TOO MUCH SALT, TOO LITTLE SALT...

Too little salt can cause stress to the heart. Though the American Heart Association recommends 1,500 milligrams per day or less, a new report found that reducing daily sodium intake below 2,300 milligrams can increase a person’s risk of heart problems. In one study of patients with congestive heart failure, those who consumed 1,800 milligrams of sodium daily were twice as likely to die during the study period as patients who took in 2,700 milligrams. Salt is known to raise blood pressure, but researchers now see its role as “more complicated,” says researcher Michael H. Alderman of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Too much salt can contribute to autoimmune disease. Researchers noticed that frequent fast-food eaters had above-normal levels of Th17 cells, which attack the body’s own tissues in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes. When they tested salt’s effect on the immune cells of mice, they found that the more the animals were exposed to it, the more Th17 cells they produced. Feeding a high-salt diet to mice genetically engineered to develop MS rapidly accelerated the course of the disease. “If I had an autoimmune disease,” says Yale immunobiologist David Hafler, “I would put myself on a low-salt diet now.”
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