Less salt is found to help the heart

Consuming less salt can not only lower blood pressure, but also may reduce the risk of heart disease overall, researchers reported.

They found that people with borderline-high blood pressure who reduced their sodium intake by 25% to 35% lowered their risk of total cardiovascular disease by 25%. And this lower risk lasted 10 to 15 years.

Dr. Nancy Cook and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston studied more than 3,000 people who took part in a study of a low-salt diet and its effects on high blood pressure.

Those who were assigned to a low-salt diet had a lower risk of various kinds of cardiovascular disease even 10 to 15 years later, they reported last week in the online version of the medical journal BMJ.

They were also 20% less likely to have died than people assigned to a normal diet.