4.1) mm Hg.
- Compared with individuals with moderate sodium sensitivity, they found that the odds of incident hypertension were similar in both high sodium sensitivity and low sodium resistance (OR:1.43).
- They also found a J-shaped association between systolic BP responses to sodium intake and incident hypertension.
- They observed similar results for diastolic BP.