Re:Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
by steve_adams_86 on Thursday June 30, 2022 @10:09PM
(#31941369)
There are some interesting points in this podcast and related resources/sources (not a fan of all of this site’s content, though Gregor is good at compiling research):
https://nutritionfacts.org/audio/the-sodium-debate/
My take away from this and other sources is that we don’t have proper long-term, randomized, human trials to determine exactly what to say about this. At the same time, there are cases where a reduction is clearly helpful but no typical cases where an increase is beneficial.
I’m certainly not out to debate or disprove you here — I’d really like to eat more salt, but the evidence I come across doesn’t justify it. I’d rather be wrong, though.
But a drastic decrease in salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. Most people will benefit more from a diet of mostly unprocessed foods than from micromanaging their salt intake.
As an example, salt-sensitive hypertension is a condition which some people have, but most people don't. If you don't, then salt will generally not affect your blood pressure adversely (it will go up temporarily if you eat a whole Domino's pizza, but will quickly go down again).