April 10, 2023 – It is well known that high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.
Now, new research from Sweden has shown that too much salt in the diet is a major risk factor for clogged arteries in the neck and heart, raising the risk of heart attacks and strokes, even if you don’t have blood pressure. high.
The study was published online in European magazine of the open heart.
The finding raises the possibility that salt may cause harm even before someone develops high blood pressure, said study author Jonas Wuopio, MD, of the Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, and Clinical Research Center at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Salt is bad for heart health because of its link to high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, but the role salt plays in the development of plaque in the arteries has not been examined, Wuopio said.
“Ours is the first study to examine the association between high salt intake and hardening of the arteries in both the head and neck. The association was linear, meaning that each increase in salt intake was linked to with more atherosclerosis,” he said.
The study included 10,778 adults ages 50 to 64. The research team measured the amount of salt found in their urine to estimate their salt intake.
The researchers then captured images of the heart’s arteries to check for calcium and blockages or stenosis, and ultrasound to detect blockages in the carotid arteries in the neck.
They found that the more salt people ate, the greater the risk of calcifications in the arteries of the heart and neck.
The findings were seen even after the researchers excluded people with high blood pressure.
“This means that it’s not just patients with high blood pressure or heart disease who need to control their salt intake,” Wuopio said.
He tells his patients to follow instructions from the World Health Organization and other groups to limit salt to one teaspoon a day.
“It can be difficult to estimate how much salt we eat, so I advise patients to limit their use of table salt or replace salt with a salt substitute,” he said.
food is medicine
The lower you can get your blood pressure, the better, said Alon Gitig, MD, assistant professor and director of cardiology at Mount Sinai Doctors in Westchester, NY.
“Everyone knows that high blood pressure is associated with future risk of cardiovascular disease, but what many don’t realize is that that risk starts to rise,” even at the high end of what’s considered normal. “Most people in the US in their 60s have high blood pressure,” Gitig said.
A good way to lower blood pressure is through diet, exercise and maintaining a healthy weight, he said.
The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which suggests several servings of fruits and vegetables a day, with few refined carbohydrates, flour and sugar, has been shown in one study to dramatically lower blood pressure, Gitig said.
“There are two reasons for that. One is that fruits and vegetables have lots of phytonutrients that are good for our arteries. The other is that most American adults have insulin resistance, and insulin resistance leads to high blood pressure. high blood pressure,” he said.
Eating more fruits and vegetables and lean meats while limiting sugar and flour will improve insulin resistance. Do that, Gitig said, “and you can lower your blood pressure that way.”