"(E)xcessive salt restriction is as harmful as high salt in heart failure," concludes a study in the European Journal of Pharmacology . The Osaka, Japan-based research team demonstrated that for heart failure patients low-salt diets activate plasma aldosterone and the "increased plasma aldosterone level with strict salt restriction activated the mineralocorticoid receptor signaling in volume-overloaded condition, resulting in increased myocardial fibrosis."
In short, yet another study showing the risk of low-salt diets. The authors conclude:
A recent report showed that high sodium intake rather improved cardiac performance, induced peripheral vasodilatation, and suppressed the release of vasoconstrictor hormones in patients with compensated heart failure (Damgaard et al., 2006). Indeed, our findings suggest that salt depletion, which increases the plasma aldosterone level, must be avoided in addition to salt overload in the treatment of heart failure.
There was an interesting story on the front page in the print edition of today's Wall Street Journal with an eye-catching but gratuitously offensive and grossly inaccurate headline: "Maybe Mummy Should Have Laid Off the Salt." We had to respond :
There has been exactly one clinical trial of the effect of low-salt diets on cardiovascular morality and rehospitalization for congestive heart failure. That study confirmed observational studies and showed conclusively that low salt diets produced greater mortality. See the article in Clinical Science, "Normal-sodium diet compared with low-sodium diet in compensated congestive heart failure: is sodium an old enemy or a new friend? " It concludes: "The results of the present study show that a normal-sodium diet improves outcome, and sodiumdepletion has detrimental renal and neurohormonal effects with worse clinical outcome...."
So, perhaps the mummy should have used more salt during life -- as well as the salts used in the mummification process.
It's headline writers like this that are responsible for newspapers coming in dead last in terms of consumer confidence .
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