This Can Increase Your Heart Disease Risk

Salt has long gotten a bad rap when it comes to blood pressure, but new research has shown that that reducing salt in your diet might also help cut your heart disease risk and stop a cardiac event like a heart attack or stroke.

Eating a low salt diet might actually help keep your blood vessels working more efficiently. The findings appear in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The work of a team of Australian researchers looked at the impact of salt restriction on the endothelium, the thin layer of cells lining the inside of the blood vessels that helps regulate blood flow.

Study subjects who were overweight and obese but with normal blood pressure, found that restricting the sodium in their diets improved endothelial function compared to subjects who didn't restrict dietary salt.

Healthy people should keep their salt intake to 2400 milligrams a day - about the size of a teaspoon (6 grams) of table salt.

Of course, most of us eat double this amount, even if you just use the salt shaker on your food.

Processed foods also are loaded with salt, even if they don't have a salty taste.

"We found that if we reduced the salt in the diet, we saw a direct, positive impact on blood vessels," study co-author Jennifer B. Keogh, PhD, points out.

The study involved 29 overweight and obese subjects, both men and women, who ate 3.5 grams (low salt) of salt a day or 7.5 grams (normal salt) of salt for a two-week period.

Next they had to switch to the opposite diet for the following two weeks. None of the subjects had high blood pressure at the start of the program.

While on the low salt diet, but not the normal salt diet, the subjects showed improvements in endothelial function. This diet also led to small reductions in systolic (the top number) blood pressure, though no change in the diastolic (that's the bottom one) number.

So, a low salt diet may have more benefits than just dropping blood pressure. Less salt might also have an impact on blood vessel function and provide some protective benefits to your whole cardiovascular system.

If you have cardiac risk factors or are worried about your blood pressure, eating a low salt diet might be a smart move.

If you can't make the cut all at once, gradually working to eliminate extra salt from what you eat is often a workable alternative.

Trust the American Heart Association to offer some common sense tips that will help you lower your salt intake.

- Read labels and understand the FDA guidelines for reporting salt content.

- Watch out for seasonings like soy and steak sauce, bouillon cubs, Worcestershire sauce and cooking sherry. Try lemon juice, vinegar and natural herbs and spices.

- Season or marinate meats ahead of time with onion, garlic or your favorite herbs before cooking.

- Save chicken broth from a chicken you prepare, as opposed to buying canned, powdered or bouillon cube preparations.

- Take the salt shaker off the table, and try tasty low salt recipes instead.

- Choose fresh or frozen over canned. If you do use canned foods, drain and rinse contents well before cooking. Rinse fish as well.

- Know the names used for salt on food labels, besides sodium chloride, there's sodium alginate, sodium sulfate, sodium caseinate, disodium phosphate, sodium benzoate, sodium hydroxide, monosodium glutamate (MSG) or sodium citrate.

- When you eat out, watch for descriptions in menu items such as smoked, barbecued, pickled, broth, soy sauce, teriyaki, creole sauce, marinated, cocktail sauce, tomato base, Parmesan and mustard sauces as clues to high salt content in the dish.

Watch for larger studies to help confirm the intriguing findings of this most recent Australian study on salt.

In the meantime, you've got one more reason why cutting your sodium intake might be a smart move to reduce heart disease risk and your overall health.