Can you say how much salt your body needs each day? In all my years I did not know. I found out yesterday that 1,050 mg of salt is all you need. A level teaspoon.
The Doctors TV Show has began to advertise the “Halt the Salt” campaign on 11/24/2010.
High salt intake causes high blood pressure. Your blood swells when too much sodium or salt is in it. It causes pressure on your blood vessels and breaks the capillaries. It makes your heart pump harder and enlarges the heart. It causes your health to develop COPD or breathing failure.
W. Rex Hawkins, MD published a book, Eat Right-Electrolyte (1). The DASH studies of 1997 and 2001 were to affirm the importance of dietary tools to control blood pressure through salt restriction and weight loss (p 22). The DASH study was funded and performed by and through the National Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood. The 1997 study confirmed that blood pressure control requires a proper balance of dietary electrolytes. Fruits and vegetables balance provide an abundance of magnesium and potassium including calcium. Low fat dairy supplies abundant calcium (p 22). The old standard salt was 3,000 mg a day. During the DASH study salt was restricted to 1,050 mg (p 42). In the DASH report of 2001, a lower salt amount of 1,050mg per day showed a blood pressure reduction of 8.9 mm HG . That reduction is as much as the blood pressure lowering drugs. (p 43). The 1997 DASH report showed blood pressure fell with a diet that enhanced fruits/vegetable and low fat significantly reduce blood pressure (p 44).
Salt alone is not a complete electrolyte. Your body needs sodium (salt), potassium, magnesium and calcium. Since the book was published vitamin D3 has become as important as calcium, because the two work together to ionize the calcium so it can be used in all the cells of the body (2). The small intestine is lined with Vitamin D receptors known as VDR’s. When the receptors are full (approx 5,000 units of Vit. D) then the intestine is capable of absorbing 2,000% more calcium (p 42).
I ask everyone who reads this writes to write or email the commercial companies and demands less salt in our prepared foods, then we can the save lives of ourselves, our families and our neighbors. Ask the commercial food makes to use spices instead of salt and MSG monosodiumglutamate ( more salt).
1 Eat Right-Electrolyte by W. Rex Hawkins, MD, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, copyright 2006.
2 Barefoot on Vitamin D, Robert R. Barefoot, Pan American Intl. Nutrition Ltd. Publishing, Wickenburg, Arizona, USA, copyright 2008.
