Eating too much salt can raise your blood pressure and hurt your heart, but eating too little salt might still be bad for your heart—even if your blood pressure doesn’t change.

Eating too much salt is linked to higher blood pressure and a greater risk of heart problems in adults.

Eating too much salt might raise your blood pressure, but we’re not sure if cutting back on salt actually helps prevent heart problems because no big, fair studies have proven it yet.

For people with slightly high blood pressure, eating more salt seems to raise the risk of dying earlier—even at very low salt levels below what’s usually considered healthy. There’s no sign that eating very little salt is safe or helpful.

Eating too much salt may raise your chances of getting high blood pressure—every extra gram of salt you eat daily is tied to a 16% higher chance of having high blood pressure.

If you eat less salt, your blood pressure tends to go down, and you’re less likely to have a stroke, heart problems, or die early.