How about a low-mango diet?
A letter published in today's Chicago Tribune defends salt. David Feder of Wellness Foods says "a healthy person has as much chance of suffering a negative health impact from salt as he or she would from a mango."
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A letter published in today's Chicago Tribune defends salt. David Feder of Wellness Foods says "a healthy person has as much chance of suffering a negative health impact from salt as he or she would from a mango."
CBS Radio News medical consultant Dr. Gabe Mirkin wrote me calling my attention to his "August" article (all senses of the word) "Why You Need Salt During Exercise" .
Shortly afterwards I was e-mailed an article filed today by Ivana Bisaro, "See Salt: You Need More Sodium Than You Think." The Bisaro article was perfect for hot August days, reminding us of the new guidelines presented by the American College of Sports Medicine calling for replacing 500-700 mg of sodium and 3/4 to 1 liter of fluid for every hour of exercise. ACSM warns to pay special attention to getting enough salt if your sodium intake is less than 3,000 mg day (US average = 3,500 mg, but some recomend 2,300 mg, below the ACSM warning level).
The US Dietary Guidelines call for a half hour of at least moderate exercise a day beyond normal activities. When it's hot outside, you may need even more than the 250-350 mg of sodium called for by the ACSM.
Salt Institute president Richard L. Hanneman has issued this response to Janet Helm “Shaking our salt addiction” published in the Chicago Tribune, August 16, 2006:
Janet Helm’s article on salt is unbalanced. She leads with an anti-salt recommendation from the generalists in the American Medical Association and buries the opposite recommendation by the medical specialty experts of the International Society of Hypertension and American Society of Hypertension (though Helm does quote the ISH president disparaging the AMA resolution as a “reckless recommendation”). While correctly noting that “doctors can’t seem to agree on how important it is to restrict salt” because “other factors may play a more powerful role,” Helm never elaborates on what those important health factors are. They include how low salt diets adversely increase insulin resistance and plasma renin activity producing adverse health outcomes; U.S. government data shows a 37% greater cardiovascular mortality among those who follow a low-salt diet. As an award-winning Science magazine analysis of “The (Political) Science of Salt” concluded: “After decades of intensive research, the apparent benefits of avoiding salt have only diminished.” The irony is that as better science increasingly clouds earlier certainty with regard to dietary salt, the news media seems determined to dredge up and publicize a worldview that science has left in its rear-view mirror. The salt issue used to be about blood pressure; now it’s about health outcomes and there is no evidence that low salt diets lower the risk of heart attacks or strokes.
The citations supporting this statement can be examined at http://www.saltinstitute.org/28.html and http://www.saltinstitute.org/healthrisk.html.