The simple diet hack that could ‘slash your risk of heart attack, stroke and dying young’
IT has long been recognised by experts that eating a high salt diet is bad for you.
Eating lots of salt has been linked to heart issues and can increase your risk of stroke, heart attacks and even death.
But now scientists have discovered a way in which we can enhance the taste of food without a sprinkle of the dangerous white stuff.
New research has found that replacing salt with dietary salt substitutes, such as LoSalt, lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and high blood pressure is a major risk for an early death.
A diet high in sodium – the compound which salt is made up of – and low in potassium is known to drive up blood pressure.
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In salt substitutes a certain amount of sodium chloride is replaced with potassium chloride.
The research, published in Heart, confirms previous findings from another study which found that salt substitutes are good for heart health.
The new study found that using salt substitutes in place of salt can effectively lower blood pressure.
Researchers from the Harbin Medical University in China, looked at the results of several clinical trials involving nearly 30,000 people to determine how salt substitutes affected their blood pressure.
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Salt substitutes were found to lower blood pressure in all the participants and lower the risk of early death by 11 per cent.
The research also found that salt substitutes lowered the risks of cardiovascular disease by 13 per cent, and the risks of heart attack or stroke by 11 per cent.
Authors of the study said the findings suggest that doctors should be telling patients to make the switch from salt to salt substitutes.
They also called for the Government to use the findings to implement a national health strategy to “reduce dietary sodium intake, increase dietary potassium intake, lower blood pressure and prevent major cardiovascular events”.
Meanwhile, a report published this week found that heart attack patients’ chances of survival are down to a postcode lottery.
Those living in London and the South East are most likely to survive.
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Those areas are said to have the best NHS heart doctors — while care in the regions is worse.
UK hospitals deal with 100,000 heart attack patients a year — one every five minutes.