00:00 The main thing that happens, which people are most focused on, which is best research,
00:05 is that it affects your kidneys.
00:08 And essentially, you retain water and salt in your body, and that affects the hormones
00:13 that control blood pressure, and your blood pressure goes up.
00:17 And as you get older, your blood pressure goes up anyway, and if you eat more salt,
00:22 that really can become out of control, and you end up with high blood pressure.
00:26 And high blood pressure has its own effects.
00:28 But I'll come back to those in a second.
00:30 The other effects of salt are thought to be that it may affect your immune system, and
00:35 there's some indication that autoimmune disease is more common in people with high salt intake,
00:40 and it may increase the risk of some cancers, like gastric cancer.
00:42 But if you come back to blood pressure, high blood pressure is probably the most toxic
00:48 risk factor for premature aging and other problems, such as heart attacks, strokes,
00:54 atrial fibrillation, abnormal rhythm in the heart, heart failure, dementia, kidney damage,
01:03 kidney failure.
01:05 High blood pressure has enormous ramifications on the body, and salt intake is one of the
01:10 strong contributors.
01:11 So, if we reduce our salt intake, what impact does that have on our blood pressure?
01:16 So that's had some controversy about just who it benefits most.
01:21 And so some people said, "Oh, it only benefits you if you've got high blood pressure," or
01:24 "It doesn't benefit you if you're on high blood pressure treatment," and so on and so
01:28 forth.
01:29 And a study out recently has shown that, in fact, when you look at across the spectrum,
01:35 people with normal blood pressure or high blood pressure, regardless of age, regardless
01:43 of treatment, then salt reduction is the equivalent of taking a blood pressure medication.
01:49 So you actually significantly reduce your blood pressure.
01:52 And when you significantly reduce your blood pressure, you reduce the risks of heart attacks,
01:56 strokes, and other problems by 15 or 20 percent, depending on how much you reduce your salt,
02:03 without the side effects that people talk about, which is lightheadedness and fainting
02:06 and what have you.
02:07 So we can put less salt in our food when we're cooking, put less salt on our food when we
02:12 sit at the table?
02:13 That's not the main source of salt.
02:14 The main source of salt is what you buy in the supermarket in processed foods, and that
02:19 hasn't reduced much over the years.
02:20 Despite all those packets of low-salt products, that really hasn't changed that much.
02:26 And the way to avoid taking too much salt is actually to cook your own food, eat the
02:31 Mediterranean-style diet, and know what salt's going into your food.
02:36 But the salt you add at your table is a minor part of what you take in on a daily basis.
02:41 The other way to control salt is portion control.
02:43 If you're trying to control your weight and you're watching your portions and you actually
02:48 eat less volume of food, you will also eat less salt in your diet, which may be one of
02:53 the benefits of weight loss in addition to the weight loss itself.
02:57 And last week on The Health Report, Norman, you looked at how only a third of people with
03:01 high blood pressure are properly diagnosed and treated effectively.
03:05 So what does that mean for the rest of those two-thirds?
03:07 Well basically, everybody should know what their blood pressure is.
03:11 And the older you are, the more frequently during your life you need to know what it
03:15 is.
03:16 So you may need to know once during your 20s and 30s, but then increasingly.
03:20 Now, it goes to how it's measured.
03:22 Are you sitting comfortably in the doctor's surgery?
03:24 Have you been resting for a while?
03:26 You sitting in the right position?
03:28 Sometimes it might be more accurate to check at home.
03:32 But these new automated machines, which look as if they're really accurate, may actually
03:35 be inaccurate in terms of the size of the cuff, that people are getting something as
03:41 basic as the size of the cuff wrong.
03:43 And then the other thing that's going wrong at the moment is even when you're diagnosed
03:46 with high blood pressure accurately, doctors are not doing a simple test on you, which
03:51 uncovers a condition that's got a long name, primary aldosteronism.
03:56 But essentially a hormone called aldosterone is raised in the blood of these people.
04:01 And it's treatable with specific drugs or indeed sometimes surgery to remove a benign
04:05 tumor from the glands on top of the kidneys.
04:09 And these people, coming back to the salt story, are disproportionately sensitive to
04:14 salt.
04:15 So their blood pressure goes up much more in response to salt, and they're much more
04:19 likely to get heart attacks and strokes and other problems.
04:22 And they're easily diagnosed.
04:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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