Eating too little salt—like only 5 grams a day—might actually be bad for you, even though we usually think salt is bad. Your body needs some sodium to work right, and going below what most people eat globally could be risky in ways we don’t fully understand yet.

On average, people around the world eat way more salt than doctors recommend—about twice as much. Health experts say we should eat less than 5 grams a day, but most of us are eating nearly 11 grams.

Eating too much salt—more than 2,000 mg a day—can raise your chances of having a stroke or heart problems, but cutting back to that level or less may help lower your blood pressure and keep you from dying of heart disease.

People who eat about 3 to 6 grams of salt per day seem to have fewer heart problems and live longer than those who eat much less or much more salt — it’s like there’s a sweet spot for salt intake.

Eating too little or too much salt might both be bad for your heart — people who eat way less than 3,000 mg or way more than 6,000 mg of salt a day seem to have a higher chance of heart problems or dying from them.

Eating too much salt—more than 2,000 mg a day—can raise your chances of having a stroke or heart problems, and when whole populations eat less salt, people’s blood pressure tends to drop and fewer people die from heart disease.