What Causes Hypertension (and How to Treat It
As virtually every diabetic knows, a type 2 diabetic has a better than 80% chance of also being hypertensive, ie suffering from high blood pressure. And we all know that, besides taking a daily medication to control our blood pressure, we should eat a low salt diet because excessive salt intake is the main cause of high blood pressure.
But is excessive salt intake really the main cause of high blood pressure? Recent studies suggest that this might not be so.
Is too much salt really the cause of high blood pressure?
In the 2017 issue of the American Journal of Medicine it was claimed in a paper titled Is Salt a Culprit or an Innocent Bystander in Hypertension? that the notion that excessive salt consumption leads to hypertension is based on opinion, not on fact.
The paper cited a Cochrane Review of almost 170 studies which noted that sodium restriction only lowers blood pressure by 1% to 3% in people with normal blood pressure (normotensives) and between 3.5% and 7% in people with high blood pressure (hypertensives).
Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy, and are internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based health care.
Sugar, the paper went on to claim, is the more likely primary cause of hypertension.
This study derived some support from a previous study of 133,000 adults, published in The Lancet in 2016, which found that a high sodium intake, compared with a moderate sodium intake, was associated among hypertensives with a greater risk of cardiovascular events and death. But no such association occurred among normotensives.
However, a low sodium intake was associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular events and death in both hypertensives and normotensives. This suggests that that lowering sodium intake is best targeted at populations with hypertension who consume high salt diets.
The notion that there is no good science to back up the hypothesis that salt is one of the major causes of hypertension is open to challenge. Indeed, sodium is an essential ion for nerve conduction, muscle contraction and cell signalling, so restricting your intake of salt unduly could be harmful.
Clinic studies showing that excessive salt intake increases BP
Recent estimates suggest that, globally, 62% of cerebrovascular disease and 49% of ischaemic heart disease are attributable to elevated blood pressure.
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