Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
As people get older, their blood pressure tends to react more wildly when they eat less salt—meaning older folks might be more sensitive to how much salt they consume.
Correlational
In the U.S., people started using about 55% more salt on their food from the mid-80s to the late 90s.
Quantitative
Telling people to eat less salt doesn’t seem to actually change how much salt they eat or lower their blood pressure much, if at all.
Descriptive
In Finland, when people ate about one-third less salt over 30 years, their blood pressure dropped by more than 10 points, and far fewer people died from strokes and heart disease.
If you eat less salt and more foods rich in potassium, calcium, and magnesium, your blood pressure is likely to go down a lot.
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.
For people with long-term heart failure, how well they take care of themselves at home doesn’t seem to make a difference in whether they live longer or not.
People with heart failure who say they eat very little salt actually have a higher chance of dying sooner — even after accounting for how sick they are or their age and income — which makes scientists wonder if people are just bad at remembering or reporting what they eat.
For people with heart disease, the more potassium their body gets rid of in urine, the higher their blood pressure tends to be — every extra gram of potassium excreted per day raises systolic pressure by about 1 point and diastolic by about 0.6 points, which is the opposite of what doctors usually expect.
If you have heart disease and eat more salt, your blood pressure tends to go up — for every extra gram of salt you excrete in urine, your top blood pressure number goes up by about 1.3 points and your bottom number by about 0.5 points.
For people who already have heart disease, having just the right balance of salt and potassium in their urine — not too much, not too little — seems to be linked to the lowest chance of heart problems or dying from any cause. Too little or too much of this balance is linked to higher risks.
For people who already have heart disease, the more potassium their body gets rid of in urine, the more likely they are to have a heart attack, stroke, or die — which is the opposite of what most people think potassium does.
For people who already have heart disease, eating just the right amount of salt — not too little and not too much — seems to be linked to the lowest chance of heart problems or dying from any cause. Too little or too much salt might actually be riskier.
In people with high blood pressure who are white, certain gene variations seem to make their bodies produce less of a hormone called renin when they eat less salt—but these same gene changes don’t affect another hormone called aldosterone. This suggests the genes are tweaking renin on their own, not through aldosterone.
People of Caucasian descent with a certain common gene version might see their blood pressure rise a little when they eat a lot of salt, but the change is so small that we can’t be sure it’s real yet — we’d need to study more people to find out for sure.
For people with high blood pressure who are white, having certain versions of the SGK1 gene might make their blood pressure more sensitive to salt—but only if they eat a lot of salt. If they eat very little salt, this gene doesn’t seem to affect their blood pressure at all.
Mechanistic
People of Caucasian descent with high blood pressure who have two copies of certain gene versions may be more likely to have a type of high blood pressure that doesn’t respond well to the body’s normal salt-control system, and this could mean their condition is driven by how their genes affect salt and hormone balance.
People of Caucasian descent with high blood pressure who have two copies of certain gene versions tend to see their blood pressure rise more when they eat a lot of salt, and their body produces less of a hormone called renin when they eat little salt—this suggests their genes might make them more sensitive to how much salt they eat.
If you swap out regular table salt for a special salt that has less sodium and more potassium, it might help you have fewer strokes, heart problems, and even live longer — plus it could gently lower your blood pressure.
Causal
Eating more potassium-rich foods like bananas and spinach can help lower your blood pressure and make it less likely you'll have a stroke or heart problem—especially if you're eating a lot of salty foods.
Some groups of people, depending on their ancestry or where they’re from, have bodies that react differently to salt—some get a bigger spike in blood pressure when they eat salty food, and that’s because of differences in their genes.
When you eat almost no salt, your body may overwork a system that controls blood pressure, making your blood vessels tighter and raising your risk of heart problems.
Eating too little or too much salt might both be bad for your heart — people who eat way less than 3,000 mg or way more than 6,000 mg of salt a day seem to have a higher chance of heart problems or dying from them.
People who eat less than 2,300 mg of salt per day for a long time are 25% less likely to die from any cause than people who eat more than 3,600 mg of salt per day.