The Study
Sodium and potassium intake and risk of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality: the Rotterdam Study
This study looked at what people ate and whether they got sick or died later, but it didn’t make people change their diets — so we can’t say eating more potassium stops people from dying. It just found that people who ate more potassium tended to live longer, but maybe they also exercised more or had other healthy habits.
Analysis score
Maximum 58 for a case-control study.
Where the score came from
This study looked at what older people ate and how much salt and potassium they had in their urine to see if it affected how long they lived.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 558 / 100
Quality score
Researchers compare people who have a condition (cases) with similar people who do not (controls), looking back in time for differences in exposure. Useful but more prone to bias.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — for older adults without heart problems, eating more potassium (like from fruits and veggies) may help them live longer, and balancing salt with potassium matters more than salt alone.
- 2People who ate more potassium-rich foods had a 29% lower chance of dying over 5 years.
- 3Overweight people with high salt-to-potassium ratios had a 19% higher chance of dying.
- 4Eating more salt alone didn't change death risk.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
European Journal of Epidemiology
Year
2003
Authors
J. Geleijnse, J. Witteman, T. Stijnen, M. Kloos, A. Hofman, D. Grobbee
Related Content
Claims (6)
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.
In older people in the Netherlands, how much salt they say they eat doesn’t seem to link to more heart problems or early death — maybe they’re not reporting it right, or salt just doesn’t affect them much at the levels they’re eating.
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.
For older adults who are overweight but don’t have heart disease or high blood pressure, eating more salt than potassium might raise their chance of dying within 5 years by about 19%—so it’s not just how much salt or potassium you eat, but how they balance each other.
For older people in the Netherlands, eating a lot or a little salt doesn’t seem to reliably make heart problems or death more or less likely—even if they’re overweight. So salt intake probably isn’t a strong predictor of health outcomes in this group.
For older people in the Netherlands, how much potassium they pee out doesn’t seem to predict whether they’ll have a heart problem or die sooner—even though very low levels might hint at a slightly higher risk. This means a single urine test might not tell us how much potassium they’ve been eating over time.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.