Doctors were quick yesterday to criticize a new study that found the highest death rates among people who consumed the least salt -- warning that millions of Americans could jeopardize their health if they increase their sodium consumption.
The risk could be greatest for African-Americans, who suffer the nation's highest rates of hypertension and its consequences, which include heart disease, stroke and kidney failure, doctors said.
"This sends out the wrong message and magnifies what is already a very serious problem in the real world," said Dr. Matthew R. Weir, a kidney specialist at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Salt-sensitive population
Dr. Elijah Saunders, a UM Medical Center cardiologist, said that about 70 percent of African-Americans are salt-sensitive -- meaning they are genetically predisposed to develop high blood pressure in the face of too much dietary salt.
Other populations are at risk, too, Saunders said. These include the elderly, obese and the 20 million Americans who suffer from diabetes.
"To say that it's ill advised to reduce salt in the diet, or worse, to say that people who restrict salt in the diet are going to have more heart attacks, strokes or cardiovascular events -- that's the wrong interpretation," Saunders said.
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York examined sodium intake and death among 11,346 Americans who were originally questioned in the 1970s by the U.S. government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Study flawed, critics say
After tracing what happened to the people in the years that followed, researchers found that people who ate the least salt died the most from any cause. Critics said the study was flawed because it relied on people's memories of what foods they ate and how much salt they added over a 24-hour period.
"A single day in one's life doesn't reflect how they live normally," Saunders said. People are likely to play down their salt consumption because they have heard the warnings.
Dr. Michael Alderman, who led the study, said nobody should alter dietary habits on the basis of this one study. But, in a challenge to conventional wisdom, Alderman said he found no evidence to support low-salt recommendations issued by such groups as the American Heart Association.
