Study finds too little sodium impairs cognitive functioning

Could a low-salt diet be the gateway to dementia?

For as long as I can remember, the low-sodium myth has been hammered into our heads by the feds, mainstream researchers, and even (I’m sure!) your own doctor.

So, by this point you know their familiar refrain — if you don’t carefully restrict your salt intake you’re risking dire consequences such as high blood pressure, heart attack, or stroke.

It’s enough to make you toss your salt shaker out the window!

Now, some new research is making the rounds about how even the very best of diets, ones filled with fruits and veggies, aren’t enough to compensate for consuming too much salt.

But while such warnings keep getting more than their share of publicity, there’s another study that you probably didn’t hear about. This research discovered how subtle drops in your blood sodium level can cause changes in “cognitive function,” a.k.a., a decline in your ability to think and remember clearly, which might very well be a gateway to dementia.

That research adds to the growing body of evidence telling us that salt isn’t your enemy. And that by getting too little, you’re putting your life in grave danger.

The spice of life

Every so often, the mainstream feels compelled to give us a “salt talk,” with the latest such lecture coming from researchers based in the UK and U.S.

This sodium-bashing study was kind of a doozy – a four-day look at several thousand volunteers that involved one blood pressure reading, one Q & A, and two urine samples per subject to try and figure out what nutrients they’d been eating.

So, what did the findings tell us? In reality, absolutely nothing.

But for the researchers, who apparently set out to prove a point about the “global epidemic of high-salt intake,” it was some kind of eureka moment, one confirming that no matter how good of a diet you have, sodium will raise your blood pressure.

The site WebMD even gave that study the headline “Don’t count on healthy foods to blunt salt’s harm.” Yikes! You would think that they were talking about cyanide or arsenic, not a mineral that’s necessary in order to keep your body functioning.

But while those “scientific” findings were circling the media sphere, another recent study about sodium reveals what small dips in blood levels of the mineral can do to your brain.

Researchers from the University of Colorado who specialize in hypertension and kidney diseases wanted to see if there was a connection between “subtle impairments in cognition” and mild “hyponatremia,” which simply means a low level of sodium in your blood.

To find that out, they analyzed data from 5,435 healthy male subjects, all over 65 and all of whom had been monitored for more than four and a half years (rather than four days).

They found that all it took to cause a drop in the volunteers’ ability to reason and think normally were “slightly” reduced blood sodium levels, the kind that would easily go unnoticed by doctors.

The researchers also discovered that the men with the lowest sodium readings were close to 40 percent more likely to start showing clear symptoms of mental decline during the course of the study.

While that research simply focused on cognitive functioning, other studies have found low salt intake can lead to a wide variety of problems, such as falls, fractures, heart disease, and even early death.

In past eAlerts we’ve told you about tons of research done over the years showing the very real harms of salt restriction, including the work of Dr. Andrew Mente, who operates out of McMaster University in Canada.

One of his most shocking findings was that the kind of low-sodium diet that those with high blood pressure are typically put on can actually raise the risk of having a heart attack or stroke!

According to Dr. Mente, the optimal amount of salt to consume is between 3,500 and 4,000 mg a day – what you probably consume if you’re not on a salt-restricted diet. And that’s a far cry from what the AHA has been advising us all these years, which is not to touch a grain more than 1,500 mg a day… or else!

Look, it’s up to us to know the facts where salt is concerned. Because if you’re going to wait for the mainstream to see the light here, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. And by carefully following that bad advice, you’ll not only be putting your brain and heart at risk, but will also be eating some pretty tasteless food to boot!

“Don’t count on healthy foods to blunt salt’s harm” Steven Reinberg, March 5, 2018, WebMD, webmd.com