Existing salt and hypertension guidelines obsolete

Dec 13 2004

A respected medical expert has branded as "obsolete" and "one-sided" the existing salt and hypertension guidelines of Europe and the United States. These guidelines were drawn up in the 90s based on studies conducted in the 80s and are misleading, German Professor Dr. Karl-Ludwig Resch told the 12th annual Aachener Diätetik Fortbildung (further training on dietetics) in Aachen, Germany.

"If we look at the current studies there is no obvious correlation between the amount of salt consumed and blood pressure", Dr Resch maintains ; "Two Cochrane meta-analyses updated at the beginning of this year found no meaningful association between blood pressure and salt consumption". He pointed out that in all the existing research a strictly salt-reduced diet resulted in systolic blood pressure values decreasing only a few millimetres and this was specifically in people suffering from hypertension , not for healthy people. Dr Resch also highlighted the fact that these results where based only on short-term tests; results from long-term studies do not yet exist.

It is according to Dr Resch not justified to maintain the current guidelines stating benefits of salt reduction benefits for both hypertensive and healthy people; "The actual guidelines do not reflect the latest level of knowledge, they actually ignore it", the professor stated. He went on to point out that there are still no meaningful studies analysing the relationship between salt consumption and cardio-vascular incidents or cardio-vascular mortality.

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