For US adults with high blood pressure who are on medication, whether they eat more sodium or potassium doesn't change how well their blood pressure drugs work or their risk of heart disease.

For US adults with high blood pressure who are already on treatment, how much sodium versus potassium they eat doesn’t seem to make a real difference in whether they get their blood pressure down to a healthy level.

Eating too much salt compared to potassium might be worse for your heart over time than just looking at salt or potassium by itself.

If you eat less salt but add more potassium to it, your blood pressure might drop more if you usually don’t get much potassium in your diet—because your body gets a bigger boost from the potassium than it loses from the sodium.

People today eat way more salt than our ancestors did, but less of other important minerals like potassium and magnesium—and this mix is linked to why so many people today have high blood pressure.

When mice eat a lot of salt, adding a moderate amount of potassium lowers their blood pressure, showing that potassium's main benefit might be fighting high blood pressure caused by salt.