Salt Overdose = Heart Overload

As I am looking ahead to the Superbowl I wonder about how much salt people eat. As I understand it eating out and packaged foods from the grocery make up about 80% of the sodium in our diets, and another 11% comes from our salt shakers.

Current guidelines suggest people eat no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day or about a teaspoon of salt. Actually that’s about half of what many people actually use.

Those at risk for high blood pressure, like African-Americans and older people, are advised to eat much less. Genetics indicate that different people have different reactions to sodium. Some people are more sensitive to high levels of salt, and in others, low levels of sodium can be unhealthy.

When I stop and think about it I have grown up eating really salty foods (which I need to reverse) and so has the rest of our whole society. If I could just cut my salt or sodium in half it would be a major boost to staying heart healthy.

My cardiologist told me that other nutritional issues get more attention but high blood pressure is a leading factor in the number of heart attack and stroke, and salt causes it to rise. I take medicine for hypertension, but not everybody has access health care to get the medication. He has been telling people to watch their salt for years, it hasn’t been working.

There are certain food categories I have to watch like cheese, breakfast cereals, bread, macaroni and pastas, cake mixes, condiments and soups.

The federal government has been trying to control sodium levels for decades. In the 1980s, the federal dietary guidelines warned about excess sodium, and the FDA also asked the food industry to reduce sodium levels in processed foods voluntarily.

Surprise … It didn’t work. By 2000, a study showed that men were consuming 48 percent more salt than they did in the early 1970s, and women, 69 percent more because food got saltier and people were consuming more calories.

For me the whole idea of controlling my diet is incredibly complicated. My overall strategy is just find ways to balance diet and exercise and keep on my weight loss program. If I remember to eat in moderation as I lower my weight I increase my health.

Is One Teaspoon Bad Luck Or A Good Thing

The Archives of Internal Medicine just published some findings on research about the effects of salt in on our health. The research determined that too much sodium and too little potassium in your diet may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. The study also suggests that increasing potassium consumption along with lowering one's salt intake may reverse the risk.

Researchers found that for people with high normal blood pressure levels, every unit increase in the person's sodium-to-potassium ratio raised his or her chance of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent.

Since around one third of American adults have high blood pressure, defined as 140/90 or higher, while another 37 percent have pre-hypertension, that is a pretty significant health concern.

High blood pressure can damage the heart because the extra pressure means the heart has to work harder to pump blood around the body. This damage can lead to heart failure and increase the risk of having a heart attack.

High blood pressure also increases the risk of atherosclerosis, where fatty deposits are laid down inside the arteries. This makes the blood vessels narrower and stiffer, which can raise blood pressure further and increase the risk of having a heart attack.

Therefore lowering your blood pressure reduces the risk of developing heart disease, even if your blood pressure is already within the normal range. The recommended maximum amount of salt you need on a daily basis is 6 grams. That is about a teaspoon full.

When we think of salt, we think in terms of what we add to our food or what we cook. It is much harder to know exactly how much salt you eat in a day, because you would need to know the salt content of each food and measure the exact quantities you eat.

If you know how much sodium is in a few of the foods you normally eat, then you'll see how easy it can be to eat more than 6g. Salt is often listed as sodium on food labels.

About three-quarters (75%) of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy, including processed foods like frozen dinners, snacks, and pizza.

Almost all of us eat at least some of these types of foods. Even if you make all your own meals from scratch, you probably buy bread and cheese, which have salt in them.

So, before you assume that you don't eat too much salt, take a look at what you're buying, as well as how you use salt at home. The amount you eat also affects how much salt you get also.

Some categories of products that are usually high in sodium are baked beans, cereals, bread products, pasta sauces, Pizza, frozen foods, Soup, lunch meat, Sausages, Tomato ketchup, mayonnaise and other sauces.

Foods that are often high in salt include Anchovies, Bacon, Bullion cubes, Cheese, Chips, Ham, Olives, Pickles, Salami, Salted and dry roasted nuts, Smoked meat and fish, Soy sauce.

You don't need to stop eating high-salt foods altogether, but it makes sense to cut down on the amount you eat or eat them less often. Also, when you're shopping, take a look at the label and try to choose brands/recipes that contain less sodium.