Well this is not encouraging

salt
insurance
#1

I got a newsletter from my insurance provider, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas.

This was the first topic of the newsletter:

Is Hidden Salt Wrecking Your Healthy Eating Goals?

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) promotes World Salt Awareness Week to urge people to lower their daily intake of hidden salt to help lower their blood pressure.

You only need a tiny bit of salt to help your body do its work. Less than one-tenth of a teaspoon per day, says the Harvard Medical School. An average American gets 20 times that, and some people hold water as a result. That raises the amount of fluid flowing through your blood vessels, which can boost blood pressure.

https://lifetimes.bcbstx.com/article/hidden_salt

(Carl Keller) #2

What, no coupon for blood pressure lowering medication? Or at least a brochure?

#3

I would die.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4
(Scott) #5

Meh, as I salt my bacon.

(Edith) #6

Less than 1/10th teaspoon! Wtf!!! What is that? Five grains!

Does Harvard actually look at any research that is being done outside of Harvard?

(Daisy) #7

The nutritionist came to my 5th graders class and made them air popped popcorn and told them the butter and salt are unhealthy, so had them eat it plain. I told her to say “keep the popcorn and give me the salt and butter” lol

(Jane) #8

:laughing:

(Central Florida Bob ) #9

I know it’s easier said than done, but the best thing to do with a letter like this is to shred it and forget it ever existed. If they don’t say they’re going to make everyone on the plan get a blood test to check sodium levels, or some other action, It Doesn’t Matter.

(Bob M) #10

I used to eat salt-free stuff all the time, back on my low fat/low salt diet. The stuff is incredibly tasteless. Inedible. It’s like fat-free cottage cheese or ricotta. The memories of this crap make me shiver.

(Jane) #11

From what I gathered from The Salt Fix book is a small minority of the population are sensitive to salt and it does cause increases in blood pressure.

For the guidelines to be written for ALL people to reduce salt intake based on a small group that need different management is insane.

(Bob M) #12

If you want a funny read on salt, including references to actual RCTs and how they are all over the map, see here:

And we can’t attack those people at Harvard with a study based on epidemiology. That’s how we got to where we are, via epidemiology. Epidemiology is garbage. If the Government’s recommendation is to reduce salt intake, they really need to run a freaking RCT. Other than that, and the results from epi studies are all over the map and even if they all pointed in one direction, they are useless, as they can’t prove causation.

For one of the many reasons not to use epi studies, see this:

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This is from:

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2011.00506.x

What it shows the that when they looked to see what epi studies had theorized and then what subsequent RCTs had shown, not ONE of the epi studies was verified by RCT. Not only that, but FIVE of the claims were verified to be WRONG.

The classic example of this is hormone replacement therapy. They had epi evidence that women taking HRT were helped with heart disease. Then they ran some RCTs. Guess what? HRT actually CAUSED more heart disease. This is what you see above, where there were 3 negative trials for HRT, where negative means the original theory was WRONG.

The only thing epi evidence should be used for is (1) hypothesis generating; (2) evidence that a correlation does NOT exist; or (3) there might be causation if the Bradford-Hill criteria are met (and nutritional epi NEVER meets that).