Salt and Heart Health - Impact of Excessive Sodium

Too much sodium poses a significant health risk to your heart and other vital organs, like the kidneys and brain. Apart from this, high sodium symptoms can also lead to excessive fluid retention, ultimately causing bloating and sometimes weight gain. Hence, it is essential to take timely action and reduce sodium intake to avoid future complications.

Understanding Sodium and Its Role in The Body

Sodium is an essential mineral that your body requires to function properly in your everyday life. Since the salt present in your food comprises sodium chloride, it is the main and the most abundant source of sodium for your body. ²

Your salt intake is responsible for controlling various bodily functions, such as—

1. Fluid Balance

Sodium has the property of attracting water. This property makes your body absorb more water from your diet. Hence, it ultimately increases the volume and pressure of your blood. ³

Apart from this, blood and the other fluids that surround your cells are the main storage sites of sodium. Since it stays there, it holds control of the fluid balance. Therefore, sodium plays a crucial role in maintaining the overall fluid balance of your body. ⁴

2. Sodium and Blood Pressure

There is a direct connection between sodium and blood pressure. High blood pressure is one of the most damaging effects of high sodium intake because of its water-attracting property. Whenever the volume of blood increases, it raises your blood pressure as well. Hence, sodium is essential for maintaining your blood pressure.

3. Muscle and Nerve Functioning

By maintaining good fluid balance, sodium makes your muscles and nerves more capable of working smoothly and efficiently.

However, adding too much sodium to your diet can cause high sodium symptoms. When these symptoms persist for a long time, they can result in cardiovascular diseases. For this reason, healthcare professionals recommend low sodium intake to prevent heart disease due to excess salt consumption.

Effects of High Sodium Intake on Heart Health

Heart disease and salt intake are directly interconnected. When you do not follow sodium intake recommendations and go above the recommended daily sodium intake, you put your body at great risk for cardiovascular diseases, ranging from high blood pressure to stroke and other related illnesses. These problems can not only produce severe high sodium symptoms but can also eventually lead to death if not addressed on time.

Here’s how too much sodium affects your heart health:

When high blood pressure persists for a long time, it is called hypertension. The more salt you consume, the higher your chances of developing hypertension. Salt and hypertension have a direct relationship because regularly consuming too much sodium leads to hypertension.

So, if you're wondering what happens in hypertension, then here is a quick overview:

The heart requires more energy to function
Blood flows with a high force, resulting in damaging your arteries and other internal organs

Hence, hypertension produces high sodium symptoms, which increase the risk of—

Heart attack
Heart failure
Stroke
Kidney disease
Blindness

What Is the Ideal and Recommended Daily Sodium Intake?

The above sections show that balancing sodium intake is essential for your health. But how much sodium is too much for your body?

Well, sodium is naturally present in certain food items (examples include milk and celery), and it might be added to processed foods (for example, bread, soy sauce, etc.) to enhance their taste. However, certain food items, like canned or pickled items, commercially prepared sauces, condiments, frozen meats, etc., might have a high quantity of sodium, resulting in high sodium symptoms on regular consumption. ⁵

Moreover, even though the recommended daily sodium intake varies for every individual depending on their age, certain general sodium intake recommendation guidelines apply to everyone. These include—

For Adults and People Above 14 Years

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that the recommended daily sodium intake for adults and people above 14 must stay within the limit of 2,300 mg. Do you know this quantity equates to only 1 teaspoon of table salt?

In addition, the sodium intake recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) state that an adult should not consume more than 2,000 mg of sodium in a single day.

All in all, according to renowned health organisations, anything above 2,000 mg is considered too much sodium.

That is why it is crucial to reduce sodium intake in your regular diet. You can easily do this by using salt alternatives for cooking and understanding more about the hidden sources of sodium to eliminate them from your everyday life.

How Does Low Sodium Affect the Heart?

For most of us, our regular diet generally contains too much sodium. Therefore, to avoid high sodium symptoms, using salt alternatives for cooking and reducing sodium intake are solutions that naturally come to our minds.

However, even though a low-sodium diet benefits in many ways, consuming too little sodium can also have adverse effects. This is how it works–

Low-Sodium Diet Benefits for Heart Health

If you plan to reduce sodium intake to deal with high sodium symptoms, the most important low sodium diet benefit is reducing your blood pressure levels.

Since prolonged high blood pressure leads to hypertension, which ultimately leads to heart failure and stroke, reducing sodium intake through diet can help avoid the risk. ⁶

Negative Effects of Low Sodium on Heart Health

If you're looking for answers to how much sodium is too much, it is also a good idea to understand how much sodium is too low for your heart to function properly. Here's why—

Therefore, while a low-sodium diet benefits your heart by decreasing blood pressure, the risks associated with excessively reduced sodium intake can sometimes outweigh the benefits. Hence, to avoid high sodium symptoms, it is essential to talk to an expert before making drastic dietary changes.

Long-Term Effects of High-Sodium Diets

The long-term negative effects of high sodium intake include an increased risk of the following health issues—

Apart from these, there are certain other high sodium symptoms and adverse effects you must not ignore, which are as follows—

Bloating: It happens due to excessive fluid buildup when your diet has too much sodium. When you're bloated, your stomach swells, resembling the appearance of belly fat. However, a bloated stomach is much tighter than a pot belly.

Swelling all over your body: Too much sodium results in inflammation in not just your stomach but also several other body parts, including—

Too much thirst: While sodium is important for fluid retention in your body, too much sodium can, in fact, make you dehydrated. Hence, if you are feeling thirstier than usual, it could be because of increased salt consumption.

Hidden Sources of Sodium

One of the primary reasons why most people are not able to completely get rid of high sodium symptoms even after modifying their diet is the presence of hidden sodium in everyday food items.

Likewise, while you might believe that only those food items that clearly taste salty have the ability to produce the negative effects of high sodium intake, there are many others that have sodium in the hidden form, and you might not even realise it. Some forms of sodium that you can easily identify from the packaging label include—

Hence, the best way to reduce sodium intake is to look at the list of ingredients used on the packaging while purchasing food and avoid the ones mentioned above.

Apart from these, other hidden sources of sodium include processed meats, baked items, and other fast foods. Here are a few examples—

Hence, it is essential to eliminate the above-mentioned food items to get the best of low-sodium diet benefits and reduce high-sodium symptoms. Instead, you cannot opt for salt alternatives when cooking at home. Moreover, you should also follow a doctor's official sodium intake recommendations to minimise the adverse effects of high sodium intake.

How to Reduce Sodium (Salt) Intake? 3 Essential Tips

Using salt alternatives for cooking is one of the most popular tips to reduce sodium intake. Apart from this, there are certain food items that you can avoid and include to keep the relationship between salt and hypertension and sodium and blood pressure stable.

Also, since sodium and heart health are directly related, reducing sodium intake is an excellent way to stay away from heart disease and deal with high sodium symptoms.

What to EAT to Get Low-Sodium Diet Benefits?

What NOT TO EAT To Get Low-Sodium Diet Benefits?

The high sodium symptoms often worsen with the consumption of foods that are either too salty or have high sodium content in disguise. Here are a few examples of such foods—

Read the Packaging Label Carefully

Making the right food choices is crucial to enjoying the benefits of a low-sodium diet. One of the best ways to do this and minimise the effects of high sodium intake is to read the packaging labels very carefully. Most of the time, the packages have enough information to help you decide which food item has too much sodium.

Conclusion

All in all, a low sodium diet benefits include good fluid balance in your body and decreased blood pressure levels. One way to achieve this is to choose low sodium packaged foods along with salt alternatives for cooking at home. Besides you must also follow the daily sodium intake recommendations to reduce your sodium intake.