In China, when people were encouraged to eat less salt over three years, their urine showed a big drop in salt relative to potassium—and the people who started with high blood pressure saw the biggest changes. This suggests cutting salt might help those at highest risk for heart problems the most.

People in China who lowered the balance of salt to potassium in their urine the most over three years ended up with much smaller increases in their blood pressure — some didn’t even see their bottom number (diastolic) go up at all, and their top number (systolic) only rose a little.

If you eat less salt and more foods rich in potassium, calcium, and magnesium, your blood pressure is likely to go down a lot.

Cutting back on salt can lower your blood pressure a little bit—about 3 to 5 points for the top number and 1 to 3 points for the bottom number—and this works the same way whether you're Asian, Black, or White, as long as you start with similar blood pressure and salt intake.

Scientists tried to figure out how much of the blood pressure drop in a big study was due to eating less salt versus eating more potassium — and they found it’s hard to say exactly how much each one helped, because the numbers varied a lot depending on how they did the math.

If you have high blood pressure and eat less salt—cutting from about 4.6 grams down to 1.5–2.4 grams a day—your blood pressure will likely go down a bit, especially if you're older, Black, or have kidney disease or metabolic syndrome.