Monday, July 7, 2008

Dangers of Excessive Salt Consumption

Dangers of excessive salt consumption are contributing to diabetes,high blood pressure, cataracts, kidney stones, osteoporosis and stomach cancer.No one challenges that the human body needs salt to function. Sodium is the main component of the body's extracellular fluids and it helps carry nutrients into the cells. Sodium also helps regulate other body functions, such as blood pressure and fluid volume, and sodium works on the lining of blood vessels to keep the pressure balance normal.You cannot exist without sodium, but the amount we need is quite small.The recommended safe minimum daily amount is about 500 milligrams of sodium with an upper limit of 2,400 milligrams. However, lowering sodium intake to 1,800 milligrams would probably be healthier.

Many Americans are consuming much higher amounts of salt, up to 9,000 milligrams a day with harmful effects. Some argue that a healthy kidney can get rid of it [the excess], but in many cases, that happens at the expense of losing calcium. It's likely that the habitual high intake of salt produces physiological changes in the kidney, which increases the risk of high blood pressure. For women, this habitual lack of calcium may eventually be linked to the bone disease of old age, osteoporosis, in which long-term calcium loss causes bones to weaken and break easily.

About 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, our ancestors went from gathering food and hunting to cultivating crops and raising animals. To survive, they needed to preserve and to stockpile foods for the long winter months. You can dry vegetables and dry meats, but the other way to preserve food is to salt it. However, adding salt to food did more than cut bacterial growth. It added a whole new dimension to the pleasures of eating: Salt adds flavor and heightens existing flavors, even in sweets, and salt helps process basic raw ingredients into other food products. Of these, cheese is perhaps one of the most familiar examples, since salt is necessary in its formation.

For Americans today, eating preserved and processed foods has become commonplace. It is almost impossible to prepare a meal without using some processed food. Besides, not only is salt one of the four taste categories-- salty, sweet, sour, and bitter--salt offers certain technical advantages in the kitchen. Salt raises the boiling point of water, which helps heat penetrate into cooking foods, and it helps condition dough in baked products. The biggest advantage of using salt is that it enhances other flavors.

Scientists are concerned about the amount of salt in processed foods. Seventy-five to eighty -five percent of the sodium consumed is in processed foods. What the food industry includes during processing, we can't take out. If we reduce our salt intake [at the table], that won't solve the problem. There's salt in bread, processed meat, cheese, canned vegetables-- these are all hidden sources of salt. Salt in restaurant foods, and that includes pizza, fast-food chains and Chinese restaurants, the sodium levels are very high.

Physicians in China over 4000 years ago warned patients that if they used too much salt in their food, their "pulse" would harden. The higher the salt intake, the higher the prevalence of hypertension. Higher-than- normal blood pressure may lead to heart attacks, kidney disease, and strokes.

Sprinkle salt on a slug and it will shrivel up and die because the salt has dehydrated it, and that is exactly what salt does to the human body.

Too much salt causes 'vasoconstriction' of the blood vessels, which means they shrink in size or constrict because the salt has dehydrated the cells, forcing water out of them and making them narrower.

It's this shrinking or tightening of the blood vessels that pose health risks. When blood vessels become narrower, the heart has to work harder to force the blood around the body and this increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. If you already have high blood pressure or coronary heart disease (when the arteries become narrowed because fatty deposits have formed on the inside wall of the blood vessels), then you are adding to your risk of having a stroke or heart attack by eating excessive salt.

Persistent high blood pressure--conventio nally defined as readings of 140/90 or above--is one of the most common health conditions, affecting nearly 50 million Americans. People at greatest risk for high blood pressure are those with a family history, the elderly, middle-aged men, and middle-aged Black women.

Yet everyone is vulnerable, because blood pressure normally rises with age, a fact corroborated by numerous studies, and high-salt intake contributes to that rise. The fundamental conclusion is that salt relates to high blood pressure independent of other factors affecting blood pressure, like alcohol and obesity. It is believed that too much salt causes the sodium channels (structures that move sodium into and out of cells) to work too hard and gradually the channels begin to fail. This process is irreversible, so that by old age, even if people cut back on salt, their kidneys can no longer flush extra amounts of salt from the body without an increase in blood pressure.

High-salt intake is bad news for other problems ... it induces insulin resistance and increases the risk of stomach and esophageal cancers by damaging the lining of the throat and stomach. Also, salt allows Helicobacter pylori bacteria to thrive, which can increase the risk of stomach cancer. It also aggravates asthma and contributes to kidney stones, osteoporosis and cataracts. In postmenopausal women the consumption of excessive salt has been shown to increase the level of bone minerals excreted through urine.

While many people say they crave salt and use it liberally in their food, restricting salt intake is only really a matter of making some adjustments. If people make a concerted effort to reduce salt intake,initially they notice that things don't taste salty enough. But if they go through a transition period and then go back to foods they used to like, they find them too salty.

The World Health Organization (WHO) proposes that population average salt intakes should not exceed 5g per person per day. Salt causes food to absorb more water, adding weight to a product at virtually no extra cost. Examples include processed meat products such as sausages, hot dogs and bacon.

Extra salt is added to snack foods to create thirst in consumers, encouraging them to drink more, often in the form of commercial soft drinks. Many soft drinks companies know this and team up with the salty-snack industry to bolster each other's sales. In 1965, the merger of Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola Company was approved by shareholders of both companies, and a new company called PepsiCo, Inc. was formed.

Tips to reduce salt intake:

Take stock of the sources of salt in your diet, such as restaurant meals, pizza, salt-based condiments, and convenience foods. Some of these are really loaded with salt.Read the labels when shopping. Look for lower sodium in cereals, crackers, pasta sauces, canned vegetables, or any foods with low-salt .

Options

Canned foods, especially soups and baked beans are loaded with excessive salt.If you think your meals are high in sodium, balance them by adding high-potassium foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Ask about salt added to food, especially at restaurants. Most restaurants will omit salt when requested. If you need to salt while cooking, add the salt at the end; you will need to add much less. The longer the food cooks, the more the salty flavor is muted and at the end, the final taste is on the top layer.

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