# Completely WRONG About Salt (New Study) ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Dr Brad Stanfield - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs - **Дата:** 24.03.2026 - **Длительность:** 12:43 - **Просмотры:** 49,593 ## Описание For weekly health research summaries and extra insights, sign up here 👉 https://drstanfield.com/pages/sign-up 💊 Supplements I Take: https://drstanfield.com/pages/my-supplements 💊MicroVitamin+ (Pro) Powder: https://drstanfield.com/products/microvitamin-plus 💊MicroVitamin Standard Capsules: https://drstanfield.com/products/microvitamin 🩺 Get your personalized health roadmap (free): https://drstanfield.com/pages/roadmap Timestamps: 00:00 The Sodium Debate 01:37 The Role of Genetics in Salt Sensitivity 03:31 The PURE Study and the J-Curve 06:17 The New Umbrella Review and its Findings 00:10:12 - Practical Takeaways and Conclusions ✔️ X: https://x.com/BradStanfieldMD ✔️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bradstanfieldmd Here are the links to the research papers referenced in the video: https://www.drmcdougall.com/education/information-all/walter-kempner-md-founder-of-the-rice-diet/ https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/sodium/how-much-sodium-should-i-eat-per-day https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sodium-reduction https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4393342/ https://www.bmj.com/content/297/6644/319 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742671/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5098805/ https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311889 https://www.tctmd.com/news/sodium-wars-where-some-see-linear-link-all-cause-death-others-see-no-need-change-western-ways https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824749#vp_2 https://www.tctmd.com/news/after-study-suggests-harm-too-low-sodium-intake-american-heart-association-rebukes https://academic.oup.com/ckj/article/18/7/sfaf173/8177122 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12624901/ https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/sodium/how-much-sodium-should-i-eat-per-day https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470386/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11773661 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.118.11103 https://www.tctmd.com/news/faulting-salt-new-pure-analysis-argues-against-low-sodium-intake https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8055199/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9962803/ https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2105675 https://www.tctmd.com/news/massive-ssass-study-shows-switch-salt-substitute-cuts-stroke-cvd https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11001572/ https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1378.long Thumbnail by James Kelly Video edited by Troy Young Script by John Milliken The links above are affiliate links, so I receive a small commission every time you use them to purchase a product. The content contained in this video, and its accompanying description, is not intended to replace viewers’ relationships with their own medical practitioner. Always speak with your doctor regarding the content of this channel, and especially before using any products, services, or devices discussed on this channel. ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs) The Sodium Debate In 1942, a 33-year-old woman walked into a hospital with a blood pressure so high it was destroying her eyes. Her kidneys were failing and at the same time there was no effective treatments. So in a last stitched effort, her doctor, who was a German refugee by the name of Walter Keaptainner, put her on a radical experiment, nothing but rice, fruit, and juice, almost zero salt. And he told her to come back in 2 weeks. But Keaptainner had a thick German accent. So she misunderstood and she came back in 2 months time. When she returned, instead of being dead or malnourished, her blood pressure had dropped from 190 on 120 to 124 on 84. Her eye damage had resolved and her previously swollen heart had shrunk down. Just by accident, Kipner had stumbled onto something extraordinary. That was over 80 years ago and yet was still arguing about salt. There are viral videos telling you that you don't need to cut down on your salt intake. — In this video, we're going to talk about the sodium myth. The first conclusion they made was that the lack of evidence of benefit and concern for harm suggests that low sodium intake should not be recommended. While at the same time, the American Heart Association says that we should ideally stay below 1,500 mg of sodium a day to improve blood pressure and heart health. Now, thankfully, a brand new study has just dropped. It's a massive digest of all of the research to date that finally clarifies what the evidence actually says. So, Kipner's accidental discovery was followed by decades of research and the consensus formed was clear and nearly unanimous. The American Heart Association is not an outlier here. And just a quick note, sodium and salt are not the same thing. Salt is about 40% sodium. Now, even in ### [1:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs&t=97s) The Role of Genetics in Salt Sensitivity the early days, there were hints that the story wasn't quite so simple. In the early 1960s, a physician named Lewis Stal at Brook Haven National Laboratory, he started feeding rats high salt diets. Now, some rats got hypertension or high blood pressure, but others were completely fine. So, he selectively bred them, and within just three generations, he had two distinct lines. Salt sensitive rats that died of hypertension on a high salt diet and salt resistant rats that seemed to be totally immune to it. It was the first clear proof that salt sensitivity had a genetic component and that not everyone will respond to salt in the same way. Now do remember that because it does become important later. So Darl he spent the next 15 years proving salt's dangers. He even fed commercial baby food to his salt sensitive rats and watched them all develop hypertension which triggered a US Senate investigation into sodium and infant food. In 1975, he won the SBA award, which is the highest prize in hypertension research. And the weight of the evidence just kept building against salt. In a landmark study in 1988, which was called inter salt, it tracked sodium in the urine of 10,000 adults across dozens of countries and found a clear association. The more sodium, the higher the blood pressure. Then there was a randomized clinical trial called the DASH sodium trial and it went further. It tested three sodium intake levels across two different diets. And in both, reducing sodium led to significant drops in blood pressure, especially those who started with the highest levels. And when researchers followed a group that had participated in a clinical trial for sodium reduction, and that trial lasted 24 years, those with an intake of under 2,300 mg had a 25% lower risk of death than those between 3,600 and 4,800 mg. So lower the salt, lower the blood pressure, longer the lifespan. Case closed. Or so it seemed because a widely discussed study started raising serious objections to this consensus. So in ### [3:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs&t=211s) The PURE Study and the J-Curve 2014, a cardiologist by the name of Selim Ysef and an epidemiologist named Andrew Mee at McMaster University, they published a study that would ignite a scientific war. Their team analyzed urine samples of over 100,000 people across 17 countries and they looked for indicators of sodium and potassium levels. Over a follow-up period of almost four years, they checked to see how heart attacks, strokes, and deaths related to these levels. And partly what they found matched the established picture. So when sodium intake levels were high, there were increased risks of death, heart attacks, and strokes. But then they found something that was quite surprising. Low sodium intake was also associated with elevated risks of heart attacks and strokes. In other words, the data seemed to show a J-shaped curve. It wasn't the case of less sodium the better. Instead, there was an optimal range that research placed between 3,000 and 6,000 mg a day. As mente, sodium is an essential nutrient. It's not tobacco. So, without sodium, you die. The optimum level of tobacco is clearly zero, but with sodium, it's not zero. And the response from the medical establishment was immediate and personal. Yousef, who was the study's lead, later described it bluntly. He said, "There has been a smear campaign by a group of people against anyone who questions salt. And the moment you stand up and say, well, it might not be as bad as what we think, you get attacked personally. Daniel Jones, who was speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association, fired back. He said, "This is a flawed study, and no health policy should be based on the study. " So, critics of the prevailing view were quick to point out a glaring potential problem. Both the World Health Organization's recommendation of staying under 2,000 mg per day and the American Heart Association's ideal target of 1,500 milligs per day are significantly below this sweet spot of intake. The worry, according to mente, is that if we try and lower our sodium intakes this much, we might actually be doing more harm and raising our risks, the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish. So the critics conclude that most of us shouldn't really be trying to lower our sodium intakes after all, especially if our potassium intake is adequate because there was another important finding from this study and others as well. Higher potassium intakes lower our risks of heart attacks and strokes and it does so by helping to lower blood pressure especially when it's high and there are certain conditions where people should be trying to increase their sodium intake. So one example is postural orthostatic tachicardia syndrome or POTS. It's a condition where the body struggles to keep blood flowing to the brain when a person stands. Now, all of this has generated a lot of confusion that's made people unsure about whether they should be setting the salt shaker down or picking it up. So, who's right? Is it the guidelines who say that we should cut sodium intake as low as possible? Or is it the pure researchers who say that actually if we lower sodium intake too much that could hurt you? ### [6:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs&t=377s) The New Umbrella Review and its Findings Well, a brand new study gives us the clearest answer yet. The study isn't just another trial that gives us one more data point. It isn't even a metaanalysis that pulls together the results from several trials. Instead, it's essentially a metaanalysis of metaanalyses of randomized clinical trials and observational studies. It's like a massive digest of all of the research conducted to date on the topic of sodium intake and heart health. And the headline findings reinforce the consensus. Low sodium intake is associated with reduced risks of heart related and all cause mortality. It slashed the risks of deaths from strokes by 26%. High sodium intake raised stroke mortality by 40% and each extra 1,00 mgs per day of sodium intake raised heart disease and stroke risks by 4 to 6%. So that settles it, right? Well, not so fast. What about mention's J curve? The finding that going too low may actually increase our risks. Well, this is where it gets quite interesting. The umbrella review found no signal of elevated risk at low intakes. There was no J-shaped curve. But if low sodium intake is indeed safe, then why did the Pure study find the opposite? The Pure researchers had proposed a mechanism. When sodium drops to very low levels, the body panics, it activates a backup system where various hormones, they tell our blood vessels to squeeze tighter and force the kidneys to hold on to every last grain of sodium. Think of it like a thermostat that overreacts to small temperature drops by cranking up the heat to maximum. The system is called the renin angotensin eldoststerone system and it can contribute to heart disease when it's chronically overactive. So is this backup system a real danger? Well, the umbrella review checked and it found evidence of partial activation but the response was mild and with sustained lower intakes the body adapts. There's no major red flags. But the researchers did find something that adds important nuance. And it brings us back to Lewis Dell's rat experiments from the 1960s. So the response to low sodium intake is not uniform across populations. It significantly lowered blood pressures in Western Pacific, Europe, and South Asia populations, but not in Americas. Similarly, high salt intake wasn't associated with heart disease in US populations, but it was strongly linked in Japanese populations. So this could reflect different dietary patterns, but it may also be differences in sensitivity to sodium. So was mentally. The umbrella review found no J-shaped curve for mortality, but his observation about population differences does turn out to be real. Dahl proved that salt sensitivity is genetically determined. Some rats were profoundly affected while others barely at all. And 60 years later, the same pattern shows up across human populations. One size doesn't necessarily fit all. So critics of existing salt guidelines will feel slightly vindicated by that part. And it is fair to admit that it's theoretically possible for our sodium intake to be too low. It's estimated that we need about 500 mg per day for our bodies to function normally. But in today's world, that's almost unheard of to get to such a low level. Plus, when blood levels of sodium get too low, that's generally only seen in hospitalized patients. And it's generally caused because of serious health problems, not because of eating too little salt. And remember Walter Kipner, the German refugee from our opening, his rice diet, which only contained 230 milligs of sodium per day, which is far below what anyone recommends. That study ran for nearly 60 years at Duke University, and it treated over 17,000 patients. And when researchers digitized those records, they found that 230 mg sodium intake, which is very, very low, it did appear to be safe with a 5year survival probability of 95. 6%. Now, for most of us, our problem is definitely at the other end of the spectrum. The global average of sodium intake is nearly 4,000 mg per day. So, worrying about salt recommendations because it's possible to have too little is like pushing back against exercise guidelines because it's possible to overtrain and cause injuries. So, let's ### [10:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnJTNUQehs&t=612s) Practical Takeaways and Conclusions get really practical. What are the key takeaways of this video? Well, first, for most of us, the guidelines presented by the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association, they do make good sense. They're backed up by the best available evidence that we have to date. And keeping our sodium intake levels low is linked to lower blood pressure. And that in turn is linked to lower risks of a number of problems connected to heart health. And when it comes to cutting back on sodium intake, it's helpful to realize that most of the salt that we consume is not what we add at home. Instead, it's mostly from packaged foods, which often contain very high levels of sodium. So cutting back on those is an easy way to reduce salt, and it will help us shift to much healthier whole foods at the same time. Even a little change can go a long way. So a recent study in China, for instance, had people switch out regular salt for a salt substitute. So instead of the standard table salt, which is 100% sodium chloride, the salt substitute was 75% sodium chloride and 25% potassium chloride. That little dietary tweak cut stroke risks by 14%, a combined measure of heart related problems and strokes by 13% and the risk of death by 12% over the roughly 5 years of follow-up. The average blood pressure among those using the salt substitute dropped by about three points. Ideally, we want to keep both sodium intake levels low and then boost potassium intake because most of us don't get very much potassium in our diets. So, increasing our intake is an easy win. A meta analysis of potassium and blood pressure, for instance, shows just how significant an impact this can be. When daily potassium intake reached 3,500 to 4,700 mg, the blood pressure reduction was an amazing 7 units. Potassium intake is critical in balancing sodium in our systems. So most of us want to prioritize natural food sources like leafy green vegetables, beans, lentils, and bananas. We also want to keep in mind though the risks of having too much potassium for people with kidney disease. My health road map tool does this automatically as it generates suggestions for you to discuss with your doctor. Now remember Walter Kipner's patient from 1942, the woman who was supposed to die. She survived because of something as simple as changing what she ate. And nearly 80 years of research since then has only reinforced what kept stumbled on by accident. For most of us, less salt means lower blood pressure and a longer life. And when it comes to blood pressure, exercise is another critical area. Recent research has identified one very specific exercise that makes the biggest impact. So, make sure to check out this next video here to find out exactly what it is and how you can easily start doing --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/20558*