For older people in the Netherlands, eating a lot or a little salt doesn’t seem to reliably make heart problems or death more or less likely—even if they’re overweight. So salt intake probably isn’t a strong predictor of health outcomes in this group.

In older people in the Netherlands, how much salt they say they eat doesn’t seem to link to more heart problems or early death — maybe they’re not reporting it right, or salt just doesn’t affect them much at the levels they’re eating.

For people who already have heart disease, eating just the right amount of salt — not too little and not too much — seems to be linked to the lowest chance of heart problems or dying from any cause. Too little or too much salt might actually be riskier.

For older adults who are overweight but don’t have heart disease or high blood pressure, eating more salt than potassium might raise their chance of dying within 5 years by about 19%—so it’s not just how much salt or potassium you eat, but how they balance each other.

People who pee out more salt tend to have higher blood pressure, and this pattern shows up in lots of different groups of people around the world.

People who pee out more salt tend to have higher blood pressure, and their blood pressure tends to rise faster as they get older—but in whole populations, the average blood pressure and how many people have high blood pressure don’t seem to change based on salt levels.