Sodium-blocking substance can be hazardous to your brain

Warning: This new drug is practically designed to give you dementia

There’s a new Rx coming to town. And believe it or not, it could let you eat all the high-salt foods you want, and still be following doctor’s orders.

Sounds great – chips, pickles, fries – all allowed with this new drug!

But if that seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.

What they’re pushing as a ticket to eat anything you want is actually a fast-track to dementia.

This new drug in the works is dubbed the “salt buster.” But it’s more like the “health buster.”

It’s official name is Tenapanor, and a small biotech drug company in California is busy at work to get it into your doctor’s office as soon as possible.

You’re not going to believe how this drug works. It…is…insane.

It blocks a protein that brings salt into your bloodstream. By doing that, it keeps the sodium from the foods you eat confined to your gut.

Studies on the first guinea pigs – whoops, I mean volunteers — showed that it worked just as intended. It stopped sodium from ever getting circulated in their bodies.

At first glance, that sounds like a good thing. But at second glance, it’s anything but.

You see, having sodium short-circuited that way is about as healthy as putting a plastic bag over your head. Your body needs salt just as much as it needs oxygen.

And like oxygen, sodium plays a critical role in brain health.

In fact, when you don’t get enough sodium, it can keep your neurons from transmitting impulses. And that can lead to forgetting things and confusion, which can lead to dementia.

So you see, your body and your brain must have a good supply of sodium to function normally.
And I’m not the only one saying this.

The Institute of Medicine is about as mainstream as it gets, and even it has done an about-face on its low sodium dogma.

Last year it announced that there is no reason for anyone to keep their sodium levels below 2,300 mg a day.

And the chairman of the IOM committee – one that was organized at the request of the CDC — took it even further. He said that there are “potential harms” to a diet that goes below the 2,300 mg mark. Harms like a higher risk of heart attacks and death.

So while the IOM is finally warning against this low-sodium policy, a drug company is finding yet another way – a super-high-tech way – to rob our bodies of sodium.

But remember when I said the company that is developing Tenapanor was small? Well, that’s about to change.

AstraZeneca, always looking for the next big moneymaker, has pumped $15 million into the Tenapanor project and has also taken over the development of the drug.

Now there will be no shortage of cash to bring this brain-destroying drug to market.

The numbers of Americans with Alzheimer’s is said to be over 5 million, and that’s expected to triple by 2050.

Just imagine how many more cases we could see if this drug makes it on to the pharmacy shelf – and off of your doctor’s Rx pad.

Sources:

“New drug can lower salt intake without any dietary changes” Loren Grush, March 12, 2014, Fox News, foxnews.com
“No benefit seen in sharp limits on salt in diet” Gina Kolata, May 14, 2013, The New York Times, nytimes.com