Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Is It True That Salt Causes Hypertension?

Salt (sodium chloride) is very important role in our body. Every cell in our body contains salt. This is why the tears and sweat taste salty.

Salt has an important role in maintaining the body to keep functioning properly. When we exercise, when we are hot, and when we experience physiological changes (eg during pregnancy or aging) the more fundamental role of salt.

The role of the most important salt is to maintain balance of body fluids that carry oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Two elements of salt, sodium and chloride, plays an important role in the body. Sodium allows the transmission of nerve impulses, regulate the electrical charges into and out of cells, helps muscles, including muscle contraction, and allows the blood cells. red in blood flow carrying oxygen to tissues and dispose of harmful carbon dioxide. Chloride plays a role in the digestive process, keeping the acid-base balance, and the absorption of potassium.

Salt Shortage
Our kidneys have the ability to remove excess salt. Conversely, when salt intake is lower than that needed by the body, the kidneys will seek to retain the existing salt wherever possible. However, this limited the ability of the kidneys and then there is deficiency (lack of) salt. Symptoms include weakness, fatigue, lethargy, dizziness, cramps, lethargy on a hot day, and severe or extreme deficiency can result in death.

Because salt deficiency can be dangerous, low-salt diet should be done under medical supervision.

Many pregnant women suffering praeklamsia characterized by high blood pressure. For this is usually recommended restriction of salt intake or diuretic use. However, salt restriction actually increase the incidence praeklamsia. Evidence suggests that by following a low salt diet, a pregnant woman may have problems with blood volume in the fetus. His body then tries to neutralize this by further increases in blood pressure.
Restriction of salt intake can also be dangerous for the elderly, especially during hot weather. The elderly usually drink less water and less able to adjust to hot weather. Salt lost through sweat and irreplaceable, the blood thickens and blood pressure rises. This raises an additional strain on the heart and can cause heart attacks and strokes.

Excess Salt
The link between high salt intake and the incidence of health problems are controversial. Some have claimed that excessive salt consumption is risky, but it is overrated. The studies on the subject is considered too limited, use the sample is too small with too short a time, and the results can be interpreted in various ways. High salt intake is synonymous with high blood. However, it is also still a matter of debate.

Fear of salt begin to show more than a century ago. when in 1904, French doctors reported that six people had their subjects who have high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease are people with high salt intake.

Concerns increased when in 1970, Lewis Dahl from Brookhaven National Laboratoiy claims that he has strong evidence that salt causes hypertension. Dahl also found a link between salt intake and high blood pressure in the population. However, a few years later a scientific paper in the American Journal of Hypertension says the scientists found little evidence about the relationship between sodium intake and hypertension in the population and suspected that genetic and culture factors that cause hypertension.

Intersalt, a large study published in 1988 compared the sodium intake and blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population is eating more salt is about 14 grams per day had a median blood pressure lower than populations who eat less salt is about 7.2 grams per day.

Through a meta-analysis of eleven studies involving more than 3,500 subjects, the scientists concluded that low-salt diet resulted in only minimal changes in blood pressure in healthy people is around 1.1 mm Hg (equivalent to changes in blood pressure from 120/80 to 119/79) and no effect on the incidence of heart disease or death.

In 2007, The European Journal of Epidemiology published a study that examined 1,500 people over five years and found no association between urinary sodium levels and the risk of heart disease or death.

In May 2011, Journal of The American Medical Association published a study that evaluated the effect of salt on the health of 3.681 people at the heart of Europe. This study showed that those taking sodium than the average does not have a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Conversely, those who consume less salt have a probability of 56 percent higher for the experience of dying from heart disease. Contradictory results emerged earlier in the year 2010 in the German study that found that people who consume more than six grams of salt per day had a higher risk for heart disease and high blood pressure. *** [AKHMAD TAUFIK | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 29092011]

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