By Christina Charania
Photo by Vaikunthe Banerjee
A study organized by researchers at Simon Fraser University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of California San Francisco quantifies the benefit of a reduced sodium diet. The research found that America-wide sodium cuts could prevent a significant portion of the population from dying prematurely.
“We had been invited by the US Center for Disease Control to examine one model that they could use to draft policies related to sodium intake and the risks of cardiovascular diseases,” said SFU health sciences professor and co-author Michel Joffres. “Reducing this diet component that is not major or difficult to change could have a monumental effect on our healthcare systems.”
Published in Hypertension in February 2013, the group’s research looked at two approaches to implementing a lower sodium lifestyle — the first method suddenly reduced the average American’s sodium consumption of 3,600 mg/day to the 1,500 mg/day necessary for bodily function. The second lowered total ingestion by four or five per cent each year for a decade to reach an eventual 2,200 mg/day.
The researchers used three models to evaluate these reductions: one assessed the direct impact of decreased sodium on the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, while the other two — including Joffres’ model — examined the effect of reduced sodium on blood pressure.
“We know that when we decrease blood pressure, we’re going to decrease cardiovascular disease,” explained Joffres. “The number one risk factor for mortality in the world is hypertension, and reducing sodium is a very easy way [to lessen this risk].”
Each model was analyzed at a different university and put a value on the number of American lives that can be saved — or, as Joffres explains, “postponed” through sodium reduction — and each reached the same conclusion. With a gradual reduction in the United States, the models show that 280,000 to 500,000 deaths can be prevented after 10 years, or nearly a million years of life saved. An immediate sodium cut would save an even larger amount of lives: nearly 1.2 million in the same time span.
When Joffres applied these models to the Canadians, he discovered that 26,000 lives could be saved through the same sodium diminishment in the U.S. study.
“26,000 isn’t a small number, and people don’t talk about it because [sodium-related] deaths aren’t immediate,” said Joffres. “If you put 26,000 people in a plane and they’re killed, or a bomb hits a village and it’s gone, those things would make people worry. Sodium is slow and kills slowly, but surely.”
The most feasible way to achieve these reductions is removing processed foods from the diet, as these products contain roughly 80 per cent of consumed sodium. Decreasing fast foods, frozen products, breads, and canned commodities by half would produce the cut that Joffres’ study simulates in small, annual reductions.
“Of course, people need to adjust their sodium consumption alongside weight loss and diets with higher potassium, vegetables, and fruits [for an optimal effect on lifespan],” he noted.
This is easier said than done: once individuals have adjusted to salty diet, foods taste bad when sodium is removed from their meals. Noticeable change in health demographics will require a concerted effort from North American citizens, the government, and food manufacturers. Currently, the government does not hold manufacturers accountable and opts to provide them with non-mandatory guides on reducing sodium in the foods they make.
“These diets need to change in younger people,” Joffres concludes. “If younger people become used to lower sodium intake, their blood pressure will remain lower and blood pressure won’t increase with age. They won’t have the accumulation of damage to their arteries since young adulthood. People don’t realize that, and that’s a dilemma.”
