During the holiday season, there’s no doubt that you’ll hear, “pass the salt,” at least once or twice at the dinner table. The world loves salt, and since 70% of the U.S. diet consists of processed foods that are full of it, the average person is definitely consuming more than the recommended daily intake.
On average, most people already consume nearly one-and-a-half times the recommended daily amount of salt each day, and oftentimes we continue to pile it on our plates, usually to the dismay of healthcare professionals everywhere.
We’re constantly reminded that too much salt causes high blood pressure, which, according to the Food and Drug Administration, can lead to heart attack, heart failure, stroke, kidney disease, and blindness, not to mention damage to individual organs.
But what if what we’ve been taught about salt and high blood pressure was wrong?
Does Cutting Salt From Your Diet Reduce Your Risk Of Heart Problems?
A growing number of studies should make us all question whether drastically cutting salt out of our diets, as many doctors suggest, is actually good for our health. A few examples:
- A Boston University School of Medicine study of people who started with normal blood pressure found that those who consume under 2,500 mg of salt each day had higher blood blood pressure than those who consumed higher quantities of sodium.
- An analysis of seven different studies by the American Journal of Hypertension found that there is no strong correlation between lower salt intake and a reduced risk of heart attacks, stroke, or death.
- The Journal of the American Medical Association found that people with less sodium intake actually had a higher risk of dying from heart disease.
- A study by the European Journal of Epidemiology found no significant link between sodium intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease or death in older adults.
Just like most parts of our diet, too much salt can wreak havoc on our health, but since sodium is essential for our body, too little can also cause health issues.
Your Body Needs Salt… The Right Salt
We briefly talked about processed foods at the beginning of this blog, but let’s now take a second to focus on processed salt.
The standard table salt that is used by people all over the world is essentially a processed food; this salt goes through several different chemical processes to get to its final form, and through those is stripped of many nutrients while iodine is added as well as chlorine (to give it the final white color).
Unrefined sea salt, on the other hand, has not gone through any chemical processes, especially any that are done simply to make the color look more appealing to the customer’s eye. Plus, this unrefined and unprocessed sea salt contains nearly 100 trace minerals, including potassium, calcium, and magnesium.
However, without the processing, iodine, which is an essential element for our body, is not present in unrefined sea salt. That’s why taking an iodine supplement is so important for your overall health. Nascent Iodine is an essential element for healthy thyroid hormone production and an efficient metabolism. Sufficient levels of iodine increase cell absorption of nutrients which includes vitamins and minerals.
So take your pick: would you rather consume the processed and refined salt that is stripped of almost all of its natural qualities, or go with the natural salt that the Earth has produced, and add in a supplement like Truehope Nascent Iodine Advanced, which is created using only the most bioavailable, non ocean sourced, high grade iodine?
The choice seems pretty clear.