The Argument Over Salt and Health
Eating less salt can reduce blood pressure, but can it cut heart disease, too?
02 March 2010
Some experts question the extent to which cutting salt in the diet would mean fewer heart attacks and strokes.
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Last month we reported about a study that showed eating even a little less salt could greatly help the heart. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists used a computer model to predict how just three grams less salt a day would affect heart disease in the United States.
The scientists said the results would be thirteen percent fewer heart attacks, eight percent fewer strokes, four percent fewer deaths and eleven percent fewer new cases of heart disease. And two hundred forty billion dollars in health care savings. Researchers said it could prevent one hundred thousand heart attacks and ninety-two thousand deaths every year.
The researchers were from the University of California, San Francisco, Stanford University and Columbia University.
They and public health professionals in the United States are interested in a national campaign to persuade people to eat less salt. Such campaigns are already in place in Britain, Japan and Finland.
However, some scientists say such a campaign is an experiment with the health of millions of people.
Michael Alderman is among the critics. He is a high blood pressure expert and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Doctor Alderman says that eating less salt results in lower blood pressure. But he says studies have not clearly shown that lowering salt means fewer heart attacks or strokes.
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