We have long believed that all the available evidence demonstrated a clear link between low-salt diets and insulin resistance, the condition that is a precursor to Type 2 Diabetes. In fact, the Salt Institute has published a Salt and Health Newsletter on that very subject. Insulin helps the body utilize a key energy source, blood glucose. When insulin is low or absent, cells cannot absorb glucose and the body starts to use fat as an alternative energy source. Insulin resistance leads to Type 2 diabetes, which is characterized by suppression of lipolysis (breakdown of fats) and poor regulation of energy intake in the liver, muscle, adipose tissue, and the central nervous system. It is also strongly associated with other components of poor health including dyslipidemia (an abnormal concentration of lipids in the blood), inflammation and hypertension, all leading to serious cardiovascular disease.
Dogmatic low-salt diet recommendations have ignored all the medical literature which warns that low salt intakes are associated with increased CVD deaths among those with CV conditions as well as those with elevated insulin resistance. Low-salt diets trigger production of other hormones and result in elevated aldosterone levels. Insulin resistance was always considered to be an unanticipated consequence of low salt intakes in humans and animals. Low-salt diets also increase sympathetic nerve activity and decrease tissue perfusions, two other factors contributing to insulin resistance.
The most recent research by investigators Rajesh Garg, Gordon Williams, Shelley Hurwitz, Nancy Brown, Paul Hopkins and Gail Adler from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Vanderbilt University and the University of Utah confirm this negative health impact resulting from low-salt diets. In their article entitled, "Low-salt diet increases insulin resistance in healthy subjects ," published in the journal, Metabolism - Clinical and Experimental on November 1, 2010, they report on testing the low-salt/insulin resistance hypothesis in subjects that were healthy. These healthy individuals were tested after 7 days of a low salt diet (1.2 g salt/d) and 7 days of high-salt diet (9 g salt/d) in a random order. Insulin resistance was measured after each diet and compared statistically. There was no question that a low-salt diet was found to be significantly associated with an increase in insulin resistance, while the high salt diet showed no negative consequences.
It is time that the health authorities in this country, such as the National Institutes of Health , the Institute of Medicine , the CDC and the AMA pull their collective heads out of the sand (or wherever they have them lodged), stop acting like wannabe thoughtless consumer activists and start doing their jobs. Any policy related to salt and health in this country must be based upon real, verifiable, clinical evidence. Were not living in some place where a few zealots should be able to dictate health and diet policy based upon antiquated anti-industry ideology and a perverted sense of self-importance. This is not an intellectual banana republic. We have competent scientists and we have large bodies of evidence that have repeatedly demonstrated that the negative salt myth promulgated by our health institutions is baseless.
The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath states:
"I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow."
It is time our medical authorities demonstrate the courage of their alleged convictions.
