Doctors: the complete rejection of salt can harm the heart
Doctors from Sun Yat-sen University have found that avoiding excessive salt intake can be harmful for people with heart failure, especially those under the age of 70.
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction accounts for more than half of the cases of this disease. The optimal range of salt intake and its effect on patients with this diagnosis is unclear because they are often excluded from relevant studies.
The study authors, published in the Journal of Heart, used data from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of TOPCAT in 1,713 people aged 50 years and older.
In the questionnaire, patients indicated how much salt they add when cooking rice, pasta, potatoes, soup, meat and vegetables. The researchers followed the participants’ health for an average of 3 years, tracking deaths from cardiovascular disease or hospitalization related to heart failure.
Nearly 50% of the participants did not add any salt at all. It turned out that these people had more weight and lower diastolic pressure and were more likely to go to hospital for heart failure. This was especially evident for people under the age of 70.
Given that the study is the first to investigate the effect of salt intake on patients with a preserved ejection fraction, the authors recommend not jumping to conclusions. They acknowledge that their result may be due to the fact that people with the disease initially may have been prescribed less salt, and the participants themselves may have been biased when filling out the questionnaires.
