People with high blood pressure who have certain genes that make them more prone to high blood pressure tend to see their blood pressure drop more when they switch to low-sodium salt, compared to others with those same genes but lower risk.

For people with high blood pressure, using a special low-sodium salt for three years might lower their systolic blood pressure more than regular salt—especially if they have certain genes that make them more likely to have high blood pressure. The drop is about 9.2 points on average.

If people with high blood pressure switch to a low-sodium salt for three years, their top blood pressure number (systolic) tends to go down—but their genes don’t seem to change how much their bottom number (diastolic) changes.

Some people’s genes make them more likely to get high blood pressure when they eat salty foods, while others don’t — it’s all in their DNA.

Some groups of people, depending on their ancestry or where they’re from, have bodies that react differently to salt—some get a bigger spike in blood pressure when they eat salty food, and that’s because of differences in their genes.

People of Caucasian descent with a certain common gene version might see their blood pressure rise a little when they eat a lot of salt, but the change is so small that we can’t be sure it’s real yet — we’d need to study more people to find out for sure.