Salt, Sugar, and Blood Pressure

You need salt. The brain’s ability to detect and react to low salt in the blood, to seek it out (sodium appetite), to detect salt in the environment (taste receptors) and to consume a sufficient amount of salt are key evolutionary adaptations that have allowed many animals to survive across various geographic environments. Salt is super important for many of our body functions. In summary, you need salt.

There have been a lot of claims that increased salt causes high blood pressure, but for normal people without any kidney, or other major medical problems, increasing your salt intake is very unlikely to increase your blood pressure. Increasing your salt intake will make sure you get the most out of the water you are drinking as it will make sure water gets into your tissue. Increased salt does not cause fluid retention in healthy people. If you have too much salt, your kidneys just get rid of it. Studies actually show increasing your salt intake by 10x has no significant effect on blood pressure elevation (barring any medical problems).  Furthermore, restricting salt intake is not even effective at lowering blood pressure for healthy people, as it only decreases blood pressure by 1-3%. Even in people with diagnosed high blood pressure, restricting salt only decreases blood pressure by 3.5-7%. In summary, healthy guys need salt, and no it’s not effecting their blood pressure.

But do you know what directly messes with your body’s salt management system and increases blood pressure?

Added sugar and processed carbohydrates are ruining us. Drink your coffee black, stop eating processed snacks, and eat whole foods. Like I said, if you’re a normal guy without any significant medical problems, your kidneys will just get rid of extra salt. Sugar, on the otherhand, is different. You can have chronically high blood sugar, that’s what hemoglobin A1c is measuring. Chronically high blood sugar increases the levels of insulin in your blood, which directly causes your kidneys to hold onto salt. Now that your kidneys are not able to get rid of any extra salt, your body retains water to normalize this now elevated salt concentration. This increased fluid volume causes an increase in your blood pressure. So in essence, we have blamed salt for what sugar did.

Salt your foods, drink black coffee.