After South Africa introduced rules to reduce salt in food, more older adults in rural areas started eating less salt — the number doubled from 7% to 17%.

After South Africa started limiting salt in processed foods, people in a rural area were found to be eating less salt — and that drop stayed steady for years.

In older adults in rural South Africa, the less salt they eat, the lower their blood pressure tends to be — every gram of salt saved drops blood pressure by a small but measurable amount.

If you have high blood pressure and eat less salt—cutting from about 4.6 grams down to 1.5–2.4 grams a day—your blood pressure will likely go down a bit, especially if you're older, Black, or have kidney disease or metabolic syndrome.

If you eat a lot of salt—like 18 grams a day for 10 days—your body will pee out more salt and your blood will have a bit more salt too, which proves your body is responding as expected to the extra salt.

Adding more salt to a diet that’s already salty doesn’t make blood pressure go up — it seems like the body has already maxed out its response to salt.