Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
If older Dutch people who’ve never had heart problems or high blood pressure eat more potassium-rich foods like bananas and spinach, they’re less likely to die from any cause over the next five years—so eating more potassium might help them live longer.
Correlational
When you eat less salt and more potassium-rich foods at the same time, your blood pressure drops more than if you just cut salt or just add potassium by itself.
Mechanistic
Taking potassium supplements can lower your blood pressure, but only up to a point—around 30 mmol per day. After that, taking more doesn’t help much. The amount used in one study (20.6 mmol) was still in the range where more potassium equals more benefit.
Quantitative
Different studies say reducing salt lowers blood pressure by wildly different amounts—some say almost nothing, others say a bit more—so we’re really not sure how much of an effect salt really has.
When people who don’t eat much potassium switch to salt with extra potassium, their blood pressure drops mostly because they’re getting more potassium—not because they’re eating less salt, since they’re still eating plenty of salt.
If people eat less salt and more potassium-rich salt, the extra potassium might lower their blood pressure more than cutting back on salt alone — and most of that drop seems to come from the potassium.
Causal
It’s not your race that affects how your blood pressure reacts to eating less salt—it’s more about your income, education, and living conditions. When scientists account for those social factors, differences between racial groups mostly go away.
In the same study, people from different ethnic backgrounds didn’t respond differently to eating less salt when it came to blood pressure — so the differences we’ve seen before might be because studies were done differently, not because of biology.
Descriptive
If you compare Asians and White people who start with the same blood pressure and eat the same amount of salt, cutting back on salt lowers blood pressure about the same amount in both groups—even though Asians usually eat more salt and are older on average.
When people cut down on salt, Black individuals tend to see a tiny bit more drop in their bottom blood pressure number than White individuals—about 1.5 points—but this difference is so small and inconsistent that it doesn’t always show up in studies.
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.
If you're a hospitalized adult with high blood pressure in Shanxi, the amount of salt in your morning pee is a good guess for how much salt you passed all day — so doctors might just need your morning sample instead of collecting all day's urine.
People in Shanxi Province who are hospitalized with high blood pressure are peeing out about 11.5 grams of salt every day — that’s roughly two teaspoons of table salt.
In hospitals in Shanxi, adults with high blood pressure who excrete more salt in their urine tend to have blood pressure that doesn’t drop enough at night, which might be bad for their heart.
In hospitalized adults with high blood pressure in Shanxi, people who have more salt in their morning urine tend to have higher blood pressure numbers, even when you account for their age, weight, gender, or whether they smoke.
In hospitalized adults in Shanxi Province with high blood pressure, people who excrete more salt in their urine tend to have higher blood pressure numbers, even when you account for their age, weight, gender, and whether they smoke.
When you eat less salt and more potassium-rich foods at the same time, your blood pressure drops more than if you just cut salt or just add potassium alone.
If you don’t get enough potassium in your diet and start taking a supplement that adds about 20.6 mmol per day, your blood pressure might drop a little—roughly 3 points lower—according to studies that looked at multiple trials.
Cutting back on salt can lower blood pressure, but sometimes it doesn’t do much at all—why? It depends on the person, how you measure it, and how much potassium they eat.
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.
If you eat more potassium-rich foods and less salty food, your blood pressure might drop by a few points—and most of that drop probably comes from eating more potassium, not less salt.
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.
In people with high blood pressure in Shanxi Province, those who excrete more sodium in their urine tend to have higher blood pressure—even when you account for things like age, weight, diabetes, and cholesterol—and this link is even stronger in women.
In Shanxi Province, men with high blood pressure tend to pee out more salt than women with high blood pressure, even though they both pee out similar amounts of potassium—this suggests men might be eating more salt or keeping more salt in their bodies than women.