The Health Risks of Too Much Salt

Most Americans, including older adults, consume too much salt—or more accurately, sodium—than they should. In fact, a ­recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that those 51 and older average about 3,000 mg of sodium per day, twice what the American Heart Association recommends and about 30 percent more than the Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines of fewer than 2,300 mg per day.

Why should you care? Because a steady stream of studies over decades has also linked too much sodium in the diet to hypertension (high blood pressure) and other risk factors for heart disease.

“There’s consistent evidence that in countries with high levels of salt intake, blood pressure rises more steeply with the aging of the population,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “And in countries with low salt intake, blood pressure rates do not rise as much with age.”

But you may also have heard conflicting advice about sodium and whether everyone really needs to reduce consumption. It’s true that certain studies have shown no decrease in deaths from cardiovascular disease in people who ate less sodium. And others have even suggested that low-sodium diets could have adverse health outcomes, such as a rise in overall cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

“Most of the latter studies showing negative effects have been done with very large, very rapid reductions in sodium,” Mozaffarian says. “With slow reductions over time, there is very little plausible evidence of harm.”