Salt

SALT AND BLOOD PRESSURE

What is it about salt and how it can affect our blood pressure. Salt has been blamed for contributing to high blood pressure for many years now and salt is one of the things I was told to cut down on to help lower my blood pressure.

Is salt really that bad for us and does it really help our blood pressure rise. Well I don’t think that there is any real concrete proof that it is as bad as it is labelled, yes it may be a factor in high blood pressure but our bodies need a certain amount of salt or sodium chloride as it is known scientifically. So how much salt is the right amount for our bodies to be healthy without it affecting our blood pressure.

We are not supposed to eat more than 6 grams of salt a day as an adult, but how do we know if we are consuming more than 6 grams a day. The answer to that is unless we count all the salt in every food we eat then we will not know and as about 75 to 80% of our salt intake is actually in the foods we buy and eat then it is not an easy thing to control. The other 20 to 25% of salt intake is what we my add when we are cooking or what we sprinkle on our food at meal times.

So it seems we only really have control over roughly 25% of our salt intake. Yes we can pick low salt option foods so as to control the other 75% but we don’t really know if what is said on the packet is 100% true. We can’t get to hung up about every aspect of our diet and get to strict at what it says on the packet, if we do then before we know it we are going to be paranoid about salt and just worrying about the amount of salt in a product we buy could send our blood pressure up anyway.

My opinion is we should not get to worried about the salt content in products we buy, just keep an eye on the 25% of our salt intake that we can control. This is what I did and my BP has come down to normal. I don’t think it has come down as a result of me consuming less salt on its own but it is a combination of all the things I have changed in my life.

So think twice about the amount of salt you sprinkle on your plate at your next meal time or the amount of salt you add to season that steak you are about to cook, but don’t get to hung up about the salt contained in the food products you buy.