Study finds heart failure patients do better consuming more salt

For those with CHF, this may be the deadliest health advice ever

When your health advice is respected and followed by millions, you better get it right!

But if you’re the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, the CDC and the World Health Organization, apparently you play by a different rulebook.

Now, however, we have solid evidence that all the bad advice about salt these organizations have long handed out may have dire consequences.

Because if you have congestive heart failure, the guidelines they’ve issued about sodium are more than just outdated dietary nonsense.

They can be deadly.

A pinch of common senseFor years now I’ve been keeping you up to date on what researchers have discovered about sodium and health. Their most recent about-face where salt consumption is concerned has been dramatic.

But now, the last sacred cow of that sodium advice has finally been sent to slaughter.

If you, or someone you love, has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF), it’s a given your doctor will say to keep your sodium intake low or you’ll land in the hospital…or worse.

And that advice has an impressive pedigree. But no matter how many times you hear it, and from whatever prestigious group, it’s not only wrong, it may be lethal.

A few years ago I told you about an Institute of Medicine review of sodium. That should have been a major wake-up call.

The IOM expert panel discovered that consuming less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day could create serious health problems. And that was especially true for CHF patients.

But apparently that was like telling those medical mainstream groups that horses can fly. Not only did they not buy it, they ignored, it as if it would all just go away. That sort of advice, after all, ran counter to everything they have been telling us for years.

But now we have even clearer evidence of how deadly such a dismissal can be.

When researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago followed three years of records for more than 800 CHF patients, 42 percent of those who were on sodium-restricted diets of less than 2,500 mg a day died or were hospitalized.

As far as these salt-fearing groups are concerned, that’s nothing short of heresy! The AHA for example, wants all of us to reduce our sodium intake to below 1,500 mg a day!
The Rush team, however, found that for those with heart failure, sodium restriction may have a “detrimental impact.” And other researchers have come to a similar conclusion.

The authors of a study last year published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure, for instance, said that for CHF patients “a low-sodium diet may be harmful.” And the IOM panel said back in 2013 that low salt intake “may lead to a greater risk of adverse health effects” for those with CHF.

Or maybe the AHA and the others should have paid more attention to the results of a 2013 study in The American Journal of Medicine: “Advising low sodium diets seems misguided and potentially dangerous.”

But it seems that no matter how many times research bursts the bubble of the low-sodium myth, the anti-salt brigade refuses to pay attention.

Last spring I told you about the secret risk behind slashing sodium intake. Researchers found that when you cut way back on sodium, depriving yourself of the 3,000–6,000 mg you need daily, your body responds to that imbalance by producing a hormone that damages blood vessels.

And as we’ve found out in recent years, rock-bottom sodium levels can contribute to insulin resistance, boost artery-damaging triglycerides and prompt dementia symptoms.

It’s truly frightening to think of how many are dutifully following AHA guidelines. But they’re out there, that’s for sure. At least 81,000 people have gone to the group’s website to take a low-sodium pledge and register to join the “movement to end the American love affair with salt.”

And that got that right, Americans love salt.

But the beauty of this love affair is that salt loves us back!

Sources:
“People with heart failure suffer on low sodium diet” Terry Graedon, December 31, 2015, The People’s Pharmacy, peoplespharmacy.com