To Protect Your Heart, Your Sodium to Potassium Ratio Is More Important Than Your Overall Salt Intake

Salt is the latest health/food villain that has been magically uncovered by the massive food establishment here in the US. While salt is being mandated out of foods in grocery stores and restaurants, chemicals unknown take it's place. And yet the body needs salt to function correctly, the brain needs salt so we can think clearly, so what is the truth?
By Dr. Mercola

The vilification of salt is similar to that of fat. Just as there are healthy fats that are necessary for optimal health and unhealthy fats that cause health problems, there are healthy and unhealthy types of salt. The devil’s in the details, as they say, and this is definitely true when it comes to salt and fat.
Salt provides two elements – sodium and chloride – both of which are essential for life. Your body cannot make these elements on its own, so you must get them from your diet. However, not all salts are created equal.

• Natural unprocessed salt, such as sea salt and Himalayan salt, contains about 84 percent sodium chloride (just under 37 percent of which is pure sodium^{1, 2}). The remaining 16 percent are naturally-occurring trace minerals, including silicon, phosphorus, and vanadium 
• Processed (table) salt contains 97.5 percent sodium chloride (just over 39 percent of which is sodium^{3, 4}). The rest is man-made chemicals, such as moisture absorbents and flow agents, such as ferrocyanide and aluminosilicate.
Besides the basic differences in nutritional content, the processing—which involves drying the salt above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit—also radically and detrimentally alters the chemical structure of the salt

Appropriate vs. Inappropriate Salt Restriction

In the United States and many other developed countries, salt has been vilified as a primary cause of high blood pressure and heart disease. According to research presented at last year’s American Heart Association meeting,⁵ excessive salt consumption contributed to 2.3 million heart-related deaths worldwide in 2010.
However, it’s important to realize that most Americans and other Westerners get the majority of their sodium from commercially available table salt and processed foods—not from natural unprocessed salt.
This is likely to have a significant bearing on the health value of salt, just as dangerous trans fats in processed foods turned out to be responsible for the adverse health effects previously (and wrongfully) blamed on healthy saturated fats.
Current dietary guidelines in the US recommend limiting your salt intake to anywhere from 1.5 to 2.4 grams of sodium per day, depending on which organization you ask. The American Heart Association suggests a 1.5 gram limit.
For a frame of reference, one teaspoon of regular table salt contains about 2.3 grams of sodium.⁶ According to some estimates, Americans get roughly four grams of sodium per day, which has long been thought to be too much for heart health.
But recent research, which has been widely publicized,^{7, 8, 9, 10, 11} suggests that too little salt in your diet may be just as hazardous as too much.  Moreover, the balance between sodium and potassium may be a deciding factor in whether your salt consumption will ultimately be harmful or helpful.

Too Little Salt Raises Heart Risks Too, Researchers Find

One four-year long observational study (the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study), which included more than 100,000 people in 17 countries, found that while higher sodium levels correlate with an increased risk for high blood pressure, potassium helps offset sodium’s adverse effects.
The results were published in two articles: "Association of Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion with Blood Pressure"¹² and "Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion, Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events."¹³
I’ve discussed the importance of getting these two nutrients—sodium and potassium—in the appropriate ratios before, and I’ll review it again in just a moment.
In this study, those with the lowest risk for heart problems or death from any cause were consuming three to six grams of sodium a day—far more than US daily recommended limits.
Not only did more than six grams of sodium a day raise the risk for heart disease, so did levels lower than three grams per day. In short, while there is a relationship between sodium and blood pressure, it’s not a linear relationship.¹⁴ As noted by the Associated Press:¹⁵

"‘These are now the best data available,’ Dr. Brian Strom said of the new study. Strom, the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, led an Institute of Medicine panel last year that found little evidence to support very low sodium levels.
"‘Too-high sodium is bad. Too low also may be bad, and sodium isn't the whole story,’ Strom said. ‘People should go for moderation.’

The authors propose an alternative approach; instead of recommending aggressive sodium reduction across the board, it might be wiser to recommend high-quality diets rich in potassium instead. This, they surmise, might achieve greater public health benefits, including blood-pressure reduction.
As noted by one of the researchers, Dr. Martin O'Donnell¹⁶ of McMaster University, “Potatoes, bananas, avocados, leafy greens, nuts, apricots, salmon, and mushrooms are high in potassium, and it's easier for people to add things to their diet than to take away something like salt.”

Read the full article at -  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/08/25/sodium-potassium-ratio.aspx