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Salt tied to elevated blood pressure, even with healthy diet, says study

Agencies
March 7, 2018

People who eat lots of fruits, veggies, and whole grains may still have an increased risk of elevated blood pressure if they consume a lot of salt, a new study suggests.

Eating high-sodium foods has long been associated with raised blood pressure readings, but some evidence suggests that body weight and other nutrients in the diet may modify or offset the effects of sodium on blood pressure.

To see how diet might influence the connection between salt and blood pressure, researchers examined data from food surveys completed by 4,680 middle-aged adults, and determined the amount of 80 nutrients in each person’s diet.

With the exception of potassium, none of these nutrients appeared to weaken the connection between eating a high-sodium diet and having higher average blood pressure readings over 24 hours than people who ate the least sodium, researchers report in Hypertension.

“This matters because it indicates that the problem of excess salt intake and its adverse effects on blood pressure cannot be solved by augmenting the diet with other nutrients,” said lead study author Dr. Jeremiah Stamler of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“The solution is reduction in salt intake,” Stamler said. “This is difficult since, as a result of commercial food processing, salt is almost everywhere in the food supply.”

Chronic high blood pressure is tied to an increased risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke and heart failure.

To lower the risk of heart disease, adults should reduce sodium intake to less than 2 grams a day, or the equivalent of about one teaspoon of table salt, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Sodium is found not only in salt, but also in a variety of foods such as bread, milk, eggs, meat and shellfish as well as processed items like soup, pretzels, popcorn, soy sauce and bouillon cubes.

Extra sodium in the bloodstream can pull water into the blood vessels and boost blood pressure by increasing the amount of fluid the heart needs to pump through the body. Potassium can help remove excess sodium from the body.

In the current study, researchers examined data on sodium and potassium levels in urine, as well as blood pressure, height, weight and eating habits from adults aged 40 to 59 in Japan, China, the UK and the US

Higher sodium levels were associated with elevated blood pressure for both men and women at all ages in the study, regardless of race and ethnicity or socioeconomic status.

The connection between sodium and blood pressure was similarly strong for both normal weight and obese people in the study, although the connection was weaker for overweight individuals who weren’t obese.

Potassium appeared to weaken the connection between dietary salt and elevated blood pressure only for people who had low sodium levels in their urine, the researchers also found.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how dietary salt or other things people eat might directly alter blood pressure. Another limitation is that surveys used to assess eating habits can be unreliable snapshots of what people actually consume.

Even so, the results add to evidence that managing blood pressure requires paying attention to salt, said Cheryl Anderson, a researcher at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Even though potassium can help lessen the blood pressure-raising effects of sodium, eating more potassium isn’t a license to eat more sodium,” Anderson said.

The American Heart Association recommends the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet or a Mediterranean-style diet to help prevent cardiovascular disease. Both diets emphasize cooking with vegetable oils with unsaturated fats, eating nuts, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grains, fish and poultry, and limiting red meat and added sugars and salt.

“There is data showing that when the DASH dietary pattern is combined with sodium reduction there are substantial effects on blood pressure,” Anderson said. “This can be as powerful as taking a drug prescription for high blood pressure.”

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 3: A new study has found out that diet significantly affects the mental health and well being of an individual.

The study was published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology.

"We have found that there is increasing evidence of a link between a poor diet and the worsening of mood disorders, including anxiety and depression. However, many common beliefs about the health effects of certain foods are not supported by solid evidence," said the lead researcher, Professor Suzanne Dickson.

According to the researchers, the link between diet and mental health can be firmly established in certain cases like that of the ability of a ketogenic diet being helpful for children with epilepsy and the impact of vitamin B12 deficiency on poor memory, depression and fatigue.

"With individual conditions, we often found very mixed evidence. With ADHD for example, we can see an increase in the quantity of refined sugar in the diet seems to increase ADHD and hyperactivity, whereas eating more fresh fruit and vegetables seems to protect against these conditions," said Dickson

But there are comparatively few studies, and many of them don't last long enough to show long-term effects," added Dickson.

The study further concludes that some food items can be associated with treatment and the betterment of certain mental health conditions.

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News Network
February 21,2020

Washington, Feb 21: The fat around arteries may play an important role in keeping the blood vessels healthy, according to a study in rats that may affect how researchers test for treatments related to plaque buildup, as seen in conditions leading to heart attack.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, noted that the fat, known as perivascular adipose tissue, or PVAT, helps arteries let go of muscular tension while under constant strain.

According to the researchers, including Stephanie W. Watts from the Michigan State University in the US, this feature is similar to how the bladder expands to accommodate more liquid, while at the same time keeping it from spilling out.

"In our study, PVAT reduced the tension that blood vessels experience when stretched," Watts said.

"And that's a good thing, because the vessel then expends less energy. It's not under as much stress," she added.

According to Watts and her team, PVAT has largely been ignored by researchers believing its main job was to store lipids and do little more.

Until now, she said, scientists only divided blood vessels into three parts, the innermost layer called the tunica intima, the middle layer called the tunica media, and the outermost layer called the tunica adventitia.

Watts believes PVAT is the fourth layer, which others have called tunica adiposa.

Tunica, she said, meant a membranous sheath enveloping or lining an organ, and adiposa is a synonym for fat.

"For years, we ignored this layer -- in the lab it was thrown out. In the clinic it wasn't imaged. But now we're discovering it may be integral to our blood vessels," Watts said.

"Our finding redefines what the functional blood vessels are, and is part of what can be dysfunctional in diseases that afflict us, including hypertension. We need to pay attention to this layer of a blood vessel because it does far more than we originally thought," she added.

Earlier studies, Watts said, had shown that PVAT plays a role in the functioning of blood vessels, finding that it secretes substances that can cause blood vessels to relax as well as substances that can cause it to contract.

In the current study, the researchers decided to test whether PVAT provides a structural benefit to arteries by assisting the function of stress relaxation.

They tested the thoracic aorta in rats, and found those with intact PVAT had more stress relaxation than those without.

The study revealed that the pieces of artery with surrounding fat had measurably relaxed more than those without.

Watts and her colleagues then tested other arteries, and were able to duplicate the same response.

"It's not something you see only in this particular vessel or this particular species or this particular strain. But that maybe it's a general phenomenon," she said.

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Agencies
August 2,2020

Washington, Aug 2: Children under the age of five have between 10 to 100 times greater levels of genetic material of the coronavirus in their noses compared to older children and adults, a study in JAMA Pediatrics said Thursday.

Its authors wrote this meant that young children might be important drivers of Covid-19 transmission within communities -- a suggestion at odds with the current prevailing narrative.

The paper comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump is pushing hard for schools and daycare to reopen in order to kickstart the economy.

Between March 23 and April 27, researchers carried out nasal swab tests on 145 Chicago patients with mild to moderate illness within one week of symptom onset.

The patients were divided into three groups: 46 children younger than five-years-old, 51 children aged five to 17 years, and 48 adults aged 18 to 65 years.

The team, led by Dr Taylor Heald-Sargent of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital, observed, "a 10-fold to 100-fold greater amount of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of young children."

15 countries with the highest number of cases, deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic

The authors added that a recent lab study had demonstrated that the more viral genetic material was present, the more infectious virus could be grown.

It has also previously been shown that children with high viral loads of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are more likely to spread the disease.

"Thus, young children can potentially be important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population," the authors wrote.

"Behavioral habits of young children and close quarters in school and daycare settings raise concern for SARS-CoV-2 amplification in this population as public health restrictions are eased," they concluded.

The new findings are at odds with the current view among health authorities that young children -- who, it has been well established, are far less likely to fall seriously ill from the virus -- don't spread it much to others either.

However, there has been fairly little research on the topic so far.

One recent study in South Korea found children aged 10 to 19 transmitted Covid-19 within households as much as adults, but children under nine transmitted the virus at lower rates.

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