HOLD THE SALT!

Autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes are on the rise, and scientists now think salty diets may be partly to blame. Researchers noticed that the immune systems of people who visited fast-food restaurants more than once a week had higher-than-normal levels of cells that cause inflammation.  (click below to ream more)


Those cells, called TH17 cells, ordinarily help repair the body after injury or repel disease-causing pathogens, but in autoimmune diseases, they overmultiply and attack the body’s own tissues. When researchers tested salt on the immune cells of mice, they discovered that the more they were exposed to, the more TH17 they produced. And feeding a high-salt diet to mice genetically engineered to develop MS rapidly accelerated the disease. Researchers say that in humans, genes, diet, and environmental factors probably all play a role in autoimmune diseases. Still, study author David Hafler of the Yale School of Medicine tells WebMD.com, “if I had an autoimmune disease, I would put myself on a low-salt diet now.”