for decades now we've said high salt diets are bad for our health but what is the real deal salt so sinfully seductive and delicious but those pesky doctors have been salty over sodium for centuries claiming excessive salt intake causes high blood pressure and heart disease [ __ ] could be a salt on salt be unsubstantiated alas there's hope for you sinful snackers there's new evidence that salt could save your life so which is it Doc's should we slash the sodium or should we shake it like a salt shaker we're about to have this salty debate with doctor of pharmacy James Dean nickel Antonio the author of the salt fix and cardiologist dr. Nasir Goldberg welcome to you go the reason this is important is this affects each and every one of you in the audience all of us on stage everyone watching at home this is such an important topic but James to get this started because you're really instigating this debate by you wrote a book the salt fix and you basically say you can't get too much salt talk to us yes so if you look at the highest salt eating populations Japan South Korea France they all lived the longest and they have the lowest rates of coronary heart disease mortality and so in my book I actually show that we're at a much greater risk of salt efficiency than cell access because so many things cause us to lose salt so if we consume just four cups of coffee we lose over a full teaspoon of salt in the urine in just four hours and yet every guideline tells us to consume less than a teaspoon of salt so it just makes no sense and so people are different if you exercise a lot and you're being told by your doctor to cut your salt intake that can lead to heat stroke circulatory collapse muscle spasms muscle fatigue I mean I've had patients come up to me saying that their heart palpitations no longer are occurring at by upping their salt intake but just to be clear are you saying to every single person out there that you can't get too much salt so we salt intake is actually controlled by the body so we know this because if animals are depleted of salt they somehow know to go to a Salt Lick so same thing happens in humans your body controls salt intake and we should be listening to those cravings because it's fighting you to better health humbly you know in control salt intake the food manufacturers because there's a lot of sodium in a lot of products now I'm glad we're talking about this because you raise some very valid points but dr.
Goldberg obviously is a cardiologist I have a feeling you're going to take an opposing view here well the concept of the high salt diet that James is proposing it frightens me that is to have one of my patients follow that diet that's scary because it could kill them the populations that were studied in Japan in Korea it's not just about their salt intake they have a whole different lifestyle they have a diet that's less in processed foods the standard American diet is very high in processed foods it's high in sodium it's high in carbs it's high in fat so we can't just glamorize one mineral we have to look at the whole body in fact you can you can attribute about 57,000 deaths a year in our country to a high salt diet if you actually look at Japan and South Korea they're eating real foods insulting to taste right they eat salty kimchi and things like that so in a way it's not the salt that's the issue it's the other way crystal sugar and sugar can actually cause people to over retain salt so a lot of people can cut the sugar and fix their quote/unquote salt sensitive high blood pressure but if you say eliminate processed foods for the most part then you are effectively eliminating the bad sodium from your diet right I mean to me I think I think we're I'm confused a little bit is are you saying that it's completely fine to take the salt shaker and just put as much salt as you want on your meals or are you saying that it actually doesn't matter at all how much sodium you're getting your dies so the brain actually controls its intake so if you eat a lot of salt you're gonna end up not eating a lot later on in the day and so with sugar though we don't have that type of flipping a version signal with salt and so your body's going to control the intake and your kidneys will just flush out whatever salt it doesn't need you
