Reduction in salt consumption can help to prevent up to 500 000
Date: Sunday 07 March, 2010
According to a new study conducted by scientists from Boston - the reduction of salt intake, even by 10 percent could save thousands of lives and save billions of dollars.
Less consumption of salt leads to decrease in blood pressure, which is a key risk factor in strokes and heart attacks. For an individual the change of blood pressure is not so significant, but in a nation-wide the reduction of salt intake can have a tremendous impact. Therefore, the results of the study are primarily distributed among the main suppliers of food: restaurants, shops and food companies.
According to the study, excessive salt consumption cause about 100,000 deaths per year in the United States only. To demonstrate the potential of this research, scientists have built several statistical models on computers.
The results show that reducing salt intake by 9.5% would prevent 531,885 myocardial infarctions and 480,358 heart attacks in Americans aged 40 to 85 years. This will help to reduce medical costs by 32 billion dollars.
The investigation is published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
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