Contested

Eating more salt won't make your blood pressure stay high if you're otherwise healthy.

52
Pro
78
Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (2)

52

Community contributions welcome

This study gave people a lot more salt than normal for 10 days and checked if their blood pressure stayed high — it didn’t. So it supports the idea that extra salt doesn’t make healthy people’s blood pressure stay elevated.

People who drank water with lots of salt didn’t get higher blood pressure than those who drank water with little salt, even though their bodies got rid of the extra salt — so salt in water didn’t make their blood pressure stay high.

Contradicting (4)

78

Community contributions welcome

This study found that when people eat less salt, their blood pressure goes down—even if they’re healthy. That means eating more salt likely makes blood pressure go up, which is the opposite of what the claim says.

70

Effect of Dietary Sodium on Blood Pressure: A Crossover Trial.

Randomized Controlled Trial
Human
2023 Dec 19

The study showed that when people ate more salt, their blood pressure went up, and when they ate less salt, it went down—even in people who were otherwise healthy. This means eating more salt does raise blood pressure, so the claim is wrong.

This study says eating too much salt makes your blood pressure go up and stay up, which is the opposite of what the claim says.

1

Sodium and blood pressure

Narrative Review
Human
2002 Jul

This study shows that eating a lot of salt makes blood pressure go up over time, and cutting back on salt helps lower it — which is the opposite of what the claim says.

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.