Are Salt and Sodium Bad for You?
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Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels
By: Mark Sisson
Other than saturated fat, I can’t think of a nutrient that’s been so universally maligned and demonized as salt. All the experts hate it and recommend that we get as little of it as possible. They even all seem to have their own little anti-salt slogans. The American Diabetes Association recommends between 2300 and 1500 mg of sodium per day (“Be Sodium Savvy”). The American Heart Association wants you eating less than 1500 mg per day and claims that 97% of young people already eat way too much salt. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) also recommends keeping sodium below 2300 mg.
Why has salt been cast in such a negative light?
Why Salt Became Worrisome
Back in the 1980s, researchers launched a massive global study of salt intake and blood pressure called INTERSALT. Overall, it showed a modest association between the two, but some groups, particularly the undeveloped, non-industrial peoples who had very little access to salt (and other trappings of industrialization), had blood pressure that was generally extremely low.
Foremost among these groups were the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest.1 The Yanomami have very low sodium excretion, which indicates very low sodium intake, and very low blood pressure. Even the elderly Yanomami enjoyed low blood pressure.
Sounds convincing, right? Low salt intake, low lifelong incidence of hypertension – how much more cut and dry can you get? This low salt and low blood pressure connection seemed to also apply to other groups who happened to be living more traditional ways of life.
Except that there’s another non-industrialized group (and you only need one) whose slightly different results kinda muck up the Yanomami argument: the Kuna of Panama.
Among the Kuna, a tribe native to Panama, both salt intake and blood pressure were also historically low well into old age. To study whether the two variables were linked, researchers examined a group of “acculturated” Kuna2 with ample access to salt and an otherwise strict adherence to their traditional way of life. Little changed but the salt intake. in other words. But, despite consuming an average of 2.6 daily teaspoons of salt (and sometimes up to 6 teaspoons), the Kuna did not have hypertension, not even in old age. In other words, there was no change between the hypertensive statuses of 20 year old Kuna and 60 year old Kuna, even though they ate more salt.
