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.

If you have pre-hypertension, having more sodium than potassium in your urine might mean you’re more likely to die from any cause — even if you’re not eating a ton of salt. It’s not just how much salt you eat, but the balance between salt and potassium that might matter more for living longer.

For people who already have heart disease, having just the right balance of salt and potassium in their urine — not too much, not too little — seems to be linked to the lowest chance of heart problems or dying from any cause. Too little or too much of this balance is linked to higher risks.

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.

People aged 30 to 54 who eat more salt over several years are 12% more likely to die from any cause for every extra 1,000 mg of salt per day—and eating very little salt doesn’t seem to help them live longer.

If older Dutch people who’ve never had heart problems or high blood pressure eat more potassium-rich foods like bananas and spinach, they’re less likely to die from any cause over the next five years—so eating more potassium might help them live longer.