When people eat a lot of salt, guys' main blood pressure in their arteries tends to bounce around more than girls', which might mean their blood vessels react differently to salt—and that could affect their heart health later in life.

Eating a lot of salt for 10 days might make the pressure in your main arteries bounce around a bit more, but it’s not clear yet—more research is needed to see if it affects your core arteries differently than your arm blood pressure.

In people in Shanxi Province with high blood pressure, those who excrete more sodium in their urine tend to have higher blood pressure readings, and this link is even stronger in women, which might mean salt affects women’s blood pressure more than men’s.

In men and women with high blood pressure in Shanxi Province, women’s blood pressure seems to be more closely linked to how much salt and potassium they pee out, and this link shows up in more ways than it does in men.

Eating a lot of salt for 10 days might make your blood pressure bounce around a bit more, but the change wasn’t big enough to say for sure it’s real — it’s just a hint, not proof.

For people with slightly high blood pressure, eating more or less salt doesn’t seem to change their chance of dying, no matter how old they are, their gender, race, or whether they tried to lose weight — this pattern held true for over 20 years.