Salt is an essential element in the human body, and it plays a crucial role in maintaining fluid balance, regulating electrolytes, and conducting nerve and muscle actions. Intake of too much salt leads to a myriad of health complications in nearly every organ in the human body.
Since processed and packaged foods form the core of most contemporary diets, it is very straightforward to exceed the accepted daily consumption of salt.
This article analyzes how excessive salt intakes affect the body, long-term health risks, and ways of intake reduction for better health.
Recommended Daily Salt Intake
Before getting into what happens when you have too much salt, remember that there is a recommended intake. The World Health Organization has a recommended allowance of no more than 5 grams per day (about 1 teaspoon) for adults. Most people consume much more than that because salt is hidden in virtually all processed foods, fast foods, and even in some beverages.
Effects Of Excess Salt On Your Body
1. High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)
Salt increases the level of blood pressure in the body. It forces your body to retain more water, thereby raising more blood quantity flowing through your blood vessels and consequently raising your blood pressure.
High blood pressure, often known as hypertension, is one of the leading causes of heart attacks, strokes, and many other heart diseases.
How It Works: The excessive sodium will compete for your kidneys to eliminate it and the fluid is retained in your body. This fluid accumulation forces the walls of your arteries.
Effects: When enough time is allowed, then this high blood pressure will cause damages in your arteries, heart disease, stroke, or failure.
2. Heart Disease And Stroke
While excessive salt intake is a cause for raising blood pressure, this condition elevates the risk of heart disease and stroke. When one uses high salt, their blood vessels get stiffer, narrowing the flow of blood full of oxygen to the heart, thereby upping the risks of heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes.
Heart Strain: The heart sometimes becomes overworked because it has to pump against the greater pressure, leading to some enlargement and reduced efficiency.
Risk of Stroke: This condition causes blood to build up in the body for some reasons. Hardened arteries limit the necessary blood flow to various parts of the body, such that the brain is at risk of suffering strokes with permanent damage or death.
3. Kidney Damage
Your kidneys filter waste from your body and control fluid balance in your body. Excessive salt loads your kidneys to excess sodium in the body, which will cause long-term damage. This leads to chronic kidney disease, a condition where your kidneys fail to maintain normal body functions.
Increasing workload: The body uses urine to filter excess sodium. However, if sodium builds up within the body and is excessive, the kidneys will eventually be unable to handle it.
Kidney Stones: The excessive salt also causes an increased amount of calcium in urine that can lead to their cause known as kidney stones.
4. Water Retention And Bloating
Water retention is probably the most outward sign of too much salt consumption. This is because sodium draws water from its environment into your blood vessels, which leads to swelling and puffiness, mostly in the hands, feet, and legs.
Why it occurs: Salt absorbs fluid from the surrounding tissues into your blood vessels, leading to fluid retention or puffiness.
Visible signs: Visible signs include puffiness or swelling, which can be quite painful and unappealing to appear with.
5. Bone-Related Problems
An excess of salt in diet can also become a problem for health of bones. If sodium levels are high in the body, it makes the excretions of calcium through urine increase.
After several years of this, the deficiency of calcium starts weakening bones, increasing the chances of the condition called osteoporosis, where the bones become brittle and fragile.
Affects Bones: Sodium leads to the loss of calcium in the body through urine, depriving bones of much-needed minerals.
Long-Term Effects: There is a possibility of fracture in the case of weakened bones, especially with age.
6. Digestive problems
Excess salt consumption has been correlated with increased chances of stomach cancer. Salt can cause irritation to the stomach lining, irritate the body, and facilitate the occurence of infections like Helicobacter pylori, which causes ulcers to the stomach, to be cancerous.
Irritation of the stomach lining: Sodium excess has a chance of irritating the stomach lining, leading to ulcers.
Risk Of Cancer: The risk of causing stomach cancer increases due to chronic damage and inflammation.
7. Dehydration
Too much salt causes dehydration. Although salt will maintain the balance between fluid in your body, too much of it creates an imbalance leading to dehydration especially if there is not enough fluid intake to counterbalance the sodium.
Signs of Dehydration: Symptoms also include dehydration that is indicated by thirst, dry mouth, headaches, dizziness, and dark urine.
How It Works: Sodium helps retain water. When you do not drink enough fluids, your body cannot keep your hydration levels correct.
How To Lower Your Salt Intake?
Having low salt intake is very essential in staying healthy and preventing some other health problems. Here are a few actual methods on how to reduce your salt intake.
- Cut down on processed and packaged foods: Most packaged foods, including canned soups, frozen dinners and lunch boxes, and snacks, are high in sodium. Of course, whole foods are always a better option.
- Read the food labels: Before you purchase a package, make sure you check out the label to know exactly the sodium present. When there are options such as low-sodium, go for the latter.
- Limit fast food: The intake of fast foods, with a higher content of salt, should also be lowered. Try to take as less fast food as you can and, if you cannot stop fast food completely, at least take healthier fast food options.
- Cook at home: Preparation at home allows you to monitor the amount of salt put into the food in addition to the variety used.
- Use herbs and spices: Replace salt with herbs, spices, and other salt-free seasonings to taste your dishes.
Consume too much salt, and it might lead you to major health issues that could result in serious health problems like blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, or even kidney damage. Salt is an essential nutrient, but if ingested in extreme quantities, it can be dangerous, so you have to regulate the consumption. Now you can protect your body from the toxic impact by limiting processed foods, reading labels well, and making some smart choices.